U.N. chief: Darfur a victim of climate change
Ban blames humanitarian crisis on decades of drought, fight for resources
WASHINGTON - Climate change is partly to blame for the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, where droughts have provoked fighting over water sources, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in an editorial published Saturday.
“Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand — an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers,” Ban wrote in The Washington Post. “Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic.”
Rainfall in Sudan began declining two decades ago, a phenomenon due “to some degree, from man-made global warming,” said Ban, who has made both Darfur and climate change priorities.
Settled farmers and Arab nomadic herders had gotten along until the drought, he wrote, but as conditions worsened, water and food shortages disrupted the peace and “evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today.”
Ban said similar ecological problems are behind conflicts in other countries, including Somalia and Ivory Coast.
More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudanese leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, known as the janjaweed, a charge the government denies.
After months of U.N. and Western pressure, Sudan agreed in the past week to allow a joint U.N.-African Union force of up to 19,000 peacekeepers to replace the 7,000-member AU mission now in Darfur.
Ban called the agreement “significant progress” after “four years of diplomatic inertia.” But he warned that a long-term solution was needed for “the essential dilemma” — the scarcity of good land.
“Any peace in Darfur must be built on solutions that go to the root causes of the conflict,” he said.
The U.N. chief called for sustained economic development, possibly involving new irrigation and water storage techniques and efforts to improve health, education and roads.
“The international community needs to help organize these efforts, teaming with the Sudanese government as well as the international aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations working so heroically on the ground,” Ban said.
I've pointed this environmental aspect out before (although not in connection with Global Warming).
The end result is that, even if international peacekeeping forces (whether authorized by the U.N. or paid for by interested countries who use private security providers - read: mercenaries - as a proxy) do deploy, they will not be able to do more than "freeze" the situation as it now stands. The two competing groups (i.e., antagonists) cannot be seperated in the aftermath of the tragedy. That means there will have to be long-term rehabilitation.
Wasn't there a load of famine and drought in Africa before global warming?
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2000AD wrote:Wasn't there a load of famine and drought in Africa before global warming?
In a sense, I guess you could say that Africa has been slowly drying out for the last million years or so. The Sahara used to be savanah, and it's still expanding.
2000AD wrote:Wasn't there a load of famine and drought in Africa before global warming?
Yes. Brought about mainly by urbanisation and a population boom in Africia during colonial times.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions really applies to Africia, as European practices of agriculture, urbanisation, a cash based economy and central government services paved the way for a population boom that wasn't economically and environmentally sustainable. The fact that most of Europe colonies were not self sustaining and costing them money was a reason in decolonisation after WW2, so, it could be argued that Europe pulled out just as the shit was hitting the fan.
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Eh, increased, desperate competition for resources causes social collapse and violence. This is news for idiots, but if anyone didn't guess this before...
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Rwanda had more to do, I think, with simmering ethnic rivalries that had only recently calmed in April 1994. Not all violence has a material component.
Darfur is much more difficult to explain as "pure" ethnic violence - that is, a case of two groups clashing in an action/reaction loop. The real point of divergence was clearly that at which the desertification of the Saharan frontier began.
As for European colonialism, it is important to remember that people are generally happier when free, even if poorer because of it. (And the issue is debatable; some countries would have generated more wealth because they did not suffer debilhitating civil wars, but what about the anti-colonial struggles and the problem of economic equality? Less than one percent of the population would be pocketing the benefits of continued stability imposed by outside forces.)
Axis Kast wrote:Rwanda had more to do, I think, with simmering ethnic rivalries that had only recently calmed in April 1994. Not all violence has a material component.
The Rwandan genocide occured even in communities with one or a few Tutsis and almost all Hutu. The most discernable pattern was landless young males killed established, land-hording elders. The situation went violent once the quantity of land per person slipped below sustainability.
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The Rwandan genocide occured even in communities with one or a few Tutsis and almost all Hutu.
A material context is not necessary to explain that. Isolated, individual Tutsi would be even more vulnerable to mobs, not less. Indeed, they would stand out more.
The most discernable pattern was landless young males killed established, land-hording elders.
Human Rights Watch blames much of the violence on social engineering; the Habyarimana regime established the Tutsis as "the other" to shore up wavering support. Furthermore, while resentment toward Tutsis' legacy as a colonial "upper class" was apparent, propaganda focused more heavily on the physical threat that Tutsis supposedly posed for the Hutu and the country at large.
