Currently there isn’t a lot of good news coming out of the Sahel, the area in Africa that borders the Saharan desert to the north, the Sudanian Savannah to the south, and stretches across the continent. Multiple raging insurgencies, especially in the western part of the region, fuel a news cycle of offensives and counter offensives, responses and massacres.

According to the damning new ‘code red for humanity’ report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the news from the region isn’t likely to get better any time soon.

Our research at the Institute of Economics & Peace (IEP) has found that the burden of societal disruption due to climate change and the overuse of natural resources will be distributed unequally across the globe, and that one of the most significantly affected areas in the world will be the Sahel.

In our latest Ecological Threat Register—a research product measuring global ecological threats and analyzing the ability of nations to be resilient and maintain peace under the burden of those threats—we found that some of the most at risk nations on earth are in the Sahel, with governmental collapse possible in a number of places.

The IPCC report finds that the planet is now locked in to a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in global temperature (and potentially a 4 degree rise). That is a catastrophic scenario for the Sahel, where most people’s livings are tied to agriculture and where the temperature will rise 1.5 times faster than the rest of the world,

In the context of this changing climate, demand for potable and agricultural water and arable land in the Sahel is likely to increase as the region experiences one of the largest population booms in the world over the next 30 years. By 2050, Niger’s current population of 25 million is expected to grow to more than 65 million; Burkina Faso’s population from 21.6 million to 43.4 million; and Nigeria’s population (partially in the Sahel) from 212 to 401 million.

Without major development programs, livelihoods will be further stressed even without the effects of climate change due to issues like over-farming, over-grazing, poor land management, soil erosion.

Governments and national institutions in the Sahel will be required to mediate and mitigate conflict, distribute resources, guarantee food security, and manage increased climate-related migration. Are they up to the task?

Our analysis finds in many instances the answer may be no.

At the IEP we promote the concept of Positive Peace, which is not just the absence of violence (that we call negative peace) but the quantifiable foundation that long lasting peace and societal resilience is built on.

We have found that there are eight pillars essentially supporting this foundation—the acceptance of the rights of others, an equitable distribution of resources, free flow of information, good relations with neighbors, high levels of human capital, low levels of corruption, a sound business environment, and a well-functioning government.

When all of these pillars are strong, a society is far more likely to be resilient against threats, ecological or otherwise. The weakness of just one pillar, however, can undermine the effectiveness of the other seven.

Looking at the period 2009 to 2019 in IEP’s Positive Peace Index finds that nations in the Sahel are sorely lacking.

Seven of the eight Positive Peace pillars are eroding in Mauritania; six in Burkina Faso; and five in Niger. In almost all countries across the Sahel, the equitable distribution scores are down from 2009.

This is not good news for the people living in the Sahel, but is also of immediate and ongoing concern to many outside of the Sahel, due to the proven ability of multinational jihadi organizations to hijack and in many instances subsume insurgencies and minority ethnic groups in that area.

The Sahel is already arguably the epicentre of jihadi activity and terrorism in Africa. The IEP’s Global Terrorism Index 2020 found that four of the ten countries who had the greatest rise in terrorist activity were in the Sahel (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mali and Niger) and the bulk of recent attacks in those countries have been executed by militias aligned with Islamic State or Al-Qaeda.

Currently, the governments of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso are all fighting insurgencies started by separatist or minority ethnic groups, but in each instance they are now also facing Al-Qaeda or Islamic State affiliated groups.

Since 2014 those five African nations have pooled their security resources to fight the insurgent threat in a military cooperative called G5 du Sahel, with the additional support of 5,000 French troops. So far however, the situation has only degraded and violence has increased.

Although a military element is necessary, it is not sufficient. There are broad systemic issues that cannot be addressed in the medium term without the support of developed nations, including funding the necessary state-building programs. The functioning of the governments needs to be improved, including reductions in corruption. Family planning programs should be provided, but also supported by food programs, and in areas that are reasonably secure, programs to improve food yields and water capture must increase. Major inequities need to be addressed as well as programs to build employment. And to be effective in the long term, all efforts must include an understanding and integration of climate-related risks.

Although this list may seem extensive, the failure to act will intensify the risks in the region, and beyond. The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban is a warning that without intelligent programs western influence will wane in the region, resulting in new threats to Europe and elsewhere.