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6.4 Strategic Environment
and Implications of
Climate Change
Colonel James G. Welton
Let me begin my pointing out that U.S. Africa Command
(USAFRICOM) has been in discussions with the Office of the
Secretary of Defense; Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for
Acquisition, Technology and Logistics; and the Defense Science
Board to establish a task force focused on climate change in Africa
and its implications for U.S. national security. That task force
hopefully will get underway within the next couple of months and
address the issues of climate change and how the United States,
Department of Defense (DoD), and the military can be prepared
to respond.
I will start this presentation by offering a few maps of Africa
for your review (Figures 1 and 2). It is always good to have pictures and maps in a presentation. I particularly like maps because
they both tell a story and provide a frame of reference regarding
locations. Over the past 20 years, many African countries have
moved toward democratization processes, good governance, and
rule of law.
Colonel James G. Welton is the Deputy Director for Programs in
the Strategy, Plans, and Programs Directorate, Headquarters (HQ)
U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM), Stuttgart, Germany. He is responsible to the Director for Strategy, Plans, and Programs for coordinating
staff actions assigned to the directorate pertaining to political–military
issues, military-to-military engagements, and Department of Defense
(DoD) theater security cooperation programs, activities, and events
in support of U.S. foreign policy in the command’s 53-country area
of responsibility (AOR). He oversees the staff actions of five divisions
involving bilateral relations with African partner nations, other U.S.
Unified Commands, allied military, international military, and regional
organizations. Colonel Welton received his commission from Officer
Training School, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, in 1981.
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Figure 1. Population Density in Africa
In January of 2009, just over a year ago, Ghanaian voters conducted their fourth free and fair election in 15 years. For the second
time, the opposition replaced a ruling party peacefully. For those
who do not know, Ghana is located in West Africa; it is about the
size of Oregon and is home to 23 million people.
In October 2009, Botswana, which is a country in southern
Africa, where the Kalahari Desert is located, successfully held
its 10th democratic presidential elections since independence in
1966—the most of any postcolonial Sub-Saharan African country.
Botswana has roughly 2 million people in an area the size of Texas.
Africa as a continent is the least responsible for greenhouse gas
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Figure 2. Natural Vegetation in Africa
emissions. If you look at Africa at night from space, you do not see
many lights in the center of the continent.
However, Africa is almost universally seen as the continent
most at risk for climate-induced conflict. It is a function of reliance on climate-dependent sectors such as rain-fed agriculture
and a history of resource-related, ethnic, and political conflict.
Often living on marginal land and disaster-prone areas and with
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few governments able to adequately respond to disasters, African
populations are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
The map in Figure 1 depicts population density per square
mile. Nigeria, at more than 149 million people, is the most populous country on the continent. It is twice the size of California,
which has just 37 million people. So if you doubled the population of California to 74 million and that amount of land space, that
is about how crowded Nigeria is. In Nigeria, the median age is
19 years. For comparison, the median age in the United States is
37, and it is 44 in Germany and Western Europe. So there are a
lot of young people in Nigeria without jobs, without security, and
without hope; this will probably become a problem at some point
in the future.
In terms of area, Sudan is the largest country on the continent. Sudan’s area is slightly more than a quarter of that of the
continental United States. Sudan’s population is 41 million people.
The median age in the Sudan is also 19 years. Throughout Africa,
there is a youth bulge with a lack of adult supervision from those
who have lived long enough to be able to provide guidance and
sage counsel.
The greatest population densities as shown on the map in
Figure 1 are along the water sources, in West Africa, and in the
Great Lakes region where Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Eastern
Congo, and Kenya are located. The continent has more than
987 million people today, a third of which live in drought-prone
areas. Africa’s population is projected to double by the year 2050.
The oil-rich Niger Delta is home to 20 million people. In West
Africa 40% live in coastal areas that are prone to flooding. Africa
has about 800 ethnic groups across borders. Approximately 1000
languages and dialects are spoken there, although English, French,
Arabic, and Portuguese are the most common international languages and serve as official languages in most nations.
