Download or read book Climate Change and Regional Instability in the Horn of Africa written by Michelle D. Gavin and published by Council on Foreign Relations Press. This book was released on 2022-11-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change and climate-induced migration in the Horn of Africa could seriously exacerbate security risks in the region. The sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reiterates the grim facts of climate change in Africa. The continent has contributed little (less than 4 percent) to total greenhouse gas emissions but has already suffered serious consequences, from biodiversity loss to reduced food production. In East Africa particularly, drought frequency has doubled. Yet, between 2010 and 2018, most Horn countries received less than the average amount of climate adaptation funding per capita for lower-income countries, despite ranking at the top of climate vulnerability indices. Not only is financing for adaptation measures insufficient, but climate research in the region is also under-resourced. The Horn of Africa is extremely vulnerable to climate change, as it encompasses vast drylands, numerous pastoralist communities, multiple border disputes, unresolved trans-boundary water-rights issues, and porous land borders. The region also has a traumatic and politically contentious history with natural disaster, famine, and conflict, including the 1983-85 Ethiopian famine and the controversial 1992-93 humanitarian intervention in Somalia. In fact, the impetus for forming the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in 1986 was to address drought and desertification from a regional perspective, with peace and security issues added to the organization's mandate in 1996 due to the obvious interconnection of those issues. The Horn's history informs and sometimes politically distorts perceptions of current climate-related threats. Ongoing conflicts in the region add complexity to any effort to envision future scenarios. The Horn is not just at risk for conflict and instability-conflict and instability are its current reality. In Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan, multiple ongoing conflicts involve violent clashes between military and militia forces. The region already hosts nearly 2.9 million refugees and asylum seekers and over 12 million internally displaced persons. The Horn is currently the site of one of the world's worst food insecurity crises; in August of 2022 the number of highly food-insecure people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia reached twenty-two million, and some already face famine conditions. Although conflict and crisis prevention is at the heart of efforts to identify interconnected climate and migration risks, for many in the region, the present is already characterized by insecurity, and the future by uncertainty. Demographic, economic, political, and environmental pressures all intersect in the Horn of Africa, driving popular unrest and resource competition and destabilizing migration patterns that exacerbate tensions within and between states. Regional disorder will have implications far beyond the Horn, affecting the politics, security, and relative power of external actors and constraining the prospects for effective global governance. The United States and others should act now to mitigate those risks.
Download or read book African Climate and Climate Change written by Charles J. R. Williams and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-02-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compared to many other regions of the world, Africa is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and variability. Widespread poverty, an extensive disease burden and pockets of political instability across the continent has resulted in a low resilience and limited adaptative capacity of African society to climate related shocks and stresses. To compound this vulnerability, there remains large knowledge gaps on African climate, manifestations of future climate change and variability for the region and the associated problems of climate change impacts. Research on the subject of African climate change requires an interdisciplinary approach linking studies of environmental, political and socio-economic spheres. In this book we use different case studies on climate change and variability in Africa to illustrate different approaches to the study of climate change in Africa from across the spectrum of physical, social and political sciences. In doing so we attempt to highlight a toolbox of methodologies (along with their limitations and advantages) that may be used to further the understanding of the impacts of climate change in Africa and thus help form the basis for strategies to negate the negative implications of climate change on society.
