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CLIMATE & ENERGY PAPER SERIES 2010
MAPPING CLIMATE CHANGE AND
SECURITY IN NORTH AFRICA
JOSHUA BUSBY, KAIBA WHITE, AND TODD G. SMITH
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Mapping Climate Change and Security
in North Africa
Climate & Energy Policy Paper Series
October 2010
Joshua W. Busby1
University of Texas at Austin
Kaiba White1
University of Texas at Austin
Todd G. Smith1
University of Texas at Austin
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Potential Climate Change-Related Security Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Where Are the Vulnerable Areas in North Africa? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Narratives of Climate Vulnerability in North Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Conclusion and Policy Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
Joshua W. Busby is an assistant professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and a Crook distinguished scholar in the
Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin. Kaiba White is a GIS research
associate at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin. Todd G. Smith is
a Ph.D. Student in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
1
The authors thank the German Marshall Fund for commissioning this report. This material is based upon work supported
by, or in part by, the U. S. Army Research Laboratory and the U. S. Army Research Office under contract/grant number
W911NF-09-1-0077. The research is part of a larger project on Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS),
http://ccaps.robertstrausscenter.org/ The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect those of the German Marshall Fund
of the United States.
Executive Summary
Climate change is increasingly recognized to
have implications that extend beyond impacts
on people’s quality of life and into the security
sphere. Scholars and analysts have invoked a host
of purported problems that climate change could
contribute to, from armed conflict to migration
flows to complex emergencies that require humanitarian intervention. A number of these concerns
apply directly to North Africa, which, for the
purposes of this study, is the region including the
countries along the Mediterranean, south to the
Sahelian countries of Mali and Niger, and extending
across to Sudan and the Horn of Africa. North
Africa is a strategically important region for Europe
largely because of its proximity, with the broader
transatlantic policy community exercising particular concern where Africa’s problems spill over to
Europe.
North or northern Africa is an arid and semi-arid
region that includes vast expanses of sparsely populated or not populated at all territory. It is a region
where the amount of water available per person is
already, in many cases, less than 1,000 cubic meters
per year and where climate change is expected to
make the region much hotter. The brittleness and
weakness of regimes in the region and the wider
continent, coupled with the low level of human and
economic development, enhance Africa’s vulnerability to a variety of ills, including climate change,
terrorism, armed conflict, and piracy.
The purpose of this study is to reach a better
understanding of how climate change and physical
sources of vulnerability to natural hazards might
intersect with the region’s various demographic,
social, and political sources of weakness. Using
Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we map
the confluence of those sources of vulnerability,
extracting maps of regional vulnerability from a
broader research effort on the entire continent
of Africa. We couple those maps with illustrative
narratives from two sites of high vulnerability
— Niger and Sudan — and seek to explain their
significance for the transatlantic policy community,
drawing on broader scholarly and policy literature.
The maps reveal vulnerability across the region
to climate change and other risks. The Mediterranean coastline looks particularly exposed to
climate-related hazards, but other areas appear
more vulnerable when we add in other dimensions like community and household resilience and
governance and political violence. Putting the four
sources of vulnerability together — climate-related
hazard exposure, population density, household
and community resilience, and governance and
political violence — we find that western Ethiopia
stands out as the most vulnerable part of the region,
with pockets of high vulnerability throughout
south-central Sudan, southern Chad, Niger,
and Somalia. Small pockets of medium vulnerability exist along the Mediterranean coastline in
Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt.
Beyond these maps of vulnerability, we explore four
potential mechanisms where climate and security
concerns are potentially connected in North Africa:
conflict, migration, terrorism, and humanitarian
disasters.
With respect to conflict, the academic literature on
climate-related violence is, thus far, inconclusive.
Where conflict is associated with climate change,
it tends not to be from scarcity of resources per se
but from volatility and shocks that make it hard for
people to plan their economic activities one year
to the next, forcing them into desperate action.
Studies are increasingly focusing on lower-level
conflicts like strikes and riots to examine their
connections with climate change. In North Africa,
however, using a new dataset from the Social
Conflict in Africa Database, we find that lowerlevel social conflict events are concentrated in the
areas least vulnerable to climate-related hazards.
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
iii
As for migration, rough calculations suggest that
additional climate-related migrants from Africa
to Europe between today and 2050 (as a result
of changing agricultural yields) are likely to be
relatively few compared to the number of migrants
likely to migrate in any case because of rising population growth. Moreover, if past trends continue, a
much higher proportion of migrants will remain in
Africa or go to regions other than Europe. Climate
change may contribute to migration through
other channels such as water scarcity and extreme
weather events, but we should be cautious about
overstating the challenge of climate-led African
migration to Europe.
There is no compelling argument that identifies
climate change as a cause of terrorism. However,
we do see terrorism and climate change potentially
being twin challenges that weak governments
in the region, such as Niger, might have to face
simultaneously, requiring difficult choices in terms
of allocation of scarce resources. Algeria has been
the largest regional site for terrorist attacks, most
of them directed against the national government
with limited implications for European or Western
security.
to high physical vulnerability to climate change is
likely to be worse because of weak governance and
low household and community resilience to climate
change. These areas include western Ethiopia and
pockets in southern Sudan, Chad, and Niger. While
targeted assistance to governments and NGOs for
disaster prevention and risk are essential, equally
important may be support for basic government
capacity and conflict resolution in those countries,
as they may generate positive spillovers for their
ability to address climate-related challenges. Our
findings also lead us to conclude that North African
countries along the Mediterranean like Morocco
and Tunisia may be more physically vulnerable
to climate change than others but possess more
capacity at the household and governance levels
to cope with these problems. Support for these
countries should include more information-sharing
to help them address their physical vulnerabilities
largely through mobilization of their own internal
resources.
Finally, with respect to natural disasters, we find
that floods and droughts are the main climaterelated disaster types in the region, with floods
being far more frequent and deadly but droughts
affecting larger numbers of people over greater
areas. Countries in the region with poorer governance such as Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Niger, Sudan,
and Somalia had far larger numbers of people
affected by disasters than other countries. As our
case studies of Niger and Sudan demonstrate, many
areas severely affected by droughts and floods are
also facing political volatility.
In terms of policy, these conclusions lead us
to recommend that resources and attention be
directed to the areas and countries where modest
iv
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
Introduction
Climate change is increasingly recognized to
have implications that extend beyond impacts on
people’s quality of life and into the security sphere.
Since 2007, policy practitioners and academics have
issued scores of reports identifying the security
risks associated with climate change. Scholars and
analysts have invoked a host of purported problems that climate change could contribute to, from
armed conflict to migration flows to complex emergencies that require humanitarian intervention.
Even as academics continue to debate the specific
relationship between climate change and security
outcomes, the topic has garnered the attention of
the UN Security Council, the European Commission, and numerous individual governments.1
A number of these concerns apply directly to North
Africa, a region for the purposes of this study we
take to include the countries along the Mediterranean, south to the Sahelian countries of Mali and
Niger, and extending across to Sudan and the Horn
of Africa. North Africa is a strategically important
region for Europe largely because of proximity, with
the broader transatlantic policy community exercising particular concern where Africa’s problems
spillover to Europe.
North or northern Africa is an arid and semi-arid
region that includes vast expanses of sparsely populated or not populated at all territory. It is a region
where the amount of water available per person is
already, in many cases, less than 1,000 cubic meters
The topic has become virtually a cottage industry, with the
number of papers and speeches too numerous to name. The UN
hosted a special meeting of the Security Council on the topic
in 2007. In the United States, the National Intelligence Council
conducted a National Intelligence Assessment in 2008. The
British government has been among the main champions of the
links between climate and security. Javier Solana, the former EU
High Representative for Foreign Policy, was another champion
(Hague 2010; Fingar 2008; Solana 2008; Beckett 2007; UN Security Council 2007).
1 per year.2 Climate change is expected to make the
region much hotter, suffering temperature increases
higher than the expected average increases worldwide.3 It is also a region that has a variety of governance challenges, with a number of regimes that
have largely resisted democratization and economic
modernization. Many of them have long-time
rulers or family dynasties (Libya, Morocco, Egypt),
and others are characterized by great political instability (Somalia).
A number of these countries have quite fragile
regimes, with recent experience of coups (Niger)
and extensive acts of terrorism (Algeria). Others
have experienced spates of violence and conflict,
including Sudan and Ethiopia. The brittleness and
weakness of regimes in the region and the wider
continent, coupled with the low level of human and
economic development, enhance Africa’s vulnerability to a variety of ills, including climate change
but also terrorism, armed conflict, and piracy. For
Europe and the United States, two problems —
migration and terrorism — are particularly salient
and potentially combustible, given the intersection with broader cultural and political currents in
Europe about immigrants and Islam and concerns
about ungoverned spaces and the rise of terrorism.
