NOAA

Sahel Drought: Understanding the Past and Projecting into the Future

The Sahel occupies a transitional zone between the Sahara to the north and tropical rain forests to the south. As for many such transitional zones adjacent to tropical rain belts, climate is highly variable due to the sharp gradients in rainfall. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the region experienced a profound drought, with over a 30% decrease in rainfall over most of the Sahel as compared to the 1950’s– arguably the most dramatic drought in any region of this large an extent observed in the 20th century. In the figure below, the black line is the observed summer (July-Aug-September) rainfall averaged over the Sahel, normalized by its mean over the time interval shown, taken from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit ( CRUTS2.1 ). A defense of the quality of the observational record after 1930 is provided by   Dai, et. al.

sahel region drought case study

Given this potential for large rainfall variations, and the economic, political, and social challenges facing the region, the possibility that increasing greenhouse gases could alter Sahelian rainfall is of great concern. Understanding the Sahel drought of the late 20th century and improving our future projections for the hydrological cycle in this region is a major challenge for climate dynamics and climate modeling.  

It has been understood since the 1980’s ( Folland, Palmer, and Parker ) that changes in ocean temperature played a significant role in producing the late 20th century Sahel drought. For a more recent influential paper making a strong case for the dominance of oceanic forcing, see Giannini, Saravanan, and Chang . GFDL’s AM2.1/LM2 atmosphere/land model, developed in part for the IPCC’s 4th Assessment, produces the result shown above when provided with the observed ocean surface temperatures over the 20th century. This computation was repeated 10 times — the gray area is the full spread of these 10 simulations, while the red line is the mean. The impressive agreement extends to the beginning of the century, which is somewhat surprising given the uncertainties in the early decades of the 20th century in both the rainfall record and the ocean temperatures used as a boundary condition for these simulations. This result is described in Held, Delwortih, Lu, Findell, and Knutson.   The observation that the rainfall reaches a maximum in mid-century, and that this maximum can be simulated, given the observed ocean surface temperatures, is evidence that the drying from the 1950’s to the 1980’s is unlikely to be primarily forced by increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (assuming that these early century rainfall and ocean temperature records are robust).

A variety of modeling studies have pointed to changes in the inter-hemispheric temperature gradient, within the tropical oceans but also globally, as being of key importance for Sahel rainfall, with drought occurring when the Northern Hemisphere oceans are relatively cold as compared to the Southern Hemisphere oceans. During the early part of the 20th century, the Northern Hemisphere warmed more rapidly than the Southern Hemisphere, but from mid-century till 1980, the Northern Hemisphere cooled on average, while the Southern Hemisphere continued to warm. Since 1980, the Northern Hemisphere has once again warmed more rapidly. The result, as illustrated below by the temperature record (land plus ocean) as compiled by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the maximum warmth of the Southern relative to the Northern Hemisphere was achieved during the most severe period of the Sahel drought.

The picture that emerges seems to be relatively simple, even though the underlying dynamics may be quite complex: the tropical rain-belts are attracted to the relatively warm hemisphere, with the Sahel, which we can think of as the northernmost extension of these rain-belts in Northern summer, suffering drought when the Southern Hemisphere is relatively warm. This effect is thought to be relevant more generally throughout the tropics, and not just for Africa. See, for example, Chiang and Bitz   on the interaction between the Ice Age ice sheets and tropical precipitation, and Yoshimori and Broccoli on the consequences for the tropical rain-belts of north-south asymmetry in radiative forcing. Sarah Kang (graduate student in Princeton’s AOS Program), has studied the underlying dynamics in a variety of idealized models (the first paper emerging from this work is Kang, Held, Frierson and Zhao ).  

An alternative hypothesis, popular during the 1970-1980’s drought itself, is modification of the land surface due to human activity, usually termed “desertification”. Climate models do suggest that one can reduce Sahel rainfall by increasing the surface albedo (the reflectivity of the surface to solar radiation), a result expected from the loss of vegetation, but models have not produced responses of adequate magnitude by this mechanism, and it is difficult to explain a mid-century maximum in rainfall through land alteration.  See Brooks   for further discussion of this major shift in perspective from one in which land alteration is directly responsible for the drought to one in which oceanic changes unrelated to any land modifications are deemed to be the dominant cause. The dominance of oceanic forcing in the past does not deny the possibility that major land modifications could be a factor in the future, or that the feedback of land vegetation to the changes in rainfall could be important for the observed variations.

