The potential for the changing climate and associated migration to
induce conflict or exacerbate existing instability is now recognized in
national security circles.
Northwest Africa is crisscrossed with climate, migration, and
security challenges. From Nigeria to Niger, Algeria, and Morocco, this
region has long been marked by labor migration, bringing workers from
sub-Saharan Africa north to the Mediterranean coastline and Europe. To
make that land journey, migrants often cross through the Sahel and
Sahel-Saharan region, an area facing increasing environmental threats
from the effects of climate change. The rising coastal sea level,
desertification, drought, and the numerous other potential effects of
climate change have the potential to increase the numbers of migrants
and make these routes more hazardous in the future. Added to these
challenges are ongoing security risks in the region, such as Nigeria’s
struggles with homegrown insurgents and the growing reach of Al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb, which has expanded out of Algeria.
For the United States and the international community, this region is
critical because of its potential for future instability. The proximity
of Algeria and Morocco to Europe, Nigeria’s emerging role as one of
Africa’s most strategically important states, and Niger’s ongoing
struggles with governance and poverty all demand attention. Northwest
Africa’s porous borders and limited resources, which allow Al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb to flourish there, suggest that there is no time to
waste in developing better and more effective policies for the region.
The climate, migration, and security nexus is a key test case because
it is likely to exacerbate all of these existing risk factors. Climate
change alone poses a daunting challenge. No matter what steps the global
community takes to mitigate carbon emissions, a warmer climate is
inevitable. The effects are already being felt today and are projected
to intensify as climate change worsens. All of the world’s regions and
nations will experience some of the effects of this transformational
challenge.
Changing environmental conditions are likely to prompt human
migration, adding another layer of complexity. In the 21st century the
world could see substantial numbers of climate migrants—people displaced
by the slow or sudden onset of climate change. While experts continue
to debate the details of the causal relationship between climate change
and human migration, climate change is expected to aggravate many
existing migratory pressures around the world. Extreme weather events
such as droughts and floods are projected to increase the number of
sudden humanitarian crises in areas least able to cope, such as those
already mired in poverty or prone to conflict.
Conflict and insecurity present the third layer of the nexus. This
final layer is the most unpredictable, both within nations and
transnationally, and will force the United States and the international
community to confront climate and migration challenges within an
increasingly unstructured security environment. The post-Cold War
decades have seen a diffusion of national security interests and
threats. U.S. security is increasingly focused on addressing nonstate
actors and nontraditional sources of conflict and instability. The
potential for the changing climate and associated migration to induce
conflict or exacerbate existing instability is now recognized in
national security circles.
This paper tracks how the overlays and intersections of climate
change, migration, and security create an arc of tension in Northwest
Africa comprising Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, and Morocco. These four
nations, separated by the Sahara Desert, are rarely analyzed as a
contiguous geopolitical region. Yet they are linked by existing
international migration routes, which thread up from sub-Saharan Africa
to the Mediterranean coast, moving people and cargo into Morocco,
Algeria, Libya, and onward to Europe. Within the region, seasonal labor
migration is widespread, particularly in areas vulnerable to rainfall
fluctuations.
We seek to examine what will happen when the effects of climate
change interact with internal and transnational security challenges
along these well-traveled routes, and connect those questions to the
strategic interests of the United States, Europe, and the transatlantic
community.
Why we must engage in this arc of tension
Why should the U.S. and international policymakers be concerned about
this nexus linking climate, migration, and security in Northwest
Africa? Challenges related to the mitigation of carbon emissions as well
as disaster risk management and economic and human security in the
region alongside the need for a secure and stable global economy require
strong partners and substantial capacities. Relatively minor
investments can create significant progress toward improving security
and preparing the region for worsening climate conditions and increased
migration. The costs of livelihood security, irrigation, improved
migration monitors, and regional water cooperation pale alongside the
likely future costs of humanitarian disaster, long-term security gaps,
and conflict.
