Darfur and the Climate Crisis

Most of the crucial challenges of today and tomorrow are related in some ways, but there is a particularly direct connection between two problems that don't seem to have that much in common: Darfur and the Climate Crisis.

But as former president of Ireland and former UN Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson made a point of saying in an important environmental speech Monday, the economic and social effects of the Climate Crisis will hit the poorest people the hardest, and global heating directly affects some of those poor areas, throwing a vulnerable subsistence into chaos and catastrophe.

Some such areas are already being affected, like Inuit villages in the north but also vast areas of Africa, where persistent drought is diminishing arable land, and various groups may fight over what's left. That's what Kofi Annan, Al Gore and others claim has been happening when Lake Chad dried up, resulting in the ongoing genocide in Darfur, partly a grab of dwindling food-producing land and water.

Kofi Annan also pointed to areas like Kenya where drought partly attributable to global heating is displacing populations, and the spread of malaria, one of Africa's major diseases, to higher regions, as they become hotter and more hospitable to mosquitos. While global heating may be changing the environment in the Arctic, it is likely to be accelerating and exacerbating ongoing desertification in Africa which may have many causes, including manmade ones.

As a global matter, a report last month by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said that while actions now to curb carbon emissions would cost one percent of world economic output, delay could push the price up to 20 percent. As usual, the brunt of any economic problem hits the poor hardest, even when they live in an area that's less directly affected. That's why Mary Robinson insists that the Climate Crisis be conceptualized as a human rights crisis as well as an environmental one.