THE SAHEL
Climate Change and Conflict in the Sahel-
Desertification, Water Scarcity, Farmer-Herder Conflict and Displacement.
Central Question: When Does an Environmental Problem Become a National-Security Problem?
Climate change does not carry a rifle.
Drought does not organize a coup.
Desertification does not automatically create a terrorist organization.
And water scarcity does not inevitably produce war.
Yet across the Sahel, environmental pressures increasingly interact with poverty, population growth, weak governance, armed insurgencies, land disputes and displacement in ways that can transform an ecological problem into a profound national-security challenge.
This distinction is essential.
Climate change should not be described as the single cause of violence in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger or the wider Sahel. Societies have endured droughts and environmental hardship for centuries without automatically descending into war.
Instead, climate change is best understood as a threat multiplier.
It places additional pressure on systems that may already be politically fragile.
A drought becomes dangerous when government institutions cannot manage water fairly.
Shrinking pasture becomes a security problem when farmers and herders lack functioning mechanisms for resolving disputes.
Crop failure becomes politically destabilizing when millions of young people have few alternative livelihoods.
Displacement becomes a national-security issue when large populations move into communities that already lack land, housing, schools and employment.
And environmental degradation becomes especially dangerous when armed groups deliberately exploit grievances over land, water, ethnicity and political exclusion.
UNDP's 2025 assessment of climate, peace and security in the Sahel emphasizes precisely this interaction: drought, flooding and land degradation intersect with conflict, displacement and livelihood insecurity rather than operating as isolated environmental phenomena.
The central question is therefore not simply:
Can climate change cause conflict?
A more useful question is:
Under what political, economic and security conditions does environmental stress become violent?
That question goes directly to the future of the Sahel.
1. What Desertification Actually Means
One common misconception should be corrected immediately.
Desertification does not simply mean that the Sahara Desert is physically marching southward like an advancing wall of sand.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification defines desertification as the degradation of land in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, driven by climatic variations and human activities.
Overcultivation, overgrazing, deforestation, poor irrigation practices, drought and erosion can all reduce soil fertility and vegetation.
This distinction matters because environmental change across the Sahel is complex.
Some areas have experienced vegetation recovery or "greening" during periods of increased rainfall. Other locations continue to experience severe soil degradation, declining productivity and pressure on grazing lands.
The problem is therefore not simply "the desert expanding."
It is land becoming less productive or less reliably productive for the people who depend upon it.
And that matters enormously in societies where agriculture and livestock remain central to employment and household survival.
UNCCD estimates that agriculture, livestock and forestry provide income and employment for more than 80% of people across the Sahelian countries examined in its West Africa assessment.
When land deteriorates in an industrialized urban economy, the consequences may be economically manageable.
When land deteriorates in a community where almost everyone's survival depends directly on rain, crops or cattle, the effects can be existential.
2. Climate Change Is Making an Already Difficult Environment More Unpredictable
Life in the Sahel has always required adaptation to climatic variability.
Rainfall fluctuates.
Droughts occur.
Pastoralists move livestock seasonally.
Farmers adjust planting cycles.
Communities traditionally developed systems for sharing wells, grazing areas and agricultural land.
Climate change does not create this variability from nothing.
It makes existing patterns increasingly difficult to predict.
UNDP reports that temperatures in the Sahel are rising about 1.5 times faster than the global average, while drought, extreme rainfall, land degradation and water scarcity increasingly interact with demographic and political pressures.
At the same time, the problem is not merely too little water.
It is increasingly about unreliable water.
A community can experience drought one year and destructive flooding the next.
This creates a paradox:
Climate insecurity in the Sahel can mean both too little water and too much water.
Niger provides a striking example.
Heavy rainfall and flooding in 2024 affected almost 1.2 million people, according to government figures cited in a World Bank assessment, while hundreds of people died and tens of thousands of livestock were lost.
The challenge is therefore not simply "drying."