Countries in North Africa also have more strategic
significance as providers of important natural
Levy et al. note that populations are vulnerable to water stress
between 500 and 1,700 cubic meters per person. The 1,000 cubic
meter per year threshold is often used to capture chronic water
scarcity. In 2005, about 35 percent of the world population faced
chronic scarcity. In countries like Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia,
about 100 percent of the population already experiences this
problem (Levy et al. 2008).
2 Model projections suggest that North Africa’s average temperature will increase by 2.16°C (almost 4°F) by mid-century,
compared to the period 1980-2000. The IPCC Fourth Assessment reports that the global average projected temperature
change for midcentury is an increase of 1.8°C (for the same time
period and under the A1B scenario) (IPCC 2007). North Africa
model projections come from collaborative work we have carried
out with scientists at the University of Texas’ Jackson School of
Geosciences. See footnote 43 for more details.
3 Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
1
resources. Libya and Algeria are among the leading
exporters of petroleum, while Niger is one of the
world’s top exporters of uranium. In addition to
these natural resources, the region’s sea lanes —
from Egypt and the Suez Canal down to Somalia
and the Gulf of Aden — are important for global
commerce.
The purpose of this study is to reach a better
understanding of how climate change and physical
sources of vulnerability to natural hazards might
intersect with the region’s various demographic,
social, and political sources of weakness. Using
Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we map
the confluence of those sources of vulnerability,
extracting maps of local vulnerability from a
broader research effort on the entire continent
of Africa. We couple those maps with illustrative
narratives from two sites of high vulnerability
— Niger and Sudan — and seek to explain their
significance for the transatlantic policy community, drawing on the broader scholarly and policy
literature.
with physical exposure and incrementally adding
population density, household and community
resilience, and governance and political violence.
Together, these baskets are combined in an overall
map of composite vulnerability in the region that
should help policymakers focus their resources and
attention. From these areas of higher vulnerability,
we selected two sites — Niger and southern Sudan
— for extended vignettes in Section 3 to explain
how the confluence of climate change and other
dimensions of social and political vulnerability may
conjoin to create security consequences of concern
for the broader international community.
This is not a work of country experts but a
measured attempt to take stock of regional vulnerabilities and potential spillovers from climate
change.4 As such, we seek to avoid overstating the
severity of problems. We also identify regions about
which policymakers have expressed concern but
do not appear particularly vulnerable to climate
change, based on our model.
In Section 1 we review the mechanisms by which
climate change could have security implications
in North Africa, by looking at conflict, migration,
terrorism, and extreme weather events. In Section 2
we create a series of sub-national maps of vulnerability to climate change in North Africa, beginning
For more area studies-informed scholarship on climate and
security in the region, see White forthcoming; Al-Marashi forthcoming; CENTRA Technology and Seitor Corporation 2009;
National Intelligence Council 2009.
4 2
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
1
Potential Climate Change-Related
Security Consequences
Since about 2007, academics and practitioners have
vigorously investigated the security consequences
of climate change, in part driven by an effort to
generate more broad-based and high-level political
interest in addressing climate change.5 As the security consequences of climate change have become
more accepted, the debate has matured. What is
now needed is a pragmatic assessment of the nature
of the threats, what we know and can know, and
how best to think about preparing for the future.
Most of the work to date has focused on whether
climate change will contribute to violent conflict,
but a host of other issues with some potential
links to climate change — migration, terrorism,
and climate change related disasters — may have
security consequences worthy of concern. Here,
we take a relatively narrow view of security threats,
focusing on problems of such grave concern that
they threaten a country’s existence or way of life or
pose deep challenges to the country’s main instruments of self-defense (namely military assets).6 To
better understand these potential consequences, we
explore the connections between climate change
and four issues — conflict, migration, terrorism,
and disasters — with special reference to examples
from northern Africa.
Conflict
Much has been made of the potential security
consequences of climate change. The emphasis
among scholars and practitioners has been on
the potential for climate change to contribute to
conflict, with words like “threat multiplier” and
“stressor” frequently invoked to acknowledge that
climate change on its own is unlikely to lead to
conflict.
The examples have become almost too numerous to mention,
but important examples include reports from the CNA Corporation, CNAS/CSIS, and the Council on Foreign Relations (CNA
Corporation 2007; Campbell et al. 2007; Busby 2007).
5 6 For a more detailed academic discussion, see Busby 2008.
While most scholarship has focused on subnational conflict, advocates have also invoked the
specter of “water wars” between states over scarce
water supplies. One of the frequently cited cases of
concern is disputes over the waters of the Nile that
link Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, and Uganda. While
dams built for irrigation, flood control, or hydroelectric power potentially will lead to disputes over
water along the length of the Nile, historically there
have been few or no cases of “water wars.” On the
contrary, the common necessity of water often
serves to force even hostile countries to cooperate.7
Climate shocks, such as large declines in precipitation from one year to the next, rather than absolute scarcity of resources like water and land, are
thought to be the most likely way climate change
might contribute to conflict. In this way, desperate
people, unable to plan their agricultural harvests or
water their animals, could be driven to steal or take
up arms, potentially leading to violent encounters
with others.8 In the northern African context, the
conflict in Darfur, Sudan, has controversially been
linked to climate change. Droughts initially brought
nomadic herders into conflict with farmers over
grazing rights, which was then exacerbated by poor
government policy. 9
In spite of this, most academic studies that have
used quantitative statistical approaches to test for
a link between climate-related indicators (such as
drought) and conflict have not found a connection.10 That said, because these studies look at
historical data, they may ultimately tell us little
about future climate change and conflict.
7 Klare 2007; Victor 2007; Nordås and Gleditsch 2009.
8 Hendrix and Glaser 2007; Levy et al. 2005.
For a discussion, see de Waal 2007; Homer-Dixon 2007; Busby
2009.
9 For summary reviews of the literature, see Theisen, Holtermann, and Buhaug 2010; Buhaug 2010; Busby 2009; Buhaug,
Gleditsch, and Theisen 2008.
10 Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
3
FIGURE 1
Scholars are starting to look at lower levels of
conflict like riots and strikes, with some suggestions that both high and low rainfall might give
rise to more of these low-level conflicts.11 Another
productive area for future scholarship is to examine
the indirect effects of climate change on conflict by
way of economic growth.12 If climate change leads
to low economic growth, which is highly correlated with the increased incidence of conflict, then
climate change could have an important indirect
effect on conflict.13
A preliminary examination of a recently released
database, the Social Conflict in Africa Database
(SCAD), reveals that riots, strikes, demonstrations,
and lower-level social conflicts in North Africa in
11 Hendrix and Salehyan 2010.
12 Levy 2010.
13 Collier 2007.
4
the period 1995-2009 are concentrated in small
areas that correspond to major cities throughout
the region (see Figure 1).
We find that social conflicts are clustered in areas
least vulnerable to climate-related physical hazards.
Figure 2 shows the number of social conflict
events by area for each of the five quintiles of
underlying exposure to climate-related physical
hazards like drought and floods. We observe that
the first quintile (the 20 percent of the region with
the least physical exposure to climate hazards)
has the most social conflict events in the period
1995-2009 (see Figure 2). This does not necessarily
mean that climate change has no connection with
social conflicts like strikes and riots, as people may
take their grievances from their home regions to
national and provincial capitals and major cities.
But, echoing other work that has examined the
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
undermine agricultural productivity, prompting people to move
in search of better land or offfarm opportunities.15
FIGURE 2
For Europe, emigration from
North Africa, particularly given
some of the emergent cultural
and political fault-lines, is a
specific concern.16 At the same
time, migrants from sub-Saharan
Africa have also used North
Africa as a trans-migratory
route into Europe, which has led
to unprecedented interdiction
efforts through Frontex, a new
European border control initiative established in 2005.17 Given
the comparatively lower levels
Sources: Authors’ calculations based on the Social Conflict in Africa Database and
of economic development in
UNEP/GRIO-Europe
sub-Saharan Africa, the prospects
connections between climate change and violence,
of larger numbers of migrants
our findings suggest a measure of caution.14
passing through North Africa in a bid to resettle in
Europe has generated significant concern (though
Migration
the Sahara Desert may be a fairly effective barrier
for most migrants).
Climate change has also been put forward as one of
the many reasons people migrate from their homes,
from rural to urban areas, within continents and
between them in the search of better opportunities.