If we accept that inter-hemispheric gradients in ocean temperature are a key proximal cause of multi-decadal Sahel rainfall variations, the search for the ultimate cause becomes the search for an explanation for these ocean temperature variations, A substantial part of these changes in temperature gradient is likely due to internal variability, the source of this variability most likely being in the meridional overturning circulation in the Atlantic Ocean. Zhang and Delworth , for example, have shown how manipulating the northward heat flux by the Atlantic ocean in a climate model can alter Sahel rainfall. But aerosol forcing has also been implicated as a potential candidate for the drying tendency since mid-century, with increasing sulphate pollution in the Northern Hemisphere causing the Northern Hemisphere to cool relative to the south.  The recent warming in the north is, in this interpretation, caused by cleansing of the Northern Hemisphere atmosphere.  Rotstayn and Lohmann   have argued that the evolution of aerosol forcing is large enough to explain a large fraction of the Sahel drought, if one includes relatively large indirect aerosol effects associated with cloud/aerosol interactions. Biasutti and Giannini   describe the results in the CMIP3 coupled-climate model simulations utilized by the IPCC’s 4th Assessment, and conclude that there is a small forced component to the drying trend over the 20th century in most of these models. This trend does not continue into the future in the multi-model average, implying that the dominant forcing in the models is not greenhouse gases but rather aerosols, in qualitative agreement with Rotstayn and Lohmann. Greater confidence in our ability to estimate past variations in aerosol forcing will be needed to make further progress on this aspect of the problem. But, once again, to the extent that the precipitation did indeed maximize in mid-century, the more plausible explanation for the bulk of the observed variability remains internal variability.

CM2.1 — an outlier in its prediction of the future of Sahel rainfall

Closer comparison of the changes in the inter-hemispheric ocean temperature gradient and Sahel rainfall suggests the possibility that another process has operated in recent years. The Northern Hemisphere has warmed quite rapidly since 1980, which one might expect to have led to a more pronounced amelioration of the drought.  Indeed. Atlantic hurricanes, which are plausibly controlled by the same difference in temperatures (at least within the Atlantic Ocean) have recovered to an activity level more comparable to mid-century values.

Analysis of the AM2.1 atmospheric model, which generates the striking fit to observed Sahel rainfall variations shown above, when forced with observed surface ocean temperatures, shows that the model is not simply responding to changes in inter-hemispheric temperature gradients. The model also dries the Sahel when the oceans are warmed uniformly. Given this behavior, it is not surprising that when this model is coupled to an ocean in GFDL’s CM2 climate model, it predicts continued drying into the future; indeed, as indicated in the following figure, the drying it projects exceeds that experienced in the 1980’s by the mid-21st century.

sahel region drought case study

In this figure, the black line is again the observations of summertime Sahel rainfall, but with a 5 year running filter. The red line prior to the year 2000 is a single realization of the freely running coupled model (unconstrained by observed ocean temperatures) but forced with estimates of the evolving greenhouse gas, aerosol, and volcanic forcing since 1860. One does not expect a particular freely running simulation of this type to simulate observations which depend in part on details of the natural variability in the oceans, but, given enough realizations, one does expect to find some that resemble observations. The realization chosen here is the one (out of 6) that most resembles the observed time series. The gray area shows the typical spread of the realizations (plus and minus one standard deviation), while the thick blue line is the mean of this ensemble. The mean provides an estimate of the forced part of the variation, which further analysis indicates is partly due to greenhouse gases in this simulation and partly to aerosol forcing. The three colors of lines continuing into the 21st century are the results of simulations of the future (using the B1(green), A1B(blue), and A2(red) SRES scenarios).

The average over the climate models utilized by the IPCC AR4 assessment is for little change in Sahel rainfall, with a number of models generating modest increases in rainfall, some generated modest drying, but no others producing the dramatic drying in CM2 One is tempted to reject this simulation as an outlier. Analysis supporting this position is provided by Cook and Vizy   and Cook   .

We are hopeful that we will find serious flaws in our model that would cause us to reject its projection as unrealistic. There are metrics based on comparison with a variety of observations that one can try to use to evaluate climate models. Ideally, there would be an model property A (for which there are observations to compare against) which takes on values in the world’s climate models that are correlated with, or, more generally, can be used to predict, the 21st century Sahel rainfall projections in this same set of models. The difference between a model’s A and the observed A then provides a metric that is demonstrably relevant to Sahel rainfall projection. There are several excellent examples of this approach in the literature, related to other aspects of climate projections, a particularly clean example being the study of snow albedo feedback by Hall and Qu   . An informative but unsuccessful attempt to isolate such a metric from the co-variability of ocean temperatures and Sahel rainfall in the models is described by Biasutti, Held, Sobel, and Gianinni   . In the absence of an ability to predict a model’s Sahel rainfall projection from a model’s behavior in the 20th century, we are left with subjective metrics that are not fully satisfying.