It is climatic volatility.
And unpredictability is especially dangerous for farmers and pastoralists who must make decisions months in advance.
3. Water Scarcity Becomes a Political Question
Water is among the most fundamental resources in the Sahel.
It supports:
human consumption;
livestock;
irrigation;
fishing;
agriculture;
local commerce;
and household survival.
When water becomes scarce, the immediate problem is environmental.
But the next question is political:
Who gets access?
Imagine one functioning well serving several villages.
Now imagine that rainfall declines.
Pastoralists arrive earlier than usual because grazing conditions farther north have deteriorated.
Farmers need the same water for irrigation.
Livestock require water.
Women travel farther to collect drinking water.
The well begins producing less.
At that moment, scarcity itself has not created conflict.
What determines the outcome is the system governing access.
If respected community institutions allocate water fairly, disputes may be resolved.
If corruption determines access, tension increases.
If one ethnic community believes another receives preferential treatment, environmental scarcity can become an identity conflict.
If armed groups enter the area, the dispute can become militarized.
This is the critical transition.
An environmental problem becomes a security problem when institutions cannot peacefully govern scarcity.
4. Farmer-Herder Conflict Shows How the Process Works
Few issues illustrate the climate-security relationship more clearly than tensions between farmers and pastoralists.
Pastoralism is not a marginal activity in the Sahel.
The World Bank estimates that it supports the livelihoods of more than 20 million people across the Sahel and West Africa and contributes substantially to Sahelian economies.
Pastoral communities have moved livestock seasonally across the region for centuries.
These movements—known as transhumance—follow water and grazing conditions.
Historically, customary arrangements helped regulate relationships between mobile herders and settled farmers.
But several changes are placing these systems under pressure.
Population growth has expanded cultivated land.
Traditional grazing corridors have sometimes been converted into farms.
Water points have become more contested.
Land tenure systems may be unclear.
Climate variability can cause pastoralists to move earlier or farther.
And insecurity can force herders away from traditional routes.
The result is a spatial collision.
A farmer may see cattle entering crops and destroying months of work.
A herder may see farmland blocking a livestock corridor that generations of pastoralists have used.
Both believe their livelihood is being threatened.
Neither necessarily begins as an extremist.
But an unresolved dispute can escalate into violence.
5. Mali Shows the Climate-Conflict Connection Clearly
Central Mali provides a powerful example.
UNDP describes how declining grazing availability and land degradation have pushed pastoralists and farmers into increasingly intense competition.
As grazing land shrinks, farmers may simultaneously expand cultivation into traditional livestock corridors because declining soil fertility forces them to seek additional farmland.
The result is increasing competition over the same land and water.
Mali's Bandiagara and Mopti areas demonstrate the complexity.
Climate variability is only one component.
The conflict also involves:
ethnic identity;
historical land rights;
weak local government;
armed militias;
jihadist organizations;
state-security operations;
and political exclusion.
This is precisely why statements such as "climate change caused the conflict" are misleading.
Climate stress enters an already complicated political environment.
It changes the incentives.
It increases pressure.
It reduces the margin for compromise.
And armed actors can deliberately manipulate the resulting grievances.
6. Extremist Organizations Understand Resource Politics
Jihadist organizations operating across the Sahel are not disconnected from environmental and economic realities.
Groups such as JNIM can exploit disputes involving land, cattle, water and local justice.
Imagine a pastoral community that believes local authorities consistently favour farmers.
The government court is far away.
Police are viewed as corrupt.
A livestock corridor has been blocked.
Several cattle have been killed.
An extremist organization arrives and offers to adjudicate the dispute.
Its justice is ideological and coercive.
But if the state offers no functioning alternative, the militants have created an entry point.
The organization can then say:
Your government abandoned you. We will defend you.
Environmental grievance becomes political grievance.
Political grievance becomes recruitment.
Recruitment becomes insurgency.
