Conflict in the Sahel Likely to Worsen as Climate Change Impacts Increase

Sep 7, 2021 | Steve Killelea
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Currently there isn’t a lot of good news coming out of the Sahel, the area in Africa that borders the Saharan desert to the north, the Sudanian Savannah to the south, and stretches across the continent. Multiple raging insurgencies, especially in the western part of the region, fuel a news cycle of offensives and counter offensives, responses and massacres.

According to the damning new ‘code red for humanity’ report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the news from the region isn’t likely to get better any time soon.

Our research at the Institute of Economics & Peace (IEP) has found that the burden of societal disruption due to climate change and the overuse of natural resources will be distributed unequally across the globe, and that one of the most significantly affected areas in the world will be the Sahel.