Plausible sources of this difference between AM2/LM2 and other models can be found in the land surface model and in the treatment of convection and clouds in the atmosphere. Our analysis indicates that it is the latter, convection and clouds, that are the most likely source of our model’s outlier status — specifically, we can change the atmospheric model’s response over the Sahel to a uniform warming of ocean temperatures by modifying the treatment of convection/clouds, but have not found comparable sensitivity to the land model. While we believe we can modify our model to generate much weaker drying in its Sahel projections, we have not yet been able to generate a model of this type that has a 20th century Sahel rainfall simulation of comparable quality.

Therefore, we are not yet ready to reject the hypothesis that, superposed on large multi-decadal internal climate variations, and on aerosol induced changes, there is also a suggestion of a greenhouse induced drying trend that will emerge clearly over the present century.  More detailed information on internal variability in the Sahel over longer time scales is of vital importance, as is a much clearer understanding of why climate models differ even in the sign of the change expected in Sahel rainfall from increasing greenhouse gases.

prepared by Isaac Hel d  for the purpose of placing GFDL research on this subject into a larger context — this essay should not be thought of as a summary of all relevant research on this issue

Comments welcome — isaac.held at noaa.gov.

A field with mid-moon dams used to save water in the coming rainy season in Burkina Faso.

Bringing dry land in the Sahel back to life

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Millions of hectares of farmland are lost to the desert each year in Africa’s Sahel region, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is showing that traditional knowledge, combined with the latest technology, can turn arid ground back into fertile soil.

Those trying to grow crops in the Sahel region are often faced with poor soil, erratic rainfail and long periods of drought. However, the introduction of a state-of-the art heavy digger, the Delfino plough, is proving to be, literally, a breakthrough.

As part of its Action Against Desertification (AAD) programme, the FAO has brought the Delfino to four countries in the Sahel region – Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal – to cut through impacted, bone-dry soil to a depth of more than half a metre.

The Delfino plough is extremely efficient: one hundred farmers digging irrigation ditches by hand can cover a hectare a day, but when the Delfino is hooked to a tractor, it can cover 15 to 20 hectares in a day.

Once an area is ploughed, the seeds of woody and herbaceous native species are then sown directly, and inoculated seedlings planted. These species are very resilient and work well in degraded land, providing vegetation cover and improving the productivity of previously barren lands. 

In Burkina Faso and Niger, the target number of hectares for immediate restoration has already been met and extended thanks to the Delfino plough. In Nigeria and Senegal, it is working to scale up the restoration of degraded land.

Workers preparing tractors to start ploughing in Burkina Faso.

Farming seen through a half-moon lens

This technology, whilst impressive, is proving to be successful because it is being used in tandem with traditional farming techniques.

“In the end the Delfino is just a plough. A very good and suitable plough, but a plough all the same,” says Moctar Sacande, Coordinator of FAO’s Action Against Desertification programme. “It is when we use it appropriately and in consultation and cooperation that we see such progress.”

The half-moon is a traditional Sahel planting method which creates contours to stop rainwater runoff, improving water infiltration and keeping the soil moist for longer. This creates favourable micro-climate conditions allowing seeds and seedlings to flourish.

The Delfino creates large half-moon catchments ready for planting seeds and seedlings, boosting rainwater harvesting tenfold and making soil more permeable for planting than the traditional - and backbreaking – method of digging by hand.

“The whole community is involved and has benefitted from fodder crops such as hay as high as their knees within just two years”, says Mr. Sacande. “They can feed their livestock and sell the surplus, and move on to gathering products such as edible fruits, natural oils for soaps, wild honey and plants for traditional medicine”.

Women dig mid-moon dams to save water in Niger.

Women taking the lead

According to Nora Berrahmouni, who was FAO’s Senior Forestry Officer for the African Regional Office when the Delfino was deployed, the plough will also reduce the burden on women.

“The season for the very hard work of hand-digging the half-moon irrigation dams comes when the men of the community have had to move with the animals. So, the work falls on the women,” says Ms. Berrahmouni.

Because the Delfino plough significantly speeds up the ploughing process and reduces the physical labour needed, it gives women extra time to manage their multitude of other tasks.

The project also aims to boost women’s participation in local land restoration on a bigger scale, offering them leadership roles through the village committees that plan the work of restoring land. Under the AAD programme, each site selected for restoration is encouraged to set up a village committee to manage the resources, so as to take ownership right from the beginning.

“Many women are running the local village committees which organise these activities and they are telling us they feel more empowered and respected,” offers Mr. Sacande.

Respecting local knowledge and traditional skills is another key to success. Communities have long understood that half-moon dams are the best way of harvesting rainwater for the long dry season. The mighty Delfino is just making the job more efficient and less physically demanding.

Tractors at work to prepare the land for plantation in Burkina Faso.

Millions of hectares lost to the desert, forests under threat

And it is urgent that progress is made. Land loss is a driver of many other problems such as hunger, poverty, unemployment, forced migration, conflict and an increased risk of extreme weather events related to climate change.