UNDP warns that violent extremist groups in Mali exploit exactly these types of disputes, amplifying tensions surrounding ethnicity, religion, culture and land rights.
This is the moment when climate resilience becomes counterterrorism.
7. Poverty Magnifies Environmental Shocks
A wealthy household suffering one failed harvest may survive through savings, insurance, credit or alternative income.
A poor household may have none of those protections.
That distinction is fundamental to climate security.
Niger illustrates the problem dramatically.
The World Bank estimated that more than 10 million Nigeriens—about 45% of the population—were living in extreme poverty in 2024. The country's economy remains highly vulnerable to rainfall fluctuations.
A climatic shock therefore rapidly becomes an economic shock.
Crops fail.
Food prices increase.
Livestock die.
Families sell assets.
Children leave school.
Households borrow.
Young people migrate.
Some enter informal mining or smuggling economies.
Others may become vulnerable to armed recruitment.
Again, none of this means poverty automatically produces terrorism.
It means extreme poverty reduces society's ability to absorb environmental shocks peacefully.
That is why resilience matters.
8. Displacement Changes the Geography of Conflict
When livelihoods collapse or violence intensifies, people move.
Sometimes movement is seasonal adaptation.
Sometimes it becomes permanent displacement.
The distinction is important.
Migration has historically been one of the ways Sahelian societies survive difficult climatic conditions.
A pastoralist moving cattle is not necessarily a climate refugee.
A worker moving temporarily to another country is not automatically displaced.
But when environmental shocks combine with armed conflict and livelihood collapse, mobility becomes increasingly forced.
UNHCR describes the Central Sahel—particularly Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger—as facing overlapping crises of violence, climatic shocks, food insecurity and economic fragility. By the end of 2026, it projects the wider Sahel+ region could host 5.6 million forcibly displaced and stateless people.
The security implications extend beyond the displaced population itself.
Suppose 20,000 people flee one district and arrive in another.
The receiving community now requires:
more water;
more food;
more schools;
more healthcare;
more housing;
more employment;
and more land.
If that community was already struggling, displacement can produce new tensions.
Host populations may ask:
Why are newcomers receiving assistance when we are also poor?
Displaced people may feel excluded.
Competition over jobs and land can intensify.
That is how one crisis creates another.
9. Burkina Faso: Climate Pressure Inside a Major Displacement Crisis
Burkina Faso demonstrates the problem particularly sharply.
It is simultaneously confronting jihadist insurgency, large-scale internal displacement and climatic instability.
The World Bank describes Burkina Faso's economy as heavily dependent on agriculture and vulnerable to climatic and security shocks.
Rainfall has become increasingly difficult for farmers to predict.
One response has been investment in climate information.
Since 2023, a World Bank-supported hydrometeorological programme has distributed thousands of farmer rain gauges and trained communities to use local rainfall information when deciding when to plant.
At first glance this sounds like an agricultural project.
It is also a security intervention.
Why?
Because better climate information can reduce:
crop losses,
food insecurity,
household debt,
competition,
and involuntary migration.
A rain gauge will not defeat JNIM.
But thousands of households becoming more resilient to rainfall shocks can reduce the pool of social vulnerability that armed groups exploit.
This illustrates an important principle:
Some of the most effective long-term national-security investments in the Sahel may not look military at all.
10. Niger: Environmental Security Is Economic Security
Niger's economic exposure is particularly pronounced because agriculture remains heavily dependent on rainfall.
World Bank assessments note that climatic shocks have repeatedly affected national economic performance; historically, most of Niger's negative-growth years over a multi-decade period coincided with droughts.
This is where climate change becomes a matter of national strategy.
If rainfall can significantly affect:
GDP growth,
food prices,
rural incomes,
government revenue,
migration,
and humanitarian needs,
then rainfall is no longer merely an agricultural issue.
It becomes an economic-security variable.
