The climate of counterinsurgency and the future of security in the Sahel
Par Bruno Charbonneau
Environmental Science & Policy
The Sahel is regularly conceived as a space where the interaction between climate and conflict can be observed. With a high-dependence on rain-fed agriculture and livestock, climate variability leaves pastoralists and smallholders particularly vulnerable. Moreover, the region remains fragile, embodied by factors such as weak capacity of the state, inter-group inequality and a history of violent conflict; as well as a decade of regional French-led military operations. As such, it is an important case study for the question of whose security is threatened by global warming. Discussions about climate security in the Sahel are not happening in a vacuum, but during a crisis-ridden moment. This article seeks to reframe the debate by grasping all these things at once: wrestling with the historical legacies of environmental interventionism, the politics of pragmatic crisis management, and the uncertainties of a climate-change future yet to be born. It develops an argument about the need to engage with a politics of the future via the politics of knowledge production.
11 octobre 2022En savoir plus