Further, among these particular countries, climate and migration
patterns complicate a difficult political terrain. The United States and
Europe are already involved in ongoing counterterrorism activities to
help stem the growth of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (found in Algeria,
Niger, Mali, Mauritania, and potentially in Nigeria and Morocco as well)
and its possible linkage to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula through
this corridor. The ongoing conflict in the oil-producing Niger Delta and
the increasing violence of the insurgent Boko Haram movement in
northern and central Nigeria, punctuated by the August 2011 suicide
bombing of the U.N. building in Abuja, further underline the potential
for instability, as does the Tuareg insurgency in northern Mali.
The United States and other countries have a vested interest in
helping ensure that areas with weak or absent governance
structures—where poverty, environmental degradation, and grievances over
central governments and energy production coincide—do not become future
recruiting grounds for extremists. The possible impacts of
climate-related migration in such fragile situations could be
destabilizing.
At the same time increased U.S. involvement in counterterrorism
activities holds the potential for a serious backlash. Western
involvement in its many forms could serve as a recruitment tool for
those who see such efforts as a pretext for American military hegemony
and establishing a forward presence in the region to secure future
energy supplies and natural resources. Furthermore, geopolitical
calculations of Western interest must acknowledge the added dimension of
the uprisings in the Middle East and Maghreb.
By focusing too narrowly
on counterterrorism, U.S. policy risks being at odds with
democratization movements. Maghreb states are also wary of how their
cooperation with NATO on the Mediterranean Sea appears to domestic
groups concerned with independence from the West.
This new pressure for transparency, both within the region’s
governments and regarding U.S. policy, puts a premium on nontraditional
approaches to security—especially with regards to human security as
defined by the United Nations to ensure the security of the individual
as opposed to the state. This approach aims to mitigate threats to human
conditions—including socioeconomic, political, food, health,
environment, community, and personal safety—and maintain social
stability.
Major U.S. imperatives in the region, including counterterrorism and
reform, would be served by supporting, for example, Morocco’s efforts to
peacefully settle the Western Sahara dispute or Nigeria’s efforts to
quell ethno-religious violence. Establishing effective governance in
Western Sahara and domestic stability in northern Nigeria will allay
economic uncertainty in the region and reassure other states confronting
North-South and Christian-Muslim divides. Periodic attacks on oil
pipelines and facilities in the Niger Delta have already affected world
oil prices, while widespread bank robberies blamed on Boko Haram
undermine Nigeria’s economic growth. Improving human security will lead
to economic improvement.
Economic stability will in turn allow industrialized countries to
cultivate greater investment in the region, which is sustaining 4
percent to 7 percent growth (with the exception of Niger at 2.5
percent), despite the lingering consequences of the Great Recession of
2007-2009. While U.S. foreign direct investment in these four countries
remains predominantly in the oil and mining sectors, the region
represents a significant future market for goods and services. Two-way
trade between the United States and Nigeria totaled more than $34
billion in 2010, and American foreign direct investment reached $5.4
billion in 2009, making the United States the largest foreign investor
in Nigeria.
Moreover, Nigeria is already a critical partner in advancing U.S.
humanitarian goals. The nation’s involvement in six U.N. peace
operations in Africa significantly reduces the burden on the United
States in responding to regional crises.
As these countries’ economies grow and diversify, they will be in a
much stronger position to manage slow- and sudden-onset climate
disasters, associated migration, and potential conflict. U.S. policy
supporting these efforts in the region will have to balance the need for
security and reform, such that these aspects are mutually reinforcing;
too great a focus on either aspect will risk instability undermining
reform or loss of credibility rendering security impossible.
The arc of tension begins in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous
state. Nigerians are already seeing early signs of climate change in a
rising sea level, more frequent flooding, and outbreaks of disease in
the southern megacity of Lagos, home to more than 10 million people. In
the northern part of the country, expanding desertification—which refers
to the degradation of land productivity in dry land areas—has caused
200 villages to disappear.