A number of different climate-related mechanisms
have been identified as potential triggers for migration, including so-called “distress migration” caused
by swift-onset disasters that make areas temporarily
or permanently uninhabitable. Increased water
scarcity for human or animal consumption might
also make migration more attractive. Similarly,
changing temperatures and precipitation might
The data are divided into five categories or quintiles of
roughly equal size, from the least vulnerable to climate-related
hazards (category 1) to the most (category 5). The Social
Conflict in Africa Database was developed by our colleagues
at the University of North Texas, Idean Salehyan and Cullen
Hendrix.
14 In this context, advocates have warned of large
numbers of “climate refugees,” or people who are
forced to move because their livelihoods are no
longer possible due to prolonged droughts, floods,
storms, and other extreme weather events.18 These
advocates have also warned of conflict emerging
from migration, as newcomers compete with local
populations for resources or work. While migration
Martin 2010a; Martin 2010b; Collinson 2010. For a set of
additional GMF-sponsored papers on climate change and
migration, see http://www.gmfus.org/cs/publications/publication_view?publication.id=650
15 16 National Intelligence Council 2010.
17 See http://www.frontex.europa.eu/
18 Myers 2005; Werz and Manilove 2009.
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
5
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 4
Source: Global Migrant Origin Database 2007
is frequently thought of as a problem, mobility has
also historically been quite an important adaptive tool for people whose life possibilities were
foreclosed in their home countries. Migrants often
enrich the communities of the host countries where
they ultimately resettle.19
One concern is that while “climate refugees” may
be a rhetorical talking point, it will be difficult in
practice to clearly identify them and distinguish
their reasons for migrating from other motives.
While scholars have found cross-border migration to be associated with an increased risk of
conflict,20 a number of scholars believe that if there
were such a thing as environmental migration,
dislocated populations, overwhelmingly dependent
upon neighboring countries’ goodwill and relief
19 World Bank 2010.
20 Salehyan and Gleditsch 2006.
6
for survival, may be less likely to engage in conflict
simply because their own situation in host countries is so tenuous.21 That said, they may be vulnerable to violent reprisals by locals, as Zimbabweans
have been in South Africa.
In the European context, whether or not migration
will lead to violent conflict in the short run may
be less important than the political ramifications
of migrants coming from particular parts of the
world. Not only are anti-immigrant parties gaining
more of a political footing in Europe, the potential
radicalization of diaspora populations from North
Africa and other parts of the world has troubled
European policymakers in countries where immi-
Gleditsch, Nordås, and Salehyan 2007; Raleigh, Jordan, and
Salehyan 2008.
21 The German Marshall Fund of the United States
grant populations have been implicated in terrorist
activity.22
Despite rhetoric from the aforementioned political
parties and certain media stories, the available
data on migration seems to lead to two somewhat
surprising conclusions. First, on the whole, Africans make up a small proportion of total immigrants into Europe. Second, Europe is not the main
destination for most African migrants.
The Global Migrant Origin Database publishes a
matrix of migrants from nearly every country in the
world to every other country in the world.23 Strictly
speaking, the reported data are stocks of migrants
— that is, people living in one country that are
from another — rather than flows of people in any
given year. Furthermore, the data for some countries are extrapolated from other countries with
more reliable census information. Despite these
limitations, it is possible to get a general picture
of emigration out of Africa and immigration into
Europe. The majority of the roughly 16 million
Africans living outside of their home countries have
migrated to other African countries. Côte d’Ivoire
(14.6 percent), Burkina Faso (7.0 percent), South
Africa (6.4 percent), and Tanzania (5.6 percent) are
the most popular destinations.
The 14 countries of North Africa, the Sahel, and
the Horn had a combined population of 335.5
million people in 2007, of which approximately
12 million were resident outside of their home
countries. Figures 3 and 4 show how these migrants
were distributed by region. The largest portion
of these, 33 percent, migrated to other African
countries. For example, of the 1.6 million Malians
who emigrated, 487,000 went to Côte d’Ivoire and
438,000 went to Burkina Faso. The second largest
High Representative and the European Commission to the
European Council 2008; Srichandan 2009.
22 See http://www.migrationdrc.org/research/typesofmigration/
global_migrant_origin_database.html
23 group is Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians, who
have migrated to their previous colonial power,
France. This accounts for 2.46 million people, or 20
percent of the total out of northern Africa. Of the
remaining migrants, another 2.46 million migrate
to the Middle East. 1.49 million of these are Egyptians, 282,000 are Sudanese, and 101,000 are Ethiopians. Saudi Arabia is the most popular destination
for Egyptians (slightly over 1 million) and Sudanese
(206,000), while Ethiopians settle in Israel (59,000)
and Saudi Arabia (22,000) (see Figure 5, next page).
Of the remaining 26 percent of North African
migrants, 2.13 million, or 18 percent, are distributed throughout the rest of Europe (excluding
France) (see Figure 4).
Figure 6 (next page) shows that Africans account
for 19 percent of migrants in Europe, with 13
percent — approximately 4.68 million people —
from the 14 countries of interest here. Fifty-two
percent of these are the aforementioned 2.46
million Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians
living in France. This accounts for 39 percent of
France’s total immigrant population of 6.3 million
but only 4 percent of its total population of over 62
million. Still, this represents a potentially destabilizing portion of French society, as evidenced
by rioting in Paris in 2005 and to lesser extents
since then. Another cultural clash has centered
on the wearing of the face veil by Muslim women,
which the French Senate banned in September
2010. Although the face veil is generally a practice
of Middle Eastern Muslims the recent legislation
may be perceived by the broader Muslim community as an attack on the religion as a whole. Other
immigrant controversies in France have had little
to do with populations from Africa. A squatter
camp near Calais that was dismantled in 2009 was
populated mainly by migrants from Iraq and other
Near East countries. Most recently France has
generated a political storm by expelling Roma from
Eastern Europe. Notwithstanding these destabi-
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
7
in emigration. Extrapolating
these results into the future, the
authors estimated that if climate
change contributes to a 10-50
percent decrease in crop yields
in Mexico (as was the range
of estimates under a variety
of climate models), Mexican
emigration to the United States
would increase by between 1.4
and 6.7 million people by 2080,
controlling for other factors.24
FIGURE 5
Although lack of data makes it
difficult to estimate the elasticity of migration from North
Africa to Europe in response
to changing crop yields, we can
make some crude calculations. If
we assume that Africa’s elasticity
of migration in response to agriSource: Global Migrant Origin Database 2007
lizing factors, the drivers of migration from Algeria,
Morocco, and Tunisia likely have little to do with
climate change or other environmental factors and
more to do with France’s long-standing influence in
the region dating back to its original colonization of
Algeria in the mid-19th century.
24 Feng, Krueger, and Oppenheimer 2010.
FIGURE 6
In the context of climate change in North Africa,
one of the great unknowns is whether the changes
will make parts of the region unlivable or uneconomic (or perceived to be), such that large numbers
of people begin moving. That prospect would have
to be in the next 20 to 30 years, a time horizon close
enough and swift enough to be policy-relevant.
A 2010 study estimated the elasticity of Mexican
migration to changes in crop yields over the period
1995-2005, suggesting that every 10 percent decline
in crop yields would lead to a 2 percent increase
8
Source: Global Migrant Origin Database 2007
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
cultural yields is similar to Mexico’s, the numbers
of migrants out of Africa in response to climate
change could potentially be quite large.
FIGURE 7
However, the Mexico study largely made use of
2001 data.25 Newer data from 2009 by the same
authors cited in the Mexico study suggest that
climate change will have a lesser impact on crop
yields than first thought.26 Using the 2009 data, we
find that the numbers of additional migrants associated with declining agricultural yields is likely to
be modest, especially when compared to migration
associated with population growth.27
If we assume similar migration rates as today,
projected population growth alone will lead to an
increase from 4.7 million North African migrants
in Europe in 2007 to 5.6 million in 2020 and 7.0
million in 2050 (see Figure 7).
Looking at all of Africa, the number of African
migrants to Europe — with population growth
and current rates of migration — is projected to
increase from 6.9 million in 2007 to 8.5 million in
2020 and 9 million in 2050. Thus, of the increment
of additional migrants to Europe, North Africans
(broadly defined) would constitute 55 percent of
them between 2007 and 2020 and 48 percent of
them between 2007 and 2050. Of those, Algerians
and Moroccans would constitute more than 60
percent of the total new North Africans in Europe
in both 2020 and 2050 (see Appendix A).