The map in Figure 2 shows natural vegetation across the
African continent. The Sahara Desert is larger in square miles than
the entire continental United States. Natural disasters over the
past 50 years have had devastating impacts to populations across
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the continent. In the year 2000, there were two cyclones that hit
Mozambique, which is located in the southwest Pacific Ocean
in the Mozambique Channel, which displaced nearly 500,000
people and left nearly 1 million dependent on humanitarian assistance for survival. Put in terms that we understand, those were
Hurricane Katrina proportions. Yet Mozambique is about twice the
size of California with 21 million people. And it does not have the
resources of the U.S. government to respond to natural disasters of
this type.
It has also been reported that, over the 30 years between 1960
and 1990, more than 500,000 people died of droughts in the Sahel
region in the Western Sahara. Climate change in the north could
decrease yields of rain-fed and semiarid coastal areas. Previously
malaria-free highland areas in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi,
and Southern Africa could also experience rises in malaria transmissions due to climate change.
In West Africa, changes to coastal environments would have
negative impacts on the mangroves, fisheries, and agricultural
crops due to flooding. Food security, which is already a humanitarian crisis in many areas of Africa, is likely to be further aggravated
and exacerbated by climate change.
The establishment of U.S. Africa Command was essentially an
internal reorganization of the DoD command structure. It is not a
plot by the Department of Defense to take over roles and missions
of the Department of State or the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) or its other agency, the Office of Foreign
Disaster Assistance. DoD does not want to get into those roles. The
purpose of Africa Command is to support U.S. government efforts,
support the Department of State foreign policy, support USAID’s
development in areas of Africa, and when requested be able to
respond to the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.
Africa Command is now the sixth geographic combatant
command. The other five commands include the U.S. Central
Command, European Command, Northern Command, Pacific
Command, and Southern Command (Figure 3). So Africa is our
command’s focus and is the DoD’s single focus on Africa.
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Figure 3. Combatant Commands in Africa
President Obama, in his address in Accra, Ghana, in July 2009,
reaffirmed Africa’s strategic importance to the United States. Africa
is a continent of vast resources, strategic minerals, and energy
sources. It is indeed in the U.S. national interest to ensure access
to markets of all the global commodities that are necessary in
today’s world to support our standard of living. These commodities
include mineral ores, such as cobalt and coltan, which is used to
make capacitors, cell phone circuit boards, other technology products needed by the U.S. military, as well as other technologies that
we now take for granted.
The bottom line is that Africa Command has the same responsibilities as all the other geographic unified commands, but with
a difference: There is no nation in Africa that we view as a state
threat to our security. But it is the conditions on the continent
that challenge and threaten our security. As a single focus for all
DoD activities in Africa, we concentrate our efforts on helping
our African partners build capable and professional militaries that
are subordinate to civilian authorities, respect human rights, and
adhere to the rule of law.
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U.S. foreign policy objectives are to build the capacities of
African militaries so that African nations can better service their
populations by providing a secure and stable environment that will
allow each nation to promote democracy, expand development,
and provide for its common defense (Figure 4). By fulfilling this
mission, U.S. Africa Command supports the national security interests of the United States by assisting African nations encountering
transnational threats from violent, extremist organizations and illicit
trafficking in humans, narcotics, and weapons.
By strengthening African security, we help to deter and diminish both the potential for and the consequences of humanitarian
disasters, whether man-made or natural, that cause loss of life and
the destructive movement of displaced peoples or threaten global
access to natural resources and commodities that the world relies
on to advance standards of living.
As has been mentioned several times before, Africa is a large
and diverse continent with a landmass that is three and a half times
that of the continental United States (Figure 5). There are vast distances to overcome. The distances between the northernmost tip to
the southernmost tip is equal to a flight from New York to Moscow.
The flight time from Frankfurt, Germany, to Johannesburg, South
Figure 4. Mission Statement for U.S. Africa Command
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Africa, is 11 hours, roughly the same time as Frankfurt to Los
Angeles. The east–west distance across Africa exceeds that of a
flight from Chicago to Honolulu.