And if economic shocks occur simultaneously with terrorism in Tillabéri, political instability, population growth and fiscal pressure, the government's capacity to respond to security threats becomes weaker.
Climate therefore affects national security indirectly through the state's balance sheet.
11. Climate Change Can Also Weaken Governments
National security depends upon state capacity.
Governments require revenue.
Armies require funding.
Roads require maintenance.
Schools require teachers.
Police require salaries.
Climate disasters consume these resources.
A major drought may force governments to finance emergency food assistance.
Floods destroy bridges and roads.
Crop failures reduce rural incomes and tax activity.
Livestock losses destroy household wealth.
Displacement requires humanitarian expenditure.
Disease outbreaks increase health costs.
Every dollar spent responding to an emergency is a dollar unavailable for other national priorities.
In already fragile states, repeated environmental shocks can therefore produce a cycle:
climate shock → economic loss → weaker government capacity → greater insecurity → reduced investment → greater vulnerability to the next climate shock.
That is a national-security feedback loop.
12. Borders Make Climate Adaptation a Regional Issue
Environmental systems do not follow national boundaries.
Neither do pastoralists.
Neither do rivers.
Neither do armed groups.
This is particularly important in the Liptako-Gourma region, where Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger meet.
UNDP identifies this cross-border zone as facing overlapping climate change, resource scarcity, competition and security problems.
Consider pastoral mobility.
If drought forces herders in Mali to move toward Burkina Faso, a purely Malian climate policy cannot solve the problem.
If insecurity closes a traditional route through Niger, animals may be redirected into farming areas elsewhere.
If one state blocks livestock movements, another country's agricultural communities may suddenly receive greater numbers.
Climate-security policy must therefore become regional.
The AES has concentrated heavily on military integration.
But the same logic suggests the alliance also needs environmental-security integration.
Joint drought forecasting.
Cross-border grazing agreements.
Shared water management.
Livestock health systems.
Conflict mediation.
Food-security reserves.
Climate early-warning systems.
These could become as strategically important as joint military patrols.
13. The False Choice Between Farmers and Herders
Political narratives sometimes describe farmer-herder conflict as though two permanently hostile groups are fighting over a fixed quantity of land.
Reality is more complicated.
Farmers and pastoralists frequently depend economically on one another.
Farmers purchase livestock products.
Herders purchase grain.
Animals fertilize farmland.
Crop residues feed cattle.
Local markets connect both livelihoods.
The challenge is therefore not eliminating pastoral mobility.
It is governing it.
Policies that simply close livestock corridors or force pastoralists into unsuitable forms of permanent settlement can worsen instability.
Likewise, allowing animals to move without clear rules can threaten farmers.
The security solution is not choosing one community.
It is constructing institutions both communities regard as legitimate.
14. Climate Change Can Intensify Ethnic Politics
Environmental competition becomes especially dangerous when economic identity overlaps with ethnic identity.
If one ethnic community is associated largely with pastoralism and another largely with agriculture, a dispute over cattle can quickly be interpreted as an ethnic conflict.
Politicians may exploit it.
Militias may mobilize around it.
Extremists may weaponize it.
Security forces may begin profiling entire communities.
What started as competition over a damaged field can become a conflict over identity.
Climate change does not create ethnic hatred.
But resource pressure can provide the arena in which existing social divisions become violent.
This is why climate-security strategies must include social cohesion and political inclusion, not merely irrigation projects.
15. Women Experience Climate Insecurity Differently
Climate security also has a gender dimension.
When wells dry, women and girls often travel farther to obtain water.
That increases time burdens.
Girls may miss school.
Women have less time for income-generating activity.
Longer journeys can also expose women to insecurity in conflict-affected areas.
UNDP's work in Mali emphasizes that women face rising workloads as water and fuelwood become harder to obtain, while insecurity increases additional protection risks.
The security consequences are indirect but significant.
A household in which education declines, income falls and daily survival becomes harder becomes more vulnerable to future shocks.