The number of additional North Africans who
migrate to Europe in response to declining agricultural yields, given our assumptions, will only bring
the total moderately higher, an additional 30,000
Source: Authors’ calculation based on data from Global
Migrant Origin Database 2010
in 2020 and 340,000 in 2050. Including all African
countries, the number of agricultural yield-related
migrants to Europe would be 485,000 in 2020 and
1.92 million in 2050 (see Table 1).28
Still, the percentage of migrants across Africa that
are projected to move due to changing agricultural
yields constitutes less than 18 percent of the total
in 2020 and 2050. Of the North Africa component to Europe, the estimate suggests these would
overwhelmingly come from Ethiopia in 2020, with
some migration from other countries in the region
(Algeria, Egypt, and Somalia) by 2050. Continentwide, agricultural-led migrants are estimated to
come disproportionately from Nigeria in 2020 and
Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda in 2050 (given our
assumptions and data on the numbers of migrants
2001 data is available here http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/
giss_crop_study/CCMquerytools.html
25 2009 data is available here http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/
mva/cropclimate/
26 This assumes no interactive effects between declining agricultural yields and population growth.
27 This estimate assumes that the elasticity of migration in
response to changing crop yields is similar to Mexico’s. The
estimate of crop yields uses one of the various scenarios of future
agricultural yields, the A1FI scenario, which assumes continued
globalization and fossil fuel intensive economic growth.
28 Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
9
TABLE 1
Estimates of Future Migration Due to Crop Yields
2020
Percent change
in ag. yield
(scenario A1FI)
2020
Algeria
Chad
Djibouti
2050
Emigration due
to change in
agricultural yield
Total
Percent change
in ag. yield
(scenario A1FI)
To Europe
2050
Emigration due
to change in
agricultural yield
Total
To Europe
0.45
-36
-30
-0.53
52
42
-0.93
28
1
-1.96
108
3
0.30
-1
0
-0.76
2
1
Egypt
-0.37
73
7
-1.63
422
39
Eritrea
-0.43
6
0
-1.56
34
2
Ethiopia
-0.83
180
38
-2.31
801
167
Libya
-0.41
6
2
-1.59
31
8
Mali
-0.89
31
1
-1.81
113
5
Mauritania
-0.76
6
1
-1.43
17
3
Morocco
-0.02
1
1
-0.05
4
3
Niger
-0.71
33
1
-1.34
155
4
Somalia
-1.37
34
9
-3.31
155
42
Sudan
-0.09
9
0
-0.91
138
7
Tunisia
0.05
-0.66
-1
-1
369
30
2,573
485
14 country North Africa
total
Africa-wide average
-0.84
-2.14
17
14
2,051
340
9,266
1,920
* in thousands of people
Source: Authors’ calculations based on crop-yield projections from Rosenzweig and Iglesias 2009, population projections from
UN Population Fund and elasticity from Feng et al. 2010
and their historically preferred choices for where to
migrate).
Of course, this is a highly contingent estimation,
based on an untested assumption that the elasticity
of migration from North Africa is at all similar to
Mexico and that the Mexico model itself accurately
reflects the underlying reality. The migration data
we used may also have significant problems, given
10
the difficulty of estimating what are often informal,
illicit population movements. More onerous,
uneven enforcement of borders may ultimately
change the pattern of where future migrants choose
as destinations. Moreover, declines in agricultural
yield only reflect one dimension of climate change
that may contribute to migration. More abrupt
weather shocks from floods and storms or declining
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
water availability may also contribute to additional
migration.
Nonetheless, this exercise leads to some preliminary conclusions. Climate change, as reflected by
changing agricultural yields, is likely to contribute
a small proportion of future migrants to Europe
compared to population growth. Of those, countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria may
be a larger source of migrants to Europe. Based
on population growth, North African countries
like Algeria and Morocco are estimated to send
larger migrant populations to Europe, particularly
to France, independent of climate change. Moreover, only about a quarter of Africa’s migrants are
estimated to end up in Europe, so the issue of how
to deal with migration within Africa and between
Africa and other countries will likely be a salient
concern for a number of other countries.
In terms of the security implications, the policy
community has to be careful about drawing
alarming conclusions regarding the number of
climate-induced migrants to Europe from Africa,
which could feed into larger xenophobic currents.
That said, if people move at historical rates and the
African population grows as expected, there will be
a significant movement of Africans to Europe with
or without climate change. A modest additional
number will likely move with climate change from
changing agriculture yields, and an untold number
of others may move as a result of other climaterelated forces such as displacement after swift-onset
disasters.
The number of migrants may matter less than the
emerging perception among advanced industrialized countries that some immigrants from developing countries cannot be successfully integrated
into the wider society of their new homes. The
choices for policymakers will be bound up with
larger questions about how to treat migrants,
whether they are climate-related or not, including
robust interdiction efforts (which could be problematic from a human-rights perspective) and
merely displace the challenges of integrating
migrants to other countries within Africa and
elsewhere.
Mobility within and between countries has
historically been one of the most important coping
mechanisms people have taken advantage of in the
face of environmental challenges. Remittances have
become as, if not more, significant than foreign
assistance; and the skills migrants learn can be
important when and if the immigrant diaspora
returns home. In the absence of better economic
opportunities and alternative livelihoods, more
vigorous efforts to restrict immigration into Europe
and other regions will do little to diminish the
demand by people to leave.
While a number of scholars have suggested that
migrants prompted to move because of climate
change may need explicit legal protections, our
analysis suggests that it may be premature to
commit to those policies until more is known about
the potential magnitude of and destination for these
migrants. In the meantime, the fate of climaterelated migrants, however slim their number in
the short run, will properly be bound up in wider
discussions of the integration of immigrants into
advanced industrialized countries.
Terrorism
Parts of North Africa, particularly Algeria, have
endured the most acts of terrorism on the continent. According to the Global Terrorism database,
of the 3,676 terrorist attacks in Africa between 1995
and 2008, nearly a third (1,195 events) took place
in Algeria and more than 10 percent (414 events)
took place in Somalia. Together, the 14 countries in
North Africa accounted for more than 55 percent
of all the terrorist attacks (2,088 events).29 Most
29 See http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
11
of these, though, were directed against their own
governments and do not pose an obvious risk to
Western governments. However, persistent state
weakness in a number of countries in the SahelMaghreb has allowed groups like Al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), after being pushed out
of Algeria, to organize in countries like Mauritania,
Niger, and Mali. Western tourists and businessmen
have increasingly become targets for hostagetaking. For scholars interested in climate change
and security in North Africa, the links between
climate change and terrorism is an obvious area for
inquiry.
Unfortunately, little scholarship exists on the links
between climate change and terrorism. It is unclear
how changes in rainfall, extreme weather events, or
rising temperatures would lead people to take up
arms and attack civilians. The influence of climate
change could go through rising immiseration and
poverty, but most studies on the causes of terrorism
suggest that poverty is poorly correlated with the
incidence and onset of conflict.30
Western counterterrorism programs in the region
have been premised on the notion that ungoverned
spaces could provide organizing territory from
which later attacks on the West could be planned.
Given the paucity of roads, airports, communication networks, and infrastructure, it is unclear that
the Sahel-Maghreb is the ideal place for terrorist
groups to organize.31 A group with more local
grievances may have been inadvertently elevated to
a larger regional or global threat on the basis of its
unfortunate choice of name as an Al Qaeda franchise.32 States in the region have been able to take
advantage of Western interests (and U.S. interest in
Krueger and Maleckova 2003; Laitin and Krueger 2008. That
said, poor economic conditions might make it easier to recruit
from the middle classes and contribute to conflict.
30 31 RAND 2007.
Kennedy-Boudali 2009. For another assessment of regional
rivalries within AQIM, see Filiu 2010.
32 12
particular) in counterterrorism to secure resources
and support to address their own security concerns,
some of which may be more related to separatist
movements and criminal elements rather than
terrorism.33
Nonetheless, as our narrative on Niger suggests, the
confluence of vulnerabilities to Tuareg separatists,
AQIM, and climate change, coupled with Niger’s
uranium supplies, may make parts of the region
more strategically important to the West.
A more productive way to think about these issues
is to examine whether or not areas that were historically most vulnerable to terrorist activity are also
among those most vulnerable to climate change. To
the extent that these vulnerabilities overlap, governments faced with both of these problems and other
governance challenges will face capacity constraints
in dealing with them simultaneously.
