Environmental Change, Migration, and Conflict in Africa: A Critical Examination of the Interconnections

• Author: Laura Freeman
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1070496517727325
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Environmental Change,

Migration, and Conflict

in Africa: A Critical

Examination of the

Interconnections

Laura Freeman

1

Abstract

How should we understand the interconnections between environmental change,

migration, and conflict in Africa? Should the rise of Islamic terrorism and Boko

Haram in northeast Nigeria be directly linked to the drying of Lake Chad? Should

cattle raiding in Kenya be seen as a result of drought across East Africa? Does the

constrained migration of the pastoral Tuareg in the Sahel causally connect to desert-

ification and their rebellion against governmental forces? Despite the compelling and

often persuasive case for directly connecting environmental change to migration and

conflict, there is a growing agreement in both the environment-migration and

climate-conflict spheres that intervening variables determine if and how environmen-

tal change causes population movements and political violence. This article presents

a case for migration as an intermediary and bidirectional causal variable. The article

argues that close attention needs to be paid to local-level manifestations of conflict

and (mal)adaptive forms of migration to understand the potential propensity of

environmental change to lead to conflict in Africa.

Keywords

environmental change, climate change, migration, conflict, constrained migration,

Africa

Journal of Environment &

Development

2017, Vol. 26(4) 351–374

!The Author(s) 2017

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DOI: 10.1177/1070496517727325

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1

Safety and Violence Initiative, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa

Corresponding Author:

Laura Freeman, Safety and Violence Initiative, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch

7701, South Africa.

Email: laura.emily.freeman@gmail.com

Africa is currently facing huge environmental challenges. With drought and food

insecurity in southern Africa, the Horn, West Africa, and Central Africa;

signif‌icant desertif‌ication in the Sahel region; rising sea levels and ocean

temperatures in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans; and with Africa’s lakes

‘‘warming rapidly’’ (Cohen et al., 2016), there is scarcely a region or biodiversity

system without signif‌icant environmental stressors. Furthermore, the ef‌fects

of contemporary climate change are accentuating vulnerabilities of African

populations, who are strongly reliant on rain-fed agriculture.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; 2014) has found that

across Africa, near-surface temperatures have increased by 0.5C or more over

the past 50 to 100 years. It predicts future temperature increases of more than

2C by the end of the 21st century, with certain regions such as the Sahel

experiencing the most signif‌icant warming. Migration and conf‌lict are two of

the major social consequences of environmental change as predicted in the

environment-migration and climate-conf‌lict subf‌ields. As the ef‌fects of climate

change and global warming become more pronounced, the impact on Africa—a

continent with preexisting environmental vulnerabilities and where the ef‌fects of

climate change are predicted to be most keenly felt—has been the focus of much

policy and academic discussion.

Since their formation, both the environment-migration and climate-conf‌lict

subf‌ields have recognized that the pathways by which environmental change

leads to migration or conf‌lict are likely to be complex. Thus, social, political,

economic, and cultural factors have been taken into account within both sub-

f‌ields when trying to analyze the potential causal links between environmental

change and migration or conf‌lict. Within both f‌ields, there is agreement that

whether environmental stress leads to migration or conf‌lict, and how it leads

to migration or conf‌lict, tends to rest on a whole set of contextual factors.

However, while both f‌ields have acknowledged this, and started to examine

the relationships in evermore innovative, complex, and context-driven ways,

the subf‌ields have not ef‌fectively branched out to reach one another. In other

words, both environment-migration and climate-conf‌lict subf‌ields have had

similar internal discussions around the propensity of environmental change to

cause (a) migration and (b) conf‌lict; in both subf‌ields, there is a growing

consensus that intermediary variables are needed to predict whether and how

environmental changes will cause political violence and migration. However, there

has not been suf‌f‌icient cross-pollination between the environment-migration and

climate-conf‌lict subf‌ields in conceptually connecting environmental change,

migration, and conf‌lict, despite their propensity to coexist.

Building on empirical and theoretical work in the environment-migration

and climate-conf‌lict spheres, this article develops f‌ive causal and exploratory

scenarios that show how pathways between environmental change, migration,

and conf‌lict can operate. The evidence suggests that migration is an important

potential intermediary variable between environmental change and conf‌lict, and

352 Journal of Environment & Development 26(4)