In Burkina Faso, for example, a third of the landscape is degraded. This means that over nine million hectares of land, once used for agriculture, is no longer viable for farming.

It is projected that degradation will continue to expand at 360 000 hectares per year. If the situation is not reversed, forests are at risk of being cleared to make way for productive agricultural land.

Africa is currently losing four million hectares of forest every year for this reason, yet has more than 700 million hectares of degraded land viable for restoration. By bringing degraded land back to life, farmers do not have to clear additional forest land to turn into cropland for Africa’s rising population and growing food demands.

When Mr. Sacande talks about restoring land in Africa, the passion in his voice is evident. “Restoring degraded land back to productive good health is a huge opportunity for Africa. It brings big social and economic benefits to rural farming communities,” he says. “It’s a bulwark against climate change and it brings technology to enhance traditional knowledge.”

A version of this story first appeared on the FAO website .

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Desertification - Sahel case study

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Desertification in the Sahel region is a pressing environmental issue with far-reaching consequences. In this article, we will explore the causes, effects, and potential solutions to combat desertification, using a case study from the Sahel region. By examining the unique challenges faced in this area, we can gain insights into the broader fight against desertification and the importance of sustainable land management practices. The Sahel is a semi-arid zone stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa to the Red Sea in the East, through northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, the great bend of the Niger River in Mali, Burkina Faso, southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, south-central Chad, and into Sudan ( Brittanica ).

It is a biogeographical transition between the arid Sahara Desert to the North and the more humid savanna systems on its Southern side.

Desertification - Sahel case study

Desertification in the Sahel has increased over the last number of years.  It has been increasingly impacted by desertification, especially during the second half of the twentieth century. The whole Sahel region in Africa has been affected by devastating droughts, bordering the Sahara Desert and the Savannas.

During this period, the Sahara desert area grew by roughly 10% , most of which in the Southward direction into the semi-arid steppes of the Sahel. 

Understanding desertification in the Sahel

The Sahel region, stretching across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, is characterized by fragile ecosystems and vulnerable communities. The combination of climate change, overgrazing, deforestation , and improper agricultural practices has resulted in extensive land degradation and desertification. The consequences of desertification in the Sahel are severe, including food insecurity, loss of biodiversity, and displacement of communities.

in the region, for around 8 months of the year, the weather is dry. The rainy season only happens for a few short months and only produces around 4-8 inches of water. The population growth over the years has caused illegal farming to take place over the last few years and has resulted in major soil erosion and desertification to take place. 

Examining a specific case study in the Sahel region sheds light on the complexities and impacts of desertification. In a particular community, unsustainable farming methods and drought have led to soil erosion and degradation. The once-fertile land has turned into arid, unproductive soil, forcing farmers to abandon their livelihoods and seek alternative means of survival. This case study highlights the urgent need for intervention and sustainable land management practices in the region.

Addressing the challenges

To combat desertification effectively, a multi-faceted approach is necessary. First and foremost, raising awareness about the issue and its consequences is crucial. Governments, NGOs, and local communities must collaborate to implement sustainable land management practices. This involves promoting agroforestry, conservation farming, and reforestation initiatives to restore degraded land and improve soil health. Additionally, supporting alternative income-generating activities and providing access to water resources can help alleviate pressure on the land and reduce vulnerability to drought.

Read more: Preventing desertification: Top 5 success stories

The impact of humans on the Sahel

The impact of humans on the Sahel region is a critical factor contributing to its current challenges and environmental changes. Human activities, including armed violence, climate change, deforestation, and overgrazing, have had significant consequences for both the ecosystem and the local communities. While the area of the Sahel region is already considered to be a dry place, the impact of the human population in the area has really affected how the area continues to evolve. Towns are popping up all over the place, and because of this, more land is being used than ever before. The ground that they are building their lives on quickly began to die and became extremely unhealthy for any type of growth. This has made headlines everywhere and even caught the attention of the United Nations. In 1994, the United Nations declared that June 17th would be known as the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. . This was a result of the large-scale droughts and famines that had been taking place and were at their height between 1968 and 1974.

In conclusion, the impact of humans on the Sahel is a multifaceted issue. The region faces a humanitarian crisis alongside security concerns, with climate change and human activities playing significant roles. Desertification caused by climate change, deforestation, and overgrazing has resulted in land degradation, loss of vegetation, and increased vulnerability to droughts and food insecurity. Implementing sustainable land management strategies is essential to mitigate the impact and promote the resilience of the Sahel's ecosystems and communities.

Droughts, grazing, and recharging aquifers

The Sahel’s natural climate cycles make it vulnerable to droughts throughout the year. But, during the second half of the twentieth century, the region also experienced significant increases in human population and resulting in increases in the exploitation of the lands through (cattle) grazing, wood- and bush consumption for firewood, and crop growth where possible.