These distances are exacerbated by Africa’s lack of internal
infrastructure. In many cases, traveling from one country to another
requires flying through Europe to make the connection. There are
few roads that connect countries together to promote trade. All of
the roads and railroads that were built in colonial days were there
to extract resources, not to promote development or prosperity of
the African peoples.
Africa’s challenges require a holistic view of security that
includes defense, law enforcement, and customs and border security. Africa is dealing with the effects of widespread conflict after
the independence movements of the last half of the 20th century.
Some are still ongoing today.
The map shown in Figure 6 is based on an article in Foreign
Policy magazine, “Failed State Index of 2009.” [1] Of note, no
Figure 5. Understanding Africa’s Landmass
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African countries were judged to be “stable” or “most stable.” Our
challenge is to facilitate African solutions to African problems by
identifying root causes and finding ways to enable African solutions. Many factors affect the probability of armed conflict, such
as poverty level, natural resources, population characteristics, and
ethnicity. Remember, there are more than 800 ethnic groups that
cross borders. The comparatively low educational levels of the
population are yet another factor driving disagreements.
So it is these nonclimatic factors that will largely determine
whether and how climate change moves from being a challenge
to presenting development opportunities to presenting a security
threat to the continent and writ large to the rest of the world, including the United States. The thin lines between security and insecurity and stability and instability will be affected by climate change
and the ability of African populations and governments to adapt.
Figure 7 includes two maps. The one on the left shows gross
domestic product (GDP) growth of 2008. It reflects a positive GDP
Figure 6. Foreign Policy Concerns in Africa
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growth over the past 5–10 years. As in the case of Angola, much of
this growth is driven by natural resources. The challenge to African
nations is to develop diversified economies with wealth derived
from these energy resources.
The Nigeria and Gulf of Guinea area is a large source of oil
for the United States. As I recall, one of our earlier speakers said
that the United Stares receives 13%–15% of its oil from Africa.
Almost all of that oil comes from the Gulf of Guinea region. It
is light, sweet crude and it is perfect for U.S. refineries. As was
shown earlier, it is just a direct transit across the Atlantic to get to
the United States. But the area around the Gulf of Guinea is beset
by a lot of problems, especially regarding Nigeria. Just recently, oil
was discovered off the coast of Ghana. So, they are set to have an
oil boom. The principal challenge that Ghana will face will be to
determine how to capture a portion of that wealth and put it back
into their economy for development and growth.
Figure 7. GDP Growth in Africa
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The map on the right of Figures 7 and 8 shows the United
Nations Human Development Index (HDI). It is measured as basically one-third GDP per capita, one-third life expectancy, and
one-third literacy. The HDI rank orders countries from all over
the world. No African state ranked above 50. The highest-ranking
African state was the Seychelles, out in the Indian Ocean. What
causes the discrepancy? Corruption and weak government institutions are one cause. Lack of security and stability to allow for
growth and development and prosperity of its people is another
cause. Why do we show this figure? Africa’s greatest challenges
revolve around economic development; combating poverty; battling disease such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and others; and providing
basic education. These complex challenges require a whole-ofgovernment approach. DoD really has only a limited role to play.
As General Wald discussed, there are other U.S. government
departments and agencies that can and should provide efforts to
build institutions and agencies within those governments.
Figure 8. Human Development in Africa
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DoD’s position is that, for development to take hold, a government needs security and stability in order to have economic
growth. Thus, DoD’s role is to partner with other U.S. governments
and agencies to help build security capacity in countries where we
are putting money for development, to allow that development to
take hold and provide hope and promise for a better tomorrow for
the people in that country under the rule of law.
The left side of Figure 8 shows Transparency International’s
2009 Corruption Perception Index. [2] The one country that stands
out is Botswana, located just above South Africa at the bottom
of the continent. Botswana is the one African country that has
been effective at fighting corruption. That fact was highlighted
in President Obama’s speech in July 2009 when he said that the
democratization and good governments evident in Ghana and
Botswana are examples that other African countries should strive
to emulate.