In the next section, we classify all areas within
Africa into five quintiles, or roughly equal-sized
classes, based on their physical exposure to climaterelated hazards. Using geo-coded data of the Global
Terrorism Database for the period from 1995 to
2008,34 we find that in North Africa the sites of the
most number of terrorist attacks per ten thousand
square kilometers are concentrated in the areas
both least and most vulnerable to climate change.
This suggests that the places physically vulnerable
to climate change may also face concomitant challenges of dealing with terrorism (see Figure 8).35
It would be premature to suggest that climate
change had any hand in causing these terrorist
33 CENTRA Technology and Seitor Corporation 2009, 35.
The data was geo-coded by Shawn Strange. Additional work
geo-coding this data was also done by University of Texas
graduate students Christian Glakas, Marc Olivier, and Sanjeet
Deka.
34 Algeria dominates the terrorism statistics, and these patterns
hold at the country level as well. Global Terrorism Database,
START, accessed July 2, 2010.
35 The German Marshall Fund of the United States
attacks. Though Osama Bin
Laden has made the occasional
reference to climate change as a
source of grievance, we have yet
to see a plausible explanation that
connects terrorism to climate
change. Our data do not address
that question, which would
require additional statistical
tests to see if climate change and
terrorism are correlated, controlling for other factors.
Extreme Weather Events and
Complex Emergencies
FIGURE 8
Sources: Calculations by the authors based on data from the Global Terrorism Data-
Climate change is expected to
base and UNEP/GRIO-Europe
increase the severity and possibly
the frequency of extreme weather
the early 1990s created a humanitarian emergency
events, contributing to more serious floods,
that prompted the United States to send in more
droughts, and soaring temperatures. With people
than 20,000 troops as part of Operation Restore
increasingly living in places of high physical expoHope. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Western
sure, along coasts and in flood plains, the number
militaries became increasingly familiar with such
of people affected and the amount of damage from
missions in places like Central America (after
climate-related weather phenomenon has been
Hurricane Mitch in 1998) and Haiti (after the 2004
steadily rising.
mudslides).
Disaster-related emergencies frequently exceed the
capacity of local fire, water, and rescue services,
requiring the mobilization of military assets for
humanitarian relief. Rich, western countries have
not been immune from these incidents. The U.S.
military was mobilized in the wake of 2005’s
Hurricane Katrina. Greece’s military was required
to stamp out a series of debilitating fires in 2007, as
was Australia’s in 2009.
The effects of climate-related hazards are even more
devastating on developing countries with poor
governance and limited capacity, which frequently
require assistance from the international community. For example, because of government incompetence, a not-too-severe drought in Somalia during
The 2010 floods in Pakistan affected more than 20
million people and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, including some of the resupply
routes the U.S. military was using to get goods
to its troops in Afghanistan. While scientists do
not attribute specific weather events to climate
change, the floods are consistent with the kinds of
weather-related anomalies expected to increase as
a result of climate change. Even as Western donors,
including militaries, mobilized to help the millions
of Pakistanis left homeless and in need in the wake
of the floods, Niger was experiencing its own flood
emergency halfway across the world.
A country that has to divert its military to deal
with weather-related emergencies at home or
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
13
abroad will face the opportunity costs of not having
them available to guard against other external or
internal challenges. For example, in the wake of the
2010 floods, the U.S. sent dozens of helicopters to
Pakistan from its increasingly difficult war effort in
Afghanistan.36
Where governments fail to respond to humanitarian needs, the effects of disasters can potentially
create security problems of their own. While in the
short run, the devastation following swift-onset
disasters may make it difficult for people to organize insurgent activity, desperate people may riot or
loot in the search for food and water, particularly
if there are known depots in the area. Over time,
insurgents groups may be emboldened to rebel and
be better able to recruit from populations disaffected from governments that failed to help them
in their time of need, particularly if insurgent or
terrorist groups were more capable of providing
emergency social services than the government.37
We can observe the role of poor governance by
examining the disaster mortality and damage
statistics using the EM-DAT International Disaster
database compiled by the Université Catholique
de Louvain in Belgium.38 In the next section, we
present maps of climate hazards based on physical
thresholds (wind speed, amount of precipitation,
etc.). The EM-DAT database only counts an event
as a disaster if the consequences meet one of the
following conditions: ten or more people killed;
100 or more people reported affected; a declaration
For a more extended discussion of the security implications of
disasters, see Busby 2008; Busby 2009.
36 Some studies have found connections between certain kinds
of natural disasters and the increased likelihood of conflict,
those concerns may be confined to earthquakes and may not
be applicable to climate-related extreme weather events. See
Brancati 2007; Nel and Righarts 2008.
37 38 See http://www.emdat.be/database
14
of a state of emergency; or a call for international
assistance.39
In the EM-DAT database, floods and droughts are
the main climate-related disaster types with floods
far more frequent and deadly but droughts affecting
larger numbers of people. When floods occur they
tend to destroy homes. As the next section on
vulnerability details, countries in the region with
poorer governance, such as Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia,
Niger, Sudan, and Somalia, had far larger numbers
of people affected by disasters than other countries.
Though some of these are highly populous countries (Ethiopia, Sudan), a number of these countries
had small populations (see Table 2).
While some of the countries that have experienced
devastating disasters in North Africa might not be
as strategically important to the United States and
Europe, large-scale disasters can generate intense
media attention and demands for humanitarian
intervention and relief operations. For Western
militaries, this can translate into rapid redeployment away from fighting wars and other traditional
security responsibilities to assist in disaster relief,
an important opportunity cost if those scarce
resources are already stretched thin. In Africa, the
continued after-effects of the international intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s, coupled with
strategic priorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
may make Western intervention in the short-run
unlikely. However, in the event of natural disasters
in the region, African Union troops might need
logistical support from the West to support humanitarian relief. Over time, the legacy of Somalia may
fade, engendering greater will to support deployment for humanitarian purposes, particularly if the
magnitude of droughts, floods, or storms creates
massive need.
This dataset is in part a reflection of reporting so the patterns
may not fully reflect all the disasters or may be biased to countries that have more media attention. Moreover, the data on
fatalities, people affected, and homelessness may be inaccurate.
39 The German Marshall Fund of the United States
TABLE 2
1995-2008 Climate-Related Disasters in North Africa
Country
Number of Number of Number of Number of
Disasters
Floods
Droughts
Storms
Max.
Killed
Max. Total
Affected
Max.
Homeless
Algeria
32
25
1
3
921 (f)
45,423 (f)
3,000 (f)
Chad
12
9
2
1
100 (f)
800,000 (d)
45,000 (f)
Djibouti
7
5
1
1
51 (f)
340,000 (d)
1,500 (d)
Egypt
10
5
0
2
32 (hw)
3,000 (f)
3,000 (f)
Eritrea
4
2
2
0
0
2.3 million
(d)
0
Ethiopia
42
34
6
0
498 (f)
12.6 million
(d)
79,000
(floods)
Libya
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
Mali
16
13
3
0
15 (f)
1 million (d) 41,586 (f)
Mauritania
14
11
2
1
25 (f)
1 million (d) 20,000 (f)
Morocco
19
15
1
2
730 (f)
275,000 (d)
0
Niger
13
9
3
1
7 (floods)
3.58 million
(d)
46,472 (f)
Somalia
26
4
22
0
2,311 (f)
3.3 million
(d)
230,000 (f)
Sudan
25
2
21
1
150 (f)
2 million (d) 200,000 (f)
Tunisia
4
0
4
0
16 (f)
27,000 (f)
0
f=flood, d=drought, hw=heat wave
Source: OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
15
2
Where Are the Vulnerable Areas in
North Africa?
Areas that have a number of problems simultaneously are more likely to be vulnerable to large-scale
emergencies that 1) necessitate outside humanitarian relief, 2) compete for attention with other
problems countries face like terrorism, 3) force
people to move temporarily or permanently from
their homes, and 4) contribute to tensions that may
escalate to violence and conflict. Our aim is to go
beyond saying a particular country is vulnerable
to climate change to identify which parts of that
country are vulnerable, and why.
entrepreneurial skills to avoid those hazards or
minimize their effects.
•Governance and Political Violence. Weather
emergencies frequently exceed the capacities
of local communities’ emergency services,
requiring national-level mobilization to save
people from rising waters or from being
trapped under rubble and to provide food,
water, and shelter for people left homeless
or otherwise affected by extreme weather
events. As the world witnessed in Pakistan
in July 2010, countries with poor or unstable
governance are less able or even willing to
provide such services. Autarkic countries like
Myanmar cannot or will not count on external
aid to help them in such circumstances. Venal
and incompetent governments can transform
even small physical effects, like the modest
drought in Somalia in the early 1990s, into
major humanitarian disasters. Places with a
history of violence may be more difficult to
deliver services to and may have additional
localized governance challenges.