These anthropogenic processes accelerated during the 1960s when relatively high rainfall amounts were recorded in the region for short periods of time, and grazing and agricultural expansion were promoted by the governments of the Sahel countries, seeing a good opportunity to use the region’s ecosystem for maximizing economic returns.

This resulted in the removal of large parts of the natural vegetation, including shrubs, grasses, and trees, and replacing them with crops and grass types that were suitable for (short-term) grazing.

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Natural aquifers, which were previously able to replenish their groundwater stocks during the natural climate cycles, were no longer able to do so, and the regions closest to the Sahara desert were increasingly desertified.

Removing the natural vegetation removed plant roots that bound the soil together, with over-exploitation by grazing eating away much of the grass.

Agricultural activity disrupted the natural system, forcing significant parts of the Sahel region to become dry and barren. Before the particularly bad famine of 1984, desertification was solely put down to climatic causes.

As the Sahel dries, the Sahara advances : and it is estimated to advance with a rate of 60 kilometres the Sahel lost and the Sahara desert gained per year.  Human influence is an important factor in the Sahel’s desertification, but not all can be attributed to human behaviour, says Sumant Nigam, a climate scientist at the University of Maryland.

'There is an important anthropogenic influence there, but it is also being met with natural cycles of climate variability that add and subtract in different periods', Nigam said. 'Understanding both is important for both attribution and prediction.' Ecologists have been meeting all over the world to discuss the desertification of the Sahel at length. While many possible solutions have been proposed, a few goals have been established and are being worked on. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations has not become involved and is working to create a long-lasting impact on the Sahel Region. However, after the mid-1980s , human-caused contributions were identified and taken seriously by the United Nations and many non-governmental organizations. Severe and long-lasting droughts followed throughout the 1960s-1980s, and impacted the human settlements in the forms of famine and starvation, allowing the Sahara desert to continue to expand southward. As a result, a barren and waterless landscape has emerged, with the northernmost sections of the Sahel transformed into new sections of the Sahara Desert. Even though the levels of drought have decreased since the 1990s, other significant reductions in rainfall have been recorded in the region, including a severe drought in 2012. It is estimated that over 23 million people in the Sahel region are facing severe food insecurity in 2022, and the European Commission projects that the crisis will worsen further amidst rising social security struggles. Now, the goal is to see change take place by   2063,  a year that seems far away but is a start in the efforts to rebuild the Sahel Region. 

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Political turmoil in the Sahel: Does climate change play a role?

Subscribe to planet policy, ahmadou aly mbaye and ahmadou aly mbaye nonresident senior fellow - global economy and development , africa growth initiative @ahmadoualymbaye landry signé landry signé senior fellow - global economy and development , africa growth initiative @landrysigne.

March 11, 2022

With the recent coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, the Sahel has once again become the focus of global attention. Even before these events, instability and insecurity were on the rise in the Sahel, exacerbated not only by poverty, inequality, and marginalization, but also by the increased impacts of climate change. To better understand the interplay of climate change and instability, in a recent paper , we take a closer look at these factors in the West African countries of the Sahel: Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad.

The entire Sahel region stretches from the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast to the Red Sea on the east coast. Passing through the heart of Africa, the Sahel is an area with a population of around 100 million of the most underprivileged, marginalized, and poorest people in the world. Per capita income levels are lower than in other parts of Africa, and up to 80 percent of the population subsists on less than $2 per day. High unemployment, weak governance, political unrest, and threats from radical Islamist groups all contribute to regional instability.

Without downplaying the effects of poor governance in fueling conflict in the Sahel, we argue that climate change plays an amplifying role, by drying out livelihoods for the majority of people with a high dependence on natural resources, and therefore, triggering fighting over increasingly scarcer resources.

Climate change disasters in the Sahel are becoming more frequent

Exacerbating this situation is the region’s particular vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Figure 1 shows the extent and rate of temperature rise in the selected countries. Indeed, experts predict that natural disasters—including desertification, drought, flood, and sea level rise—will be both more frequent and intense in coming years, threatening the availability of crucial natural resources.

Figure 1. Average annual temperatures in Sahelian countries

Figure 1. Average annual temperatures in Sahelian countries

Source: KNMI, authors’ calculations.

These trends are particularly troubling in a region where people’s livelihoods and resilience are so heavily dependent on natural resources—especially since rising temperatures reduce both water resources and agricultural yields. Overall, climate change could cost Africa a loss of agricultural output between 17 to 28 percent, versus 3 to 16 percent at the global level; a consequence of this loss of output will be to further put food security at risk.