Climate resilience therefore cannot be separated from human development.
16. Climate Change Can Drive Urban Instability Too
Climate-security discussions often concentrate on villages.
But environmental migration increasingly affects cities.
When rural livelihoods fail, young people move toward urban centres.
Cities then face greater demand for:
housing,
transportation,
electricity,
water,
schools,
sanitation,
and employment.
If governments cannot expand services rapidly enough, informal settlements grow.
Urban unemployment rises.
Political frustration increases.
Climate instability therefore migrates from the countryside into urban politics.
A drought hundreds of kilometres away can eventually contribute to unemployment and food-price demonstrations in a capital city.
That is another mechanism through which an environmental problem becomes a national-security problem.
17. Food Security Is National Security
Perhaps the clearest climate-security relationship concerns food.
Mali illustrates the scale.
The World Bank projected that more than four million Malians could experience food insecurity in 2025 as climate pressures, conflict, restricted access to farmland and flooding interacted.
Food insecurity affects national stability through multiple channels.
Higher food prices reduce household purchasing power.
Malnutrition damages child development.
Farm losses increase migration.
Governments face demands for subsidies.
Military operations become harder when communities lack food.
Extremist groups can exploit shortages.
A country unable to feed significant portions of its population cannot treat agriculture as merely an economic sector.
Food production becomes strategic infrastructure.
18. When Exactly Does Climate Become a National-Security Problem?
The threshold can now be defined more precisely.
An environmental problem becomes a national-security problem when it begins threatening the state's ability to protect its population, govern territory or maintain political stability.
That can occur when climate pressures begin to:
Produce large-scale displacement
Movement overwhelms communities and government services.
Intensify violent competition over resources
Land and water disputes become militarized.
Undermine food security
Crop losses threaten national economic stability.
Strengthen extremist recruitment
Armed organizations exploit climate-related grievances.
Weaken border control
Pastoral movements and displacement intersect with trafficking and insurgent networks.
Damage government finances
Repeated disasters reduce the state's capacity to provide services and security.
Increase communal polarization
Economic disputes become ethnic or political conflicts.
Threaten strategic infrastructure
Floods, drought or extreme heat damage roads, dams, electricity systems or military logistics.
At that point, climate policy becomes security policy.
19. But Militarizing Climate Change Would Be a Mistake
There is an important danger.
Calling climate change a security issue does not mean armies should become the primary institutions managing water, migration or pastoralism.
Militarizing environmental problems can make them worse.
A herder moving cattle because grazing has failed should not automatically be treated as a security threat.
Migrants should not automatically be viewed as destabilizing populations.
Water disputes should not automatically become policing problems.
The goal of climate-security policy should be prevention, not militarization.
The military becomes relevant when violence emerges.
But the objective should be to prevent environmental stress from reaching that point.
20. What Would a Climate-Security Strategy for the Sahel Look Like?
The Sahel needs a much broader concept of national security.
Restore degraded land
Reforestation, agroforestry, soil restoration and water-retention projects can improve productivity while reducing competition.
Protect pastoral corridors
Clearly mapped and legally protected livestock routes can prevent conflicts between farmers and herders.
Invest in water infrastructure
Wells, reservoirs, irrigation, groundwater monitoring and efficient water systems reduce scarcity.
Improve climate forecasting
Farmers and pastoralists need usable rainfall, flood and drought forecasts—not simply national meteorological reports.
Strengthen local mediation
Traditional leaders, municipalities, women's groups, farmer organizations and pastoral associations should participate in resource governance.
Improve land registration
Ambiguous land rights encourage conflict.
Clear rules can reduce disputes.
Create climate-resilient livelihoods
Young people need economic options beyond climate-sensitive subsistence agriculture.
Build regional food reserves
Governments can reduce the destabilizing effect of failed harvests and sudden price increases.
Coordinate across borders
The AES and neighbouring states need shared systems for drought, livestock movements, water and displacement.