The consequences of climate change are likely to
emerge based on the confluence of vulnerabilities.40
We consider four broad processes important in
an area’s overall total vulnerability to the securityrelated consequences of climate change including:
•Climate-Related Hazard Exposure. At a
minimum, places have to be physically exposed
to climate-related hazards.
•Population Density. Policymakers generally
care about places where people live. All else
being equal, more densely populated areas that
are highly exposed to climate-related hazards
will command more attention from decisionmakers.
•Household and Community Resilience. The
first line of defense for many people will be
what resources they have at the household and
community level to protect themselves from
physical hazards and respond in the event
of climate-related emergencies like floods,
droughts, or storms. Communities where many
people are sick and have inadequate access to
health care and basic amenities are likely to be
less resilient than those that are healthier and
have greater access to services. Where people
are poorly educated, they may have fewer
This section builds on our previous research in Busby et al.
2010.
40 16
Our operating assumption is that the most vulnerable places are likely to be those where high physical exposure to climate-related hazards conjoins
with high population density, low levels of household and community health and education, and
poor governance and widespread political violence.
Each of these four baskets — physical exposure,
population density, household and community
resilience, and governance and political violence —
is represented by indicators. In all but the population basket, multiple indicators have been selected
to represent the basket. We selected these particular
indicators based on review of the existing literature
and with some statistical tests to eliminate indicators that were highly correlated. We also selected
these indicators with an eye towards identifying
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
FIGURE 9
Composite Vulnerability Baskets and Indicators
sub-national data sources for a continent where
data availability is problematic.
Within each basket, indicators are assigned weights
and aggregated. We then classify the vulnerability
categories into quintiles with the least vulnerable
20 percent represented by yellow colors and the
most vulnerable 20 percent represented by red.
These quintile classifications are relative to the rest
of Africa, not the rest of the world. So, while all of
Africa might be vulnerable to climate change, some
areas are more vulnerable than others (see Figure 9
for a representation).
From the four baskets, we developed a composite
map combining all four baskets of vulnerability. In
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
17
TABLE 3
Climate-Related Hazard Exposure Data
Variable (weight)
Unit
Source
Years
Cyclone surge frequency
(.167)
Events per 1,000 years
UNEP/GRID-Europe
1975 - 2007
Cyclone wind frequency
(.167)
Events per 1,000 years
UNEP/GRID-Europe
1975 - 2007
Flood frequency (.167)
Events per 100 years
UNEP/GRID-Europe
Drought events (.167)
Number of events
UNEP/GRID-Europe
1980 - 2001
Wildfire density (.167)
Per year per 11.1 sq km
pixel
UNEP/GRID-Europe
1997 - 2008
Low elevation coastal zone
(.167)
Coastal areas below 10 m
elevation
USGS EROS
this composite map, each of the baskets is weighted
equally.
We started the process by mapping physical exposure to climate-related hazards on its own and then
created an additional map of population density,
then another of community/household resilience,
and then finally, a fourth map of governance and
political violence. At each stage, we also created a
map adding each new dimension to the previous
one (such as climate exposure + population
density). We then mapped the difference between
the simpler map and then more complex one,
which allows us to identify the places that show up
as more or less vulnerable with the addition of each
basket.
As our composite model of vulnerability demonstrates, places that are physically exposed to climate
hazards and are densely populated may be resilient
to climate change because individuals and communities are better prepared to protect themselves and
their governments are willing and able to help them
when in need. In many countries in North Africa
this is not true. The incremental addition of our
18
population, household/community, and governance/violence baskets shows the value of a more
holistic approach to vulnerability.
We use historic exposure to climate-related disasters to represent physical exposure. Models of
future climate vulnerability for Africa notoriously
show widespread disagreement among scientists
about what is likely to happen. For that reason, we
begin with past exposure to climate-related physical
hazards (see Table 3 for a list of data sources). We
include some early findings from our collaborative
work with climate modelers that aims to do a better
job mirroring past weather patterns in Africa and
that produces data on timescales and indicators that
are more useful for policy audiences.
Findings
Our map of climate hazard exposure shows the
Mediterranean coast of Morocco, Algeria, and
Tunisia to be especially vulnerable as well as
pockets of coastal Egypt, large swathes of western
Ethiopia, and portions of southern Sudan (see
Figure 10).
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
FIGURE 10
However, whether or not physical exposure to
climate hazards actually translates into large-scale
potential loss of life, damages, or security consequences like those explored in this paper ultimately
depends on other factors. Obviously, there will be
more potential loss of life if large numbers of people
live in an area that is physically vulnerable. Because
this work focuses on the direct impact to human
populations, we exclude unpopulated areas from
our analysis.
Our maps of population density show the population of North Africa concentrated along the Mediterranean coastline and along the Nile in Egypt,
with dense concentrations of people in western
Ethiopia, a large concentration radiating around
Khartoum, Sudan, and some moderate population
density in the southern portion of Sahelian countries like Niger and Chad. The central part of the
region is sparsely populated throughout the extent
of the Sahara desert (see Figure 11).
When we add the population basket to create a
composite vulnerability index of physical exposure
and population density (not shown), we find that
coastal Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are more
vulnerable while the interior, just south of the coast,
of all three countries is less vulnerable. Egypt along
the Nile appears much more vulnerable when we
add in population, as do densely populated areas
around Khartoum, Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), and
Maradi (Niger). Portions of southern Sudan are less
vulnerable given low population density.
We next created a map of household and community resilience and added it to climate-related
hazard exposure and population density (see Table
4 for data sources). The northern part of Sahelian
countries of Niger, Chad, and Mali appears the
most vulnerable alongside Ethiopia and Somalia.
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
19
FIGURE 11
TABLE 4
Africa-Wide Household and Community Resilience Data
Variable (weight)
Education (.25)
Health (.25)
Daily Necessities
(.25)
Access to Healthcare
(.25)
20
Indicator (weight)
Source
Years of Data Availability
Literacy rate, adult total (percent of
people ages 15 and above) (.125)
WDI
2000 - 2007; no data for The Gambia,
Guinea-Bissau, or Somalia
School enrollment, primary (percent
gross) (.125)
WDI
2004 - 2008; 1998 for Angola; 1999 for
Somalia; 2001 for Guinea-Bissau
Infant mortality ratio (per 100,000 live
births)
CIESIN
1991-2003
Life expectancy at birth (years) both
sexes (.125)
WHO
2006
Percent of children under age of 5
underweight (.125)
CIESIN
1991-2003
Percent of population with sustainable access to improved drinking water
sources (.125)
WHO
2006; 2000 for Cape Verde and
Seychelles
Per capita total expenditure on health
(PPP int. $) (.125)
WHO
2006; 2001 for Somalia
Nursing and midwifery personnel
density (per 10,000 population) (.125)
WHO
2002 - 2006; no data for Somalia
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
FIGURE 12
Adding this dimension to our overall composite
subnational political violence, these form the core
index brings down Morocco and Tunisia’s vulneraelements of our basket for governance and political
bility while significantly increasing the vulnerability
violence (see Table 5 for data sources).
(by two quintiles) of southern Niger and Chad, as
well as eastern Ethiopia and much of Somalia
FIGURE 13
(see Figure 12).
Finally, when we look at governance and
political violence, we find that the Mediterranean countries have substantially better
governance than a number of countries in
the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, elevating
the vulnerability of the latter and lowering
the vulnerability of the former.
Figure 13, a chart of North African governance ratings, draws on national-level data
of indicators of voice and accountability
and government effectiveness, an index of
global integration, and measures of political
instability (see Figure 13). Along with the
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
21
TABLE 5
Governance and Political Violence Data
Variable
Indicator (weight)
Source
Year(s)
Government Responsiveness
Voice & Accountability (.2)
World Governance Indicators
2008
Government Response
Capacity
Government Effectiveness (.2) World Governance Indicators
2008
Openness to External
Assistance
Globalization Index (.2)
KOF Index of Globalization
2009
Government Stability
Polity Variance (.1)
Polity IV Project
2000 - 2009
Number of Stable Years (.1)
Polity IV Project
1855 - 2009
Politically Motivated Atrocities
Kansas Event Data System (KEDS)
1995 - 2008
Presence of Violence
When we incorporate subnational data on atrocities, parts of Sudan and Somalia stand out, while
the relatively good governance in Morocco, Tunisia,
and Mali drives down their overall vulnerability
(see Figure 14).