Download or read book The Horn of Africa written by Kidane Mengisteab and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Horn of Africa is a deeply troubled region engulfed in three interlocking crises. The first is a security crisis characterized by a range of devastating inter-state and inter-communal conflicts, including civil wars. The second is an economic crisis, evidenced by widespread debilitating poverty, chronic food insecurity, and frequent cycles of famines. The effects of the third - environmental - crisis are all too visible in the droughts, deforestation and desertification ravaging the region. What is more, these three crises are mutually reinforcing locking the region into a cycle of disaster. Conflicts contribute to poverty, which in turn intensifies environmental degradation, leading to scarcities which fuel further conflicts. In this clear and authoritative guide, Kidane Mengisteab explores the key drivers of instability in the Horn of Africa, suggesting structural and institutional changes that - if implemented - could help lift the region out of crisis. The Horn’s complex crises must be tackled in a comprehensive manner. But, he contends, this can only be achieved if the causes of conflict are addressed head-on. Without peace, the region cannot resolve its economic problems, and nor can it develop the capabilities required to cope with environmental change. The Horn of Africa will be essential reading for students and scholars in conflict and security studies, as well as anyone with an interest in learning more about the dynamics of this troubled region
Download or read book Rethinking Humanitarian Assistance written by Anastasia Strouboulis and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Horn of Africa is in the midst of the longest and most devastating drought it has ever experienced. Within that context, this report provides humanitarian actors--and their counterparts in the development and peacebuilding communities--with a reconceptualization of the intersections between climate change and conflict. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, expert interviews, and contextual analyses, this report elucidates the interactions between climate change and other areas of vulnerability within the region. It starts by outlining the impacts of the climate crisis and comparing how these manifest in Ethiopia, Somalia, and northern Kenya. It then explores ties between climate vulnerability and fragility in these countries. Based on four major regional factors of fragility--(1) exposure to increasingly frequent and severe climate shocks, (2) resource-dependent livelihoods, (3) weak and exclusive governance, and (4) regional instability and conflict--this report then moves to consider major gaps and challenges in providing humanitarian aid. It concludes by outlining new ways forward in the (1) timing, (2) approach, (3) conflict sensitivity, (4) human mobility enhancement, and (5) innovation of humanitarian responses
Download or read book The Regional Impacts of Climate Change written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Working Group II. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Download or read book The End of Desertification written by Roy H. Behnke and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question in the title of this book draws attention to the shortcomings of a concept that has become a political tool of global importance even as the scientific basis for its use grows weaker. The concept of desertification, it can be argued, has ceased to be analytically useful and distorts our understanding of social-environmental systems and their resiliency, particularly in poor countries with variable rainfall and persistent poverty. For better policy and governance, we need to reconsider the scientific justification for international attempts to combat desertification. Our exploration of these issues begins in the Sahel of West Africa, where a series of severe droughts at the end of the 20th century led to the global institutionalization of the idea of desertification. It now seems incontrovertible that these droughts were not caused primarily by local land use mismanagement, effectively terminating a long-standing policy and scientific debate. There is now an opportunity to treat this episode as an object lesson in the relationship between science, the formation of public opinion and international policy-making. Looking beyond the Sahel, the chapters in this book provide case studies from around the world that examine the use and relevance of the desertification concept. Despite an increasingly sophisticated understanding of dryland environments and societies, the uses now being made of the desertification concept in parts of Asia exhibit many of the shortcomings of earlier work done in Africa. It took scientists more than three decades to transform a perceived desertification crisis in the Sahel into a non-event. This book is an effort to critically examine that experience and accelerate the learning process in other parts of the world.
Download or read book Climate Change and Conflict in East and the Horn of Africa written by Judi Wangalwa Wakhungu and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa is characterised by widespread and deeply entrenched poverty, armed conflict, slow economic development until recently, and agricultural systems proven to failure during frequent and persistent drought. With its tremendous natural resources and remarkable social and ecological diversity, the continent reflects a close dependency of people on natural resources. This background report illustrates that it is this dependency that will present Africa with potentially severe adaptive problems in dealing with the twin effects of climate change and population growth in future years. More than ever, Africa and its partners need to work together to turn deforestation around, to save its green lungs, to manage its cities and to grow food for its hungry millions.
Download or read book Shock Waves written by Stephane Hallegatte and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2015-11-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.
Download or read book Multi scale Climate Change Modeling Study Over the Greater Horn of Africa written by Jared Heath Bowden and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keywords: climate change, regional climate modeling, empirical analysis, Greater Horn of Africa.
Download or read book Transatlantic Security from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa written by Riccardo Alcaro and published by Edizioni Nuova Cultura. This book was released on 2014-05-21 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the so-called Arab Spring has slid into political uncertainty, lingering insecurity and civil conflict, European and American initial enthusiasm for anti-authoritarian protests has given way to growing concerns that revolutionary turmoil in North Africa may in fact have exposed the West to new risks. Critical in cementing this conviction has been the realisation that developments originated from Arab Mediterranean countries and spread to the Sahel have now such a potential to affect Western security and interests as to warrant even military intervention, as France’s operation in Mali attests. EU and US involvement in fighting piracy off the Horn of Africa had already laid bare the nexus between their security interests and protracted crises in sub-Saharan Africa. But the new centrality acquired by the Sahel after the Arab uprisings – particularly after Libya’s civil war – has elevated this nexus to a new, larger dimension. The centre of gravity of Europe’s security may be swinging to Africa, encompassing a wide portion of the continental landmass extending south of Mediterranean coastal states. The recrudescence of the terrorist threat from Mali to Algeria might pave the way to an American pivot to Africa, thus requiring fresh thinking on how the European Union and the United States can better collaborate with each other and with relevant regional actors.