Integrate environmental intelligence into national-security planning
Governments already monitor troop movements and militant networks.
They should also monitor:
rainfall deficits,
livestock mortality,
crop failure,
water availability,
food prices,
migration movements,
and resource disputes.
These indicators can provide early warning of future instability.
21. Land Restoration Could Become Peacebuilding
This may be one of the most important opportunities.
Governments traditionally treat tree planting, irrigation and soil restoration as environmental development projects.
In fragile regions, they should also be viewed as peace infrastructure.
A restored grazing area reduces competition.
A functioning well reduces disputes.
A rehabilitated irrigation system creates employment.
A protected pastoral corridor prevents confrontation.
A flood-warning system prevents displacement.
A productive farm reduces pressure to migrate.
UNDP's work in the Liptako-Gourma region identifies climate-resilient agriculture, renewable energy, resource management and community-based mediation as practical ways climate action can strengthen stability and peace.
That represents a major conceptual shift:
Environmental investment can be preventive security spending.
22. The Sahel Should Not Be Treated as Environmentally Doomed
There is also a danger in describing the Sahel as an inevitable climate catastrophe.
Such narratives remove African agency.
Communities across the region have centuries of experience adapting to difficult environments.
Traditional water-management techniques exist.
Pastoral mobility itself is an adaptation system.
Farmer-managed natural regeneration has restored degraded landscapes in parts of Niger and elsewhere.
Climate-smart agriculture is expanding.
Regional drought planning is improving.
In 2025, governments including Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger participated in a high-level regional initiative focused on strengthening drought resilience and water-management capacity.
Climate change increases the difficulty.
It does not predetermine the outcome.
Climate Becomes a Security Crisis When Institutions Fail to Absorb the Shock
The relationship between climate change and conflict in the Sahel is neither imaginary nor simple.
Desertification does not automatically create terrorism.
Water scarcity does not inevitably produce farmer-herder violence.
Drought does not automatically cause migration.
Climate change does not explain military coups by itself.
But environmental pressure can intensify almost every major vulnerability facing Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
It can reduce agricultural productivity.
It can undermine pastoral livelihoods.
It can intensify competition over water.
It can push populations toward migration.
It can strain host communities.
It can increase food prices.
It can reduce government revenue.
It can deepen ethnic grievances.
It can provide recruitment opportunities for armed organizations.
And it can weaken governments already fighting insurgencies.
That leads directly to the central question:
When does an environmental problem become a national-security problem?
The answer is:
When environmental stress overwhelms the political, economic and social institutions that would normally manage it peacefully.
A drought is an environmental event.
A drought that destroys livelihoods is an economic crisis.
An economic crisis that forces mass displacement becomes a humanitarian crisis.
Displacement that triggers competition over land becomes a political crisis.
Political grievances exploited by armed groups become a security crisis.
The transformation can therefore be understood as a chain:
Climate shock → livelihood pressure → resource competition → grievance → displacement or recruitment → political instability → conflict.
But that chain is not inevitable.
Strong institutions can break it at almost every stage.
Water management can interrupt scarcity.
Land agreements can prevent disputes.
Social protection can protect livelihoods.
Early-warning systems can reduce losses.
Local mediation can prevent violence.
Education and employment can reduce recruitment vulnerability.
Regional cooperation can manage cross-border movement.
And accountable government can prevent environmental grievance from becoming political alienation.
This may be the most important climate-security lesson for the Sahel.
The region does not simply need stronger armies.
It needs stronger systems for managing scarcity.
In the coming decades, national security in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger may depend as much on hydrologists, agricultural scientists, local mediators, meteorologists, engineers and land administrators as it does on soldiers.
Because the next major security crisis may not begin with an armed column crossing a border.
It may begin with a failed rainy season, a dried well, a blocked grazing corridor or a harvest that never arrives.
Whether that environmental shock becomes a war will depend on what the state—and society—does next.
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