Putting these four baskets together, we find that
western Ethiopia stands out as the most vulnerable
part of the region, with pockets of high vulnerability throughout south-central Sudan, southern
Chad, Niger, and Somalia. Small pockets of
medium vulnerability exist along the Mediterranean coastline in Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt (see
Figure 15).
When we look at the difference between the map
that includes only physical exposure to climaterelated hazards and population density (human
exposure to climate-related hazards) and the final
composite map, we find that a number of areas
appear to have relatively low human exposure to
climate-related hazards but are far more vulnerable when we add in other dimensions (see Figure
16). These include southern Niger and Chad as
well as Somalia. Western Ethiopia appears to be
22
highly vulnerable across all maps, whereas coastal
Morocco and Tunisia are highly physically vulnerable to climate hazards but have lower overall
composite vulnerability because of higher local
resilience at the household and community level as
well as better governance.
Some questions emerge from these maps of vulnerability. What do they have to tell us about future
vulnerability to climate change? Do we have confidence that the attributes of historic vulnerability
will be similar in the future? Trying to project
the physical dimensions of future climate change
is difficult enough, so we limit our efforts there.
While provisional, our preliminary findings from
collaboration with climate modelers at the University of Texas suggest some continuity with historic
patterns.41 For example, when we look at projected
changes between the 1980-2000 period and the
2040-2060 period, we find that eastern and western
Our collaborators are Kerry Cook and Ned Vizy from the
Jackson School of Geosciences. The model uses the Weather
Research and Forecasting (WRF) model from the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The model is based
on the A1B emissions scenario.
41 The German Marshall Fund of the United States
FIGURE 14
Ethiopia, as well as parts of central Sudan, Chad,
and Morocco will likely experience sharp increases
in the number of heat wave days, though Algeria
may experience fewer days of such hot weather (see
Figure 17).42
When we look at the change in the number of
drought days, we find that some of the Mediterranean coastline, particularly in Tunisia and Libya
will experience an increased number of drought
days, while Algeria may experience a decrease.43
Southern Mali, central Sudan, and the north coast
of Somalia will also experience more drought, while
southern Ethiopia and central Somalia may experience fewer dry days (see Figure 18).
Heat waves are defined as three or more days with maximum
daily temperatures of at least 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
42 Droughts here are defined as 21 consecutive days with less
than 1mm of rainfall in any given day.
43 Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
23
FIGURE 15
FIGURE 16
24
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
FIGURE 17
FIGURE 18
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
25
3
Narratives of Climate Vulnerability
in North Africa
By way of several illustrative vignettes, we can
understand how governance problems and political
instability can transform exposure to climaterelated hazards into disasters and create negative
spillover effects for the international community.
Niger
In fall 2010, Niger experienced the worst floods
in 80 years along the Niger River, near the capital
of Niamey. Nearly 8 million people in Niger alone
were thought to be facing severe food shortages and
200,000 people had been displaced. Parts of Chad
and northern Mali were also affected by unusual
rainfall patterns across the region. The effects of
the floods were thought to be more severe than
previous ones because they occurred in the wake of
crippling droughts.44
Niger was also beset by a number of other problems. In February 2010, the military seized power
in a coup, displacing the country’s leader who had
been in power for more than a decade and had
sought to amend the constitution in order to retain
power.45 The military government promised a
swift restoration of democracy and was relatively
responsive to the country’s flooding and droughts.
Nonetheless, Niger’s governance problems limit the
country’s capacity to respond to other problems
(Niger ranked 35th out of 53 African countries
in our governance index, and in the 2009 UNDP
Human Development Index, Niger ranked last in
the world).46
Niger’s strategic importance has been elevated due
to its reserves of uranium. Niger provides about
8 percent of the global market for uranium (with
the French particularly reliant on it) at the mines
in Arlit and Akouta in northern Niger along the
Johnson 2010; Thomson 2010; Norweigan Council for Africa
2010.
border between the Sahara Desert and the eastern
part of the Aïr mountains. In this area, the French
firm Areva is constructing a major uranium mine.
The Imouraren mine is planned to come online in
2013 or 2014 and produce 5,000 tons of uranium a
year, making Niger the second largest producer in
the world.
However, political instability in Niger from multiple
fronts may make that difficult.47 Even as Niger’s
interim military government was grappling with
the floods, seven foreigners, including five French
nationals, were kidnapped in the uranium-mining
region in September 2010 by groups affiliated
with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM),
leading the French government to encourage the
1,700 nationals in the country to leave the mining
region.48 With the status of the kidnapped staff
unknown at the time of writing, it is unclear what
effect this episode will have on Niger’s long-term
ability to export uranium.
Aside from the recent challenge posed by AQIM,
Niger and other Sahelian countries also have
periodic challenges from Tuareg nomads who
live in the uranium-mining region and in neighboring countries. The Tuareg, who have long been
marginalized from the seats of government in the
region, began a rebellion in 2007 that continued
through 2009, motivated in part by a desire for a
greater share of mineral wealth. Calm only returned
after a 2009 ceasefire, which was one of many
that have occurred in the last couple of decades.
While Tuareg mobilization dates back to the early
20th century, there have been more recent cycles
of rebellion from the 1990s on, punctuated by
periodic ceasefires in 1995, 1998, and 2006.49 The
Tuareg have a sometimes contentious relationship
with AQIM. For example, the Tuareg were thought
44 47 Lewis and Massalatchi 2010.
Reuters 2010b, 2010a.
Hershkowitz 2005; AlertNet 2007; UPI 2009.
45 Smith 2010.
48 46 See http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/
49 26
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
FIGURE 19
to have provided intelligence to French authorities, which prompted a summer 2010 raid that
killed senior AQIM leaders. In response, AQIM
kidnapped a Tuareg customs officer in Mali.50
AQIM’s ability to operate in regions populated by
the Tuareg may have depended upon complicity by
the Tuareg, but the increasingly violent activity by
AQIM, which brought in unprecedented international scrutiny, may have alienated the Tuareg
and lead to a rupture between them.51 The AQIM
threat, though perhaps inflated by international
50 Intelligence Quarterly 2010; Daily Middle East Reporter 2010.
51 Kennedy-Boudali 2009.
observers, nonetheless has taken on new significance with the potential effect on the uraniummining sector. The latest attacks prompted a
renewed effort at regional security.
It is unclear what these problems collectively mean
for Niger’s future security. The floods occurred
in the south of the country near Niamey, along
the length of the Niger River. The Tuareg and the
uranium mines are located further north in areas
where the government’s reach is weaker. In the
thinly populated regions, AQIM has found sanctuary. The uranium is typically transported in
liquidated form by truck along a road (the so-called
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
27
“Uranium Highway”) from Arlit to Tahoua to
Birnin Konni to Dosso and out of Niger at Gaya/
Malanville to the coast at Cotonou, Benin (see
Figure 19). While the uranium highway crosses the
Niger River at Gaya, satellite photos of the floods
did not include the bridge at Gaya.52 Other reports
suggested that large numbers of animals died
from hypothermia and flooding in the area east
of Tahoua and south of Agadez (see Figure 19 for
a map of the Niger River Basin and its composite
climate vulnerability).53
The confluence of problems in Niger — political
instability, disasters, al Qaeda activity, and insurgencies — may not have long-run implications for
the country’s security, regional stability, terrorism,
or global uranium supplies. Then again, the situation is in flux. The narrative here is meant to
suggest that weak governments in the region, beset
by other problems, will have trouble dealing with
climate emergencies and that extreme weather
events will, in turn, make it difficult for capacityconstrained and unstable regimes to be able to
address other challenges.
Sudan
The Darfur region of western Sudan has already
been identified by UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon as the world’s first climate war, harkening
back to the droughts and the land and grazing
disputes between nomads and farmers that
predated the Sudanese government’s support for
the Janjaweed militias in the early 2000s. Whether
or not droughts or variable rains had an important
role in the on-going conflict in western Sudan
remains hotly contested. Debating the relative
role played by environmental causes in Darfur
compared to other political factors may ultimately
be unproductive. Would the farmers and herders
have had reason to fight over resources in a world
of more reliable rain? Possibly, but the particular
story would have been different.