Violence in the Sahel is also on the rise

In parallel with rising temperatures and erratic rainfall, incidences of violence have recently been increasing in the Sahel. In fact, there is strong evidence that climate change, which is drying up sources of livelihoods, also fuels conflict: For example, a 2004 study found that a 1 degree Celsius increase yields an increase in civil war incidences by 4.5 percent.

Figure 2. Evolution of conflicts in the Sahel, 1997-2019

Figure 2. Evolution of conflicts in the Sahel, 1997-2019

Source: ACLED, and authors’ calculations.

The case of Mali

Mali offers an excellent illustration of the complex nexus between climate change, livelihoods, and conflict in the Sahel. Since the beginning of the 2000s, this country, which has been hit hard by climate change, has also experienced several types of violence, including riots in major cities, communal violence, jihadist insurgency, and military coup.

In Mali’s Niger River Delta, for example, farmers, herders, and fishermen have long coexisted and local institutions had historically mediated conflicts between them; sources of livelihoods are tied to ethnicity. The Muslim Fulani and Tuareg tend to be pastoralists, while the animist Songhai and Bambara tend to be agriculturalists.

The patterns of communal conflicts in Mali illustrate how ethnic and religious factors, along with government failure, interact with climate change to drive disputes. One such example stems from the Niger River, which supports intense agricultural activity on the part of both farmers and herders. While the farmers cultivate rice, the herders grow burgu, a fodder crop for cattle used to feed herds during the dry season. Burgu grows in deeper water than rice, and during dry periods—which are increasingly frequent due to climate change—rice farmers often encroach on burgu fields, leading to communal conflicts between pastoralists and farmers.

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Since the 1950s, a quarter of burgu fields have been converted to rice fields (Kouyaté, 2006) due to the decrease in rainfall in the area. Displacement of agricultural activities to encroach burgu’s fields and related pastoralist resistance to protect their livelihoods, perfectly illustrate how water scarcity triggered by climate change can fuel conflicts. In the absence of strong institutions to mediate such disputes, in recent years, the Fulani and the Tuareg have been increasingly joining the jihadist insurrection in northern Mali. This is the result of two intertwined factors: alleged government discrimination against these ethnic groups and conflicts over water resources that have been exacerbated by climate change.  In this regard, it is worth noting that Ahmadou Koufa, the head of the MUJAO, is Fulani, while Iyad Ag Ghali, the head of Ansar Dine, is Tuareg. In this context, Jihadist attacks lead to retaliation from the Bambara and Songhai agriculturalists, setting off a vicious cycle of intolerance and violence.

The relationship between climate change and conflict is the source of a great deal of controversy in the literature. While some authors see climate-induced scarcity as leading to fighting over resources, a growing body of empirical evidence points more decidedly to the role of institutional failures in conflict. In our paper, we use the Sahel as a case study showing that conflict has many interconnected factors, including state failure, demographics, and rent-seeking behaviors. By generating increased scarcity, climate change is further compounding these factors in a context where there are few alternative options to address food insecurity and support livelihoods besides natural resources. Therefore, adaptation to climate change should be central to policy that seeks to mitigate conflict in the Sahel.

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Drought, Desertification and Displacement: Re-Politicising the Climate-Conflict Nexus in the Sahel

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2022, Rome, IAI, March 2022, 24 p. (IAI Papers ; 22|04), ISBN 978-88-9368-241-1

Policy and media discourses have frequently evoked the existence of a nexus between climate change and conflict. The Sahel, where conflicts are on the rise and environmental degradation undermines access to dwindling natural resources, appears to provide a mostlikely case study to assess the climate-conflict nexus hypothesis. Looking at long-term trends, an analysis of the Sahelian droughts in the 1970s-80s and of the ongoing (alleged) desertification of central Sahel highlights the relevance of a political ecology approach to the climate-conflict nexus. While neither sufficient nor necessary to trigger armed violence, climatic changes may fuel violent conflicts because they contribute to an erosion of fragile socioeconomic systems and the relative mechanisms of conflict regulation. Governance schemes carry crucial "weight" in making conflicts over natural resources veer towards either violent escalation, or peaceful management. But it also notes that in the long run governance mechanisms themselves can be affected or disrupted by the impact of changing climatic conditions.

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  • Case Study: Sahel Desertification

What is desertification: It is the term used to describe the changing of semi arid (dry) areas into desert. It is severe in Sudan, Chad, Senegal and Burkina Faso

What are the causes:

  • Overcultivation: the land is continually used for crops and does not have time to recover eventually al the nutrients are depleted (taken out) and the ground eventually turns to dust.
  • Overgrazing: In some areas animals have eaten all the vegetation leaving bare soil.
  • Deforestation: Cutting down trees leaves soil open to erosion by wind and rain.
  • Climate Change: Decrease in rainfall and rise in temperatures causes vegetation to die

What is being done to solve the problem?

