Growing insecurity engendered by international terrorism and trafficking of all kinds in the Sahel Sahara area should not obscure an even more pernicious reality: that of a vast band of land nearly decimated by climate degradation. There is nowhere on this planet a place as bleak, or as damaged. The fauna, flora and the men are trapped in a climate tragedy.

The region presents the spectacle of a vast geographical area, a lunar landscape, almost a desert that stretches from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. It holds a world record: that of the lowest population density with less than one inhabitant per km2.

The Sahel Sahara area is indeed at the confluence of two major challenges: the geo political and strategic one and second, certainly not the least, the extreme vulnerability to climate issues.

Indeed, while everyone agrees on the increasing dangers of terrorism and trafficking in the Sahel, the international community, and local governments do not seem to be fully aware of the imminent and almost irreversible danger constituted by the threat of the continued environmental degradation. If Africa is the continent most vulnerable to the climate change, then, within Africa, the Sahel Sahara is a “left behind » region.

 Repeated droughts in the 1970’s and the 1984’s and continued desertification have decimated the cattle of a dozen countries in an all predominantly pastoral area. The inexorable advance of the sand dunes (up to 5 km a year in places) has buried entire villages with historic cities and threatens hundreds of homes. Since 1900, the southward advance of sand was up 250 km on a strip which extends 6000 km from east to west. Other direct consequences include: uninterrupted migrations flows, increase in insecurity and anarchy especially in the outskirts of cities, poverty, social distress, political unrest…

 This bleak picture should probably not have been an issue of concern to the world if it were not about a piece of land which covers approximately 11 million km2 (nearly 16 times a country such as France) and is larger than the third of Africa.  A quarter of African countries are located in this area and furthermore, among the top eight largest states of the continent, six belong to the Sahel Sahara area: Algeria, Chad, Libya, Mali, Niger, and  Sudan.

This situation illustrates the weight of the climate threat hanging over the Sahel Sahara at a particularly difficult juncture. Never has indeed the world been as much at risk from the adverse effects of climate change: deterioration of the eco systems, increasingly frequent natural disasters of all kinds, difficult access to water, recurrent famines, structural poverty, etc …

Sadly, in face of this tragedy, the governments of the region and the international community do not seem aware of an impending tragedy. During the last major conferences on climate, there was a prevalent fear among participants that a binding global agreement on climate was still far away. And that’s where it hurts most.

Neither the United Nations conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, December 2011, nor those held later in Copenhagen (2009) and Cancun (2010) have led to the expected international agreement. The industrialized world, with historical responsibility of greenhouse emissions, is about to kill the Kyoto Protocol (premeditated?) as there is no alternative arrangement in the making. Worse, a number of polluting countries have even announced their withdrawal from the Kyoto legal framework. This is particularly the case of Canada, Japan and Australia. The U.S. was already outside the protocol. Only the Europe Union seems to take the measure of the danger.

The forthcoming major global conference on climate change to be held in December 2012 in Qatar and the World Summit Rio+20, next June in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will be ideal opportunities to review the world policy on the environment.

 

This would not only be an opportunity for Africa and the world to address the vulnerability of the Sahel Sahara and its power to drive the neighborhood but it would be also a chance to discuss the untapped huge energy potential of this vast region. In the context of a green economy, the Sahel Sahara region is indeed a potential source of unlimited clean energy sources: wind, solar and hydro power for the region and for Europe.

In recent studies conducted as part of ambitious projects called Desertec and Medgrid, it was demonstrated that if only 0.3% of the total area of the Sahel Sahara were allocated to solar power plants, the combined energy demand of Europe and North Africa could be met! And that is only about solar potential! If the potential wind, geothermal and hydropower sources of energy were added to solar, the Sahel Sahara would provide the energy solution to the whole world. But then everything else would have to be done. That means an unwavering political commitment of the leadership in the region and of the decision-makers at international level.

Since its creation in 2005, the ANEJ, a joint initiative of the United Nations and African journalists, has been working to encourage that world leader’s awareness and commitment. Whenever it was possible, ANEJ challenged the African Heads of States and international policy makers on the continent’s vulnerability. In our next events, we will try to put a particular emphasis on the continuing disappearance of eco systems in the Sahel Sahara.

In this context, the establishment of the Centre 4S and its commitment to sustainable development in the region gives ANEJ reasons for hope. Our motivation is all the more justified as we share with the Centre4s the same views on the future of this region.

 

The security threat to the Sahel Sahara is certainly related to terrorism, and to various forms of traffics including trafficking in drugs. However, ignoring the serious threats to the environment is perpetuating the risk of chronic instability in the region.

 Sidi El Moctar Cheiguer    Président of ANEJ. www.anej.info    African Network of Environmental Journalists. 

Based in Nouakchott, the Centre’s area of intervention is the band of land stretching from Mauritania down to Guinea along the Atlantic coast and, across the savannah, to Chad and Sudan. The main issues it addresses are: defense and security of the Sahel Sahara; armed violence and terrorism; competition for oil, gas and uranium; irregular migrations within and outside the region; trafficking in human, cigarettes, drugs, etc; environmental and renewable energies. The main priority is to help the region and its international partners – public and private, as well as those from Civil Society organizations, Universities, Forums, and others Groups, to collaborate further in order to ensure security and prosperity of the Sahel