Looking ahead, the political story in Sudan appears
to dominate. The south is scheduled to have a vote
for secession in January 2011. With the country’s
oil reserves located in the south, the expected vote
in favor of southern secession may lead to renewed
violence throughout Sudan. For a country that
lost 2 million people to 20 years of civil war in the
1980s and 1990s, the prospect of another civil war
is a great and grave possibility. In 2009, political
violence claimed more than 2,000 lives in the
area near the North-South border and displaced
more than 300,000 people.54 As the south votes on
secession, the contested area of Abyei is set to have
its own referendum on whether to join the South
or remain with the North. Other areas, the Nuba
Mountains in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile,
also may be sites of future contestation; though
technically part of the north, large numbers of
people from these regions fought with the south
during Sudan’s previous civil war.55
In this context, the role of environmental factors
might seem overshadowed by politics, but like
Niger, policymakers should consider the role
that extreme and variable weather could play in
different parts of the country, particularly when
coupled with Sudan’s history of political violence
and instability. As our maps of Sudan’s vulnerability
suggest, the country has pockets of relatively high
physical exposure particularly in the south, near
the city of Juba, the expected southern capital. In
the event of a weather emergency, southern Sudan
might not have the capacity to address the needs of
its populace. Moreover, should fighting re-emerge
in Sudan, a conflict-riddled southern Sudan
might find it difficult to get relief supplies into the
52 DLR 2010.
54 Gettelman 2009.
53 FEWSNET 2010.
55 Schwartz 2009; International Crisis Group 2010.
28
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
FIGURE 20
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
29
country, particularly in the event of a weatherrelated emergency. The roads around the southern
capital suffered intense damage during the civil
war and were heavily land-mined. Only in late
2010 was a route to Uganda taking shape to ease
travel, though it passes through Gulu, an area with
a history of instability from Uganda’s own insurgent
group, the Lord’s Resistance Army.56
In January 2009, nearly 40,000 people were
displaced when unusual rains affected the southeastern state of Jonglei and heavy rains caused the
Nile to overflow its banks.57 In January 2010, the
World Food Programme estimated that drought
and conflict together meant that the number of
people who needed food assistance increased from
1 million in January 2009 to 4.3 million a year later.
In August 2010, floods displaced more than 50,000
around the southern town of Aweil, just two years
after its previous flooding.58
While relief supplies could be brought in by air,
southern Sudan is an immense region, so the
absence of good infrastructure to distribute aid
could pose a serious problem. A Sudan embroiled
in a North-South civil war might also be inattentive to droughts or food insecurity in other parts of
the country like Darfur, which is also both riven by
conflict and historically prone to drought. Perhaps
Sudan is not seen as a strategically important
country to the West, but renewed civil war, coupled
with perennial floods and droughts made worse by
climate change, could put large numbers of people
at risk of mass death, rivaling or exceeding the
atrocities observed in Darfur in recent years (see
Figure 20 for a map of composite climate vulnerability in Sudan).
56 Thome 2010.
57 Bianchi 2009; AFP 2010.
58 World Food Programme 2010; IRIN 2010.
30
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
4
Conclusion and Policy Implications
As our discussion of the potential security consequences of climate change noted, advocates for
more aggressive action on climate change have
seized on the security connection to draw attention to their cause. In an effort to demonstrate
the importance of their concerns, there is a risk of
speaking beyond the available evidence to sell the
threat, what Dean Acheson described in the Cold
War as being “clearer than truth.”
The policy world has run ahead of the scholarly
community in terms of taking the security consequences of climate change like conflict and migration at face value. As we have found, there is some
potential to overstate the severity of these threats or
a risk of mischaracterizing their nature.
By labeling climate change as a security threat,
resources are directed towards some dimensions
of the problem and potentially not others. At the
same time, security problems potentially elicit the
interest of the military. Their influence and expertise are valuable, but preventing the worst security
consequences of climate change is largely going
to be the responsibility of civilian agencies and
foreign assistance programs. Even if climate change
is understood to be a security problem, it would
be unfortunate if the security dimension primarily
came to be seen as the military’s problem.
In advancing policies to address the problem, we
are better served by evidence-driven assessments.
This study of the North African region has investigated a range of security consequences — conflict,
migration, terrorism, and disaster relief — to
determine what role climate change might play
in relation to them. For most of the concerns, our
main conclusion is that the available evidence is
inconclusive, that the threats specified by many
advocates in the climate security debate are not yet
supported by academic work on conflict, migration,
and terrorism. Our preliminary efforts to describe
their meaning in North Africa suggest that the
concerns are real, but much more work needs to be
done before the grandiose claims of climate security
enthusiasts are substantiated. As for large-scale
humanitarian disasters, events in Africa and worldwide suggest that people are vulnerable to extreme
weather events and that militaries are increasingly
finding humanitarian rescue and relief to be part of
their normal operations. While crisis early-warning
systems for both conflict and famine are important
ways the policy community has sought to prevent
the worst consequences from coming to pass,
building government capacity to make countries
and communities more resilient to climate shocks
remain important priorities.
At the same time, the policy community needs
to continually engage academics on the state of
their findings and commit to policies that will be
beneficial to countries, even if the worst security
consequences of climate change do not come to
pass. These include early warning systems, disaster
preparedness, weather station monitoring, reforestation, better building codes, and drought-resistant
agriculture.
As our maps of composite vulnerability suggest, the
places ultimately most vulnerable to the security
concerns we discussed may not be those countries
most physically exposed to climate-related hazards.
Though western Ethiopia appears across all baskets
as especially vulnerable, we observe that North
African countries along the Mediterranean tend to
be physically exposed to climate hazards but that
this vulnerability is offset by better education and
health indicators and superior governance at the
national level (as compared to the rest of the continent). By contrast, countries across the Sahel and
Horn, save for Mali, tend to exhibit extremely poor
governance and possess low indicators for health
and education, making them much more vulnerable to weather hazards than they would otherwise
be, potentially transforming moderate droughts
and floods into major humanitarian emergencies.
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
31
On one hand, this suggests that foreign assistance
resources be directed to areas that need it the most:
southern Chad, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, and persistently vulnerable western Ethiopia. On the other
hand, these are precisely the governments least
likely to spend the money well. So, while the need
is great, building state capacity for any purpose, let
alone to protect the country from climate change,
will be a great challenge.
With these observations in mind, we recommend
the following policy approaches:
1. Focus resources and attention on the areas
and countries most vulnerable to climate
change from a holistic perspective including
western Ethiopia and pockets in southern
Sudan, Chad, and Niger.
•Build basic government capacity in those
areas as more capacity to deliver services
could spill over to climate-related areas.
Countries like Morocco and Tunisia, despite facing
higher physical exposure to climate change, are
likely to be better equipped to handle the problem.
This observation leads to a conundrum for donors.
The countries with the most capacity to protect
themselves from the effects of climate change may
be best able to spend donor money appropriately.59
Trying to equip Somalia with the resources to
handle extreme weather events in the absence of a
functioning government would be a challenge, if
not an impossibility.
•Support NGO and local government
efforts to protect people through targeted
investments in early warning systems,
disaster preparedness, drought-resistant
agriculture, and weather monitoring.
2. Build cooperative relationships with North
African governments on the Mediterranean
that are physically vulnerable to climate change
but have more capacity to address the problem.
One approach would be to focus on the specific
areas where physical exposure is most severe at the
sub-national level and try to support community
and household resilience through targeted investments in NGOs and possibly local governments in
western Ethiopia.
However, given that state capacity is the main
limiting factor, continual investments in NGOs are
not an attractive long-run solution. Even amidst
broader government disarray, it may be possible to
focus on small areas of technocratic competence
such as military-to-military training exercises on
disaster preparedness or better weather monitoring.
At the same time, support for conflict resolution
and basic state-building activities in countries may
spillover to other domains, allowing people to
address other concerns like climate change.
This mirrors similar findings from the foreign assistance
community on aid effectiveness (Kaufmann 2009, 2010a, 2010b).
59 32
•Focus on information-sharing and
mobilization of the government’s own
resources to protect against climate-related
hazards.
•Develop better information resources
on migration and agriculture to assess
the responsiveness of North Africans to
changing agricultural yields.
While the precise connections and security
consequences remain uncertain, our vulnerability
assessments can help policymakers to prioritize
resources. Preventive action and measures to
address the most vulnerable areas and countries
should be more cost-effective than responding to
weather emergencies after the fact. At the same
time, such investments should mostly involve
development assistance rather than hard power,
though some investments in training local mili-
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
taries in disaster response will be a priority. Beyond
general support to improve the overall effectiveness
of weak governments throughout the region, more
targeted funds for adaptation (for drought-resistant
agriculture, early warning systems, improved flood
control, and investments in meteorological stations)
will be particularly important. Here, our vulnerability maps provide a rough first cut at where those
efforts ought to be directed.
Mapping Climate Change and Security in North Africa
33
34
The German Marshall Fund of the United States
5
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