 Over the past twelve years Oxfam has worked with local villagers in Yatenga (Burkina Faso) training them in the process of BUNDING. This is building lines of stones across a slope to stop water and soil running away. This method preserves the topsoil and has improved farming and food production in the village.

Burkina Faso - desertification

This video shows the Sahel region south of the Sahara is at risk of becoming desert. Elders in a village in Burkina Faso describe how the area has changed from a fertile area to a drought-prone near-desert. The area experiences a dry season which can last up to eight or nine months. During this time rivers dry up and people, animals and crops are jeopardised.

This video showcases the Sahel region

sahel region drought case study

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The 1983 drought in the West Sahel: a case study

  • Published: 12 November 2009
  • Volume 36 , pages 463–472, ( 2011 )

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  • Jürgen Bader 1 , 2 &
  • Mojib Latif 3  

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Some drought years over sub-Saharan west Africa (1972, 1977, 1984) have been previously related to a cross-equatorial Atlantic gradient pattern with anomalously warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) south of 10° N and anomalously cold SSTs north of 10° N . This SST dipole-like pattern was not characteristic of 1983, the third driest summer of the twentieth century in the Sahel. This study presents evidence that the dry conditions that persisted over the west Sahel in 1983 were mainly forced by high Indian Ocean SSTs that were probably remanent from the strong 1982/1983 El Niño event. The synchronous Pacific impact of the 1982/1983 El Niño event on west African rainfall was however, quite weak. Prior studies have mainly suggested that the Indian Ocean SSTs impact the decadal-scale rainfall variability over the west Sahel. This study demonstrates that the Indian Ocean also significantly affects inter-annual rainfall variability over the west Sahel and that it was the main forcing for the drought over the west Sahel in 1983.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Serge Janicot, Nils Gunnar Kvamst  Ivar Seierstad, Ellen Marie Viste and Justin Wettstein for their useful comments. We thank the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology for providing and supporting the ECHAM5 model. The UK Meteorological Office and Hadley Centre is acknowledged for providing the HadISST 1.1—global SST—data-set. This work was supported by the COMPAS and NOClim project funded by the research council of Norway and by the AMMA project of the European Union.

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Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Allégaten 70, 5007, Bergen, Norway

Jürgen Bader

Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Leibniz-Institute for Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

Mojib Latif

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Bader, J., Latif, M. The 1983 drought in the West Sahel: a case study. Clim Dyn 36 , 463–472 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-009-0700-y

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Received : 03 June 2009

Accepted : 27 October 2009

Published : 12 November 2009

Issue Date : February 2011

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-009-0700-y

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Mathematics, health & fitness, business & finance, technology & engineering, food & beverage, random knowledge, see full index, case study: drought in the sahel flashcards preview, geography unit 1 global challenges > case study: drought in the sahel > flashcards.

What kind of a hazard region is the Sahel?

The Sahel is one of the world’s most vulnerable drought hazard regions.

What is drought hazard?

Drought hazard can be defined as a condition of abnormally dry weather,

  • resulting in a serious hydrological imbalance.

What are the consequences for people?

The consequences for people can include loss of standing crops, water shortages for livestock and human populations, and damage to property.

Why are droughts a ‘creeping hazard’?

They develop slowly, often over a period of months, and can have a prolonged existence - a period of many years, for major events.

Where can their impact extend over?

Their impact may extend over thousands of square kilometres.

What does drought have many similarities to?

Drought has many similarities to long-term degradation, -

and it is often difficult to tell when a drought ends and human-induced desertification begins

Which areas are at risk of desertification?

Areas on the fringe of hot deserts

What is desertification?

Desertification is the degradation of land, which becomes increasingly dry losing vegetation and wildlife.

What is desertification caused by?

A variety of factors including climate change and the overexploitation of soil through human activity.

Where can areas at risk from desertification be found?

Areas at risk from desertification are found in dry arid environments where the rainfall will be anywhere between 100 and 1000mm of rain a year.

When will this rainfall arrive? What is this season called?

Despite some areas seeming to have enough yearly rainfall, this rainfall will often only arrive in the “wet season” leaving several months of the year with very little or no rainfall at all called the “dry season”.

Where are the areas of desertification located next to?

see maps and images in binder!

Next to desert areas, as the air above the deserts will be dry and very stable,

  • the air next to the deserts often lack moisture and the dry air over the desert will sometimes move into the fringes affecting these areas even further.

What are the 4 variety of droughts types?