Download or read book Population Size Concentration and Civil War written by Håvard Hegre and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do larger countries have more armed conflict? This paper surveys three sets of hypotheses forwarded in the conflict literature regarding the relationship between the size and location of population groups: Hypotheses based on pure population mass, on distances, on population concentrations, and some residual state-level characteristics. The hypotheses are tested on a new dataset-ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset)-which disaggregates internal conflicts into individual events. The analysis covers 14 countries in Central Africa. The conflict event data are juxtaposed with geographically disaggregated data on populations, distance to capitals, borders, and road networks. The paper develops a statistical method to analyze this type of data. The analysis confirms several of the hypotheses.
Download or read book Resilient Urban Futures written by Zoé A. Hamstead and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book addresses the way in which urban and urbanizing regions profoundly impact and are impacted by climate change. The editors and authors show why cities must wage simultaneous battles to curb global climate change trends while adapting and transforming to address local climate impacts. This book addresses how cities develop anticipatory and long-range planning capacities for more resilient futures, earnest collaboration across disciplines, and radical reconfigurations of the power regimes that have institutionalized the disenfranchisement of minority groups. Although planning processes consider visions for the future, the editors highlight a more ambitious long-term positive visioning approach that accounts for unpredictability, system dynamics and equity in decision-making. This volume brings the science of urban transformation together with practices of professionals who govern and manage our social, ecological and technological systems to design processes by which cities may achieve resilient urban futures in the face of climate change.
Download or read book Climatic and Environmental Challenges Learning from the Horn of Africa written by David Ambrosetti and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the prospect of the COP21 held in Paris in December 2015, the French Centre for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE) organised a scientific conference on environmental and climatic changes in the horn of Africa, with a decisive financial support of the Institut français (Fonds d'Alembert), Paris. The conference was part of a larger event, called "the Road to Paris" and organised by the French Embassy to Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network (HoA-REC & N), Addis Ababa University, in HoA-REC & N headquarters at Gullele Botanic Gardens, Addis Ababa, from 7 to 9 April 2015. In this event, our first purpose was to set aside from the pressure of short-term and policy-oriented concerns raised by the international bureaucracies and bilateral donors, as to try to explore diverse, cross-disciplinary dimensions related to environmental change in the region in a wider way, wider in time and also wider in the elements observed. In a way, the Road to Paris event has also showed, with the various stakeholders and speakers it has gathered, that the issue of climate change has "solidified" automatic discourses, supporting wishful intentions and thinking, and clearly embedded in the building of professional opportunities and international careers. These discourses, indeed, are everything but close to the reality observed on the ground. In this new, competitive, social field, priority may not be easily given to scientific exploration that is not directly policy-oriented and that requires a longer time to produce strong data than what the political and bureaucratic agendas allow. One could not state, though, that interest for science is totally absent in these arenas on climate change. But, invariably, public expectations appear to be much too high in scope and in time, compared to what intellectual curiosity and scientific processes and protocols can produce on a day-to-day basis. Improving awareness on environmental changes should start here: to give a better ...
Download or read book Analysis of Climate Variability written by Hans v. Storch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EUROPEAN SCHOOl OF CLiMATOlOGY AND NATURAL HAZARDS The training of scientific and technical personnel and the development of highly qualified scientists are, and have always been, among the important concerns of the European Commission. Advanced training is an important requirement for the implementation of a common EU policy in science and technology. The European School of Climatology and Natural Hazards was started as apart of the training and education activities of the European Programme on Climatology and Natural Hazards (EPOCH), and is continued under the subsequent research programme (ENVIRONMENT 1990-1994). The school consists of annual courses on specialised subjects within re search in climatology and natural hazards, and is open to graduating, grad uate and post graduate students in these fields. Each of the courses is organized in cooperation with a European Institu tion involved in the current research programme, and is aimed at giving to the students formal lectures and participation in informal discussions with leading researchers. The present volume is based on the lectures given at the course held on the island of Elba from the 30th October to the 6th of November 1993 on Statistical Analysis of Climate Variability. It features selected and extended presentations, and represents an important contribution to advanced studies in climate statistical analysis, supplementing more traditional texts. I trust that all those involved in research related to climate change and climate variability will appreciate this work and will benefit from the com prehensive and state-of-the-art information it provides.
Download or read book The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis written by Global Humanitarian Forum and published by Global Humanitarian Forum. This book was released on 2009 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-28 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. This Special Report explores the social as well as physical dimensions of weather- and climate-related disasters, considering opportunities for managing risks at local to international scales. SREX was approved and accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 18 November 2011 in Kampala, Uganda.
Download or read book Ecology and Politics written by Margaret A. Mohamed-Salih and published by Nordic Africa Institute. This book was released on 1989 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental issues are all too often treated separately from politics and social change. This volume tries to redress the balance. Common to the essays is a search for the interrelationship between ecological stress and politics.