So the challenges associated with the African Command are
great. There is a lot of corruption and plenty of weak government
institutions that undermine efforts to promote growth and prosperity. From a military perspective, many countries face the challenge
of paying their own troops so that they do not prey on the local
population. DoD’s role is to support defense sector reform initiatives in the larger area of security sector reform to build effective
government institutions.
The Venn diagram in Figure 9 helps us to summarize the strategic environment of our 53-nation area of responsibility. It also
allows us to distance ourselves from simplistic political rhetoric, which often attempts to place states on a linear sliding scale
between liberal democracies on one hand and tyrannies and dictatorships on the other.
Discussing the type of regime without discussing the strength of
the regime is a fool’s errand, especially in Africa. Contemporarily,
we could attempt to identify the transitional federal government in
Somalia as a parliamentary democracy or a dictatorship. But the
identification hardly matters when one considers that the Somalia
regime has absolutely no power to enforce its mandate over the
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Figure 9. Africa’s Political Landscape
Somalia population within the borders of that country, let alone
within the square mile of Mogadishu.
Somalia, regardless of its categorization, is a failed state, an
ungoverned space, which can threaten our homeland and our
interests abroad. Africa Command has a very specific role to play
in attempting to foster states toward the bottom left of the Venn
diagram; we want to reinforce success and help those states that
are in that area from slipping into a failed-state status. We are going
to work with other states in varying degrees of failed-state status.
It really will require a whole-community effort to make progress.
It is also valuable to look at the subject of peacekeeping as it
relates to our area of responsibility (Figure 10). Currently, 8 of 17
United Nations peacekeeping operations are in Africa and account
for approximately 75% of UN military, police, and civilian peacekeepers deployed worldwide. Knowing which states are consistently providing peacekeepers maybe a valuable point to consider
when identifying key partnerships for the United States. States that
provide peacekeepers may (1) have a degree of self-perceived
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stability that allows them to export security and (2) have demonstrated an interest in fostering regional and continental stability.
On the other side of the coin, states that consistently consume
peacekeeping resources tend to be sources of extreme instability
and conflict. Addressing their problems is likely to require a substantial investment of both resources and time. Without a congressional mandate, neither the Africa Command nor DoD will be able
to undertake the necessary nation-building activities.
For example, MONUC, the United Nations Organization
Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
is the world’s single largest peacekeeping mission with more than
18,000 uniformed members. There are two peacekeeping missions
in the Sudan, UNMIS in the Southern Sudan and UNIMED, which
is a hybrid with the Africa Union, in Darfur. Together, these missions employ approximately 25,000 uniformed members, the most
UN peacekeepers in any one country in the world. It is also useful
to note that Nigeria provides over 5000 peacekeepers annually.
Figure 10. A Survey of Potential Partners in Peacekeeping
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Two countries in Central Africa, Uganda and Rwanda, also provide
peacekeepers in areas such as Somalia and Darfur.
In conclusion, Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents
to climate change. I have highlighted the situation, which is aggravated by the interaction of the multiple stresses. The science of
climate change is complex and debatable. The projected impact
of climate change on African societies is even more uncertain.
However, it is fairly evident that climate change represents very
real challenges to developments in progress for many African
countries. Projected climate changes for Africa suggest a future of
increasingly scarce water supplies, collapsing agricultural yields,
encroaching desertification, and increased food security.
The challenges faced by Africa today suggest that climate
change could be a tipping factor that threatens to derail development and the progress that has been made. Climate change also
has the potential to be a threat multiplier, making water scarcity
and food insecurity even greater challenges to peace, security, and
stability than they are at present.
The challenge to U.S. national security interests is to understand
the implications of climate change to African regional security. The
challenges are many. Many of those of particular concern for the
Navy arise from the continent’s vast size, which will affect our ability to provide the capacity and the capability that may be required
in the future. Thank you for your time; I look forward to any questions you may have during the question-and-answer session.
REFERENCES
1. “The 2009 Failed States Index,” Foreign Policy, Jun 2009, http://
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/06/22/2009_failed_
states_index_interactive_map_and_rankings.
2. “Corruption Perceptions Index 2009,” Transparency International,
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_
indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table.