  • Meteorological drought
  • Hydrological drought
  • Agricultural drought
  • Famine drought

What is a meteorological drought

this involves a straightforward shortfall in precipitation. There is often no direct ecological or economic impact, and no effective human response.

aka rainfall deficit

What is a. hydrological drought

this mostly involves water resources in rivers and lakes and urban water supplies.

responses from local authorities and water authorities may involve managing the supply of, and demand for, water- e.g hosepipe bans in the UK.

aka stream flow deficit

What is an agricultural drought?

evidenced by widespread regional effects in more economically developed countries, and mostly affecting farm production.

direct responses are typically at a national level, involving compensation or similar measures.

aka soil moisture deficit

What is a famine drought?

see and analyze great image in binder

this is the most severe type of hazard, which results in deaths from starvation. It is mostly confined to less economically developed countries which are dependent on subsistence the Sahel, occurring annually from agriculture.

aka food deficit

Where is the Sahel?

The Sahel is a band crossing Africa from west to east, it lies directly south of the Sahara Desert.

The environment is fragile in the Sahel due te the rainfall. Describe the rainfall in the Sahel

It is a fragile environment as it receives very little rainfall which can vary year to year. Some years are “wet” whilst others can be very “dry”.

What has been put under pressure because of the changing environmentent?

people and the ecosystem under immense pressure.

What does Sahel mean in Arabic?

Sahel is an Arabic word meaning ‘fringe’, or the ‘edge of the desert’.

How far does this area extend?

This area extends over 2.5 million sq. km of the African continent, between latitudes 13”N and 17”N.

What is the annual mean temperature in the Sahel, and the precipitation?

The annual mean temperature is 28°C to 30°C and the annual precipitation averages 250-500mm.

The region is ….wet/dry…. with a …short/long… rainy season from July- Sept

The region is dry, with a short rainy season from July to September.

Is the population dense in the Sahel?

It is an area of relatively high population densities and widespread subsistence economies, and it is extremely vulnerable to drought.

aka wonen te veel mensen, ruilhandel, droughts, kut dus

what is a subsistence economy?

An economy which is not based on money,

in which buying and selling are absent or rudimentary

though barter (ruilhandel) may occur, and which commonly provides a minimal standard of living

aka middle ages

What does the human impact on drought depend on?

The human impact of drought depends on the extent to which a particular society relies upon the climate to make a living.

Why are the worst impacts of drought felt in the Sahel?

Because societies are organised simply, and dry conditions are prolonged.

Decks in Geography Unit 1 global challenges Class (15):

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    Drought in the Sahel Published: August 1999 Volume 48 , pages 299-311, ( 1999 ) Cite this article Download PDF GeoJournal Aims and scope Submit manuscript C.T. Agnew & A. Chappell 1054 Accesses 71 Citations 52 Altmetric 7 Mentions Explore all metrics Abstract The Sahel region of West Africa is well known as a region of environmental degradation.

  17. (PDF) Drought, Desertification and Displacement: Re-Politicising the

    Policy and media discourses have frequently evoked the existence of a nexus between climate change and conflict. The Sahel, where conflicts are on the rise and environmental degradation undermines access to dwindling natural resources, appears to provide a mostlikely case study to assess the climate-conflict nexus hypothesis.

  18. [PDF] Drought in the Sahel

    Since the 1960s, the semi-arid Sahel region in Africa has experienced a severe drought. In his Perspective, Zeng analyzes the possible causes of this drought. He highlights the report of Giannini et al ., whose model study suggests that changes in worldwide sea surface temperatures have played a key role in the Sahel drought. Natural vegetation processes and land use change probably reinforced ...

  19. Case Study: Sahel Desertification

    Case Studies Case Study: Sahel Desertification Quick revise What is desertification: It is the term used to describe the changing of semi arid (dry) areas into desert. It is severe in Sudan, Chad, Senegal and Burkina Faso What are the causes:

  20. PDF Resilience

    The case for a new approach to the resilience-challenges of the Sahel has been made elsewhere and will not be documented at length here.2 The two figures annexed (Figure 1 & Figure 2) capture the essence of the drama unfolding in the region. Figure 1 documents the increase in the frequency and severity of food crises in recent years and the ...

  21. The 1983 drought in the West Sahel: a case study

    The 1983 drought in the West Sahel: a case study Published: 12 November 2009 Volume 36 , pages 463-472, ( 2011 ) Cite this article Download PDF Climate Dynamics Aims and scope Submit manuscript Jürgen Bader & Mojib Latif 535 Accesses 32 Citations Explore all metrics Abstract

  22. Human Activity and Drought

    5.4B - Human Activity and Drought The contribution human activity makes to the risk of drought: over-abstraction of surface water resources and ground water aquifers. (Sahel region or Australia) People are not the cause of drought, but their actions can make droughts more severe. Desertification in the Sahel

  23. Case Study: drought in the Sahel Flashcards Preview

    Study Case Study: drought in the Sahel flashcards from Alexander Mac's class online, or in Brainscape's iPhone or Android app. Learn faster with spaced repetition. ... What kind of a hazard region is the Sahel? A The Sahel is one of the world's most vulnerable drought hazard regions. 2 Q