These opposing pressures, driven by climate change, are expected to
push internal migrants toward the center of Nigeria. At the same time a
rapidly growing and increasingly urban population is seeking greater
economic opportunities. The combination of these demographic trends and
economic aspirations spur many Nigerians to move north. Existing
international migration routes link people leaving Nigeria to Niger,
where they cross into the Maghreb states and potentially Europe.
Human mobility and climate change in Nigeria occur amid serious
threats to national and local governance. The southern Niger Delta has
supported an insurgency since the 1990s, driven in part by anger with
corruption and the mismanagement of the profits from the region’s
booming oil industry. In the northern part of the country, religious
tensions have turned violent, with more than 800 people having been
killed in the central Nigerian city of Jos since January 2011. Boko
Haram has undertaken attacks of increasing violence, including the U.N.
bombing, and is behind a string of more than 100 armed bank robberies
targeting lenders in north. A Christmas Day 2011 bombing outside Abuja
killed more than 40 Christian worshippers, provoking a brutal police
crackdown.
Although the unrest in the Niger Delta and the violence in the north
are geographically distinct, they both have their roots in underlying
dissatisfaction with a government that has failed to sustain an
inclusive, accountable, and transparent state. As the effects of climate
change worsen, even more will be demanded of Nigeria’s limited
governance capacity.
Migrants from Nigeria and other sub-Saharan states who reach Niger,
the second link in the arc of tension, enter one of Africa’s most
desperate states. Niger has the world’s second highest fertility rate
and a median age of only 15 years. Most of the booming population is
dependent on rain-fed agriculture, but acreage of arable land has
decreased dramatically over the past 50 years, and frequent droughts
have impoverished and indebted many Nigeriens. In 2010 a severe drought
left 7.1 million Nigeriens without adequate food.
Climate change is
expected to make the country hotter and more prone to drought, erosion,
and loss of forested land, exacerbating already difficult conditions.
Niger also faces ongoing international and internal migration. Due to
pressures from desertification and drought, some Nigerien pastoralists
have shifted their migratory routes southwards into Nigeria in search of
animal fodder and better grazing. In addition, unusual flooding in 2010
damaged many homes and farmland, creating an internal refugee situation
and prompting other Nigeriens to seek shelter and employment in
Nigeria, Libya, and the Ivory Coast.
Agadez, the largest city in northern Niger, is a key waypoint for
sub-Saharan migrants moving north, and a hotspot on the arc of tension.
While estimates of the number transiting the country on this path are
scarce, some research indicates that at least 65,000 Sub-Saharan
migrants passed through Niger toward Algeria and Libya in 2003 alone.
About half of these migrants are thought to come from the underdeveloped
central and southern parts of Nigeria.
Niger also faces a difficult security situation, including conflict
over rangeland and water wells in the southeast and the north
(especially near the Malian border), mineral-related conflict in the
north, and the pervasive threat of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In
northern Agadez, home to the world’s second-largest uranium mine, a 2007
drought-driven rebellion by the Tuareg people led the government to
dispatch 4,000 troops.
Additionally, Niger is within the range of operations of Al Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb, which is known to engage in kidnapping and drug
trafficking in the broader region. Agricultural and pastoral livelihoods
have been made more difficult by the effects of climate change; this
has translated to increasing numbers of disenfranchised youth, who
security experts believe are more easily recruited to assist Al Qaeda in
return for money and food.
Furthermore, some of the effects of climate change, such as
desertification and flooding, are thought to benefit Al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb by depopulating rural areas in which the group can then
operate more freely. The Nigerien government has reorganized its
security services in the hope of encouraging Nigerians not to engage in
violent acts; however, the government has been accused of being
incompetent or even unwilling to take action even when information about
Al Qaeda is received.
Algeria is the third link in the arc of tension. Like much of
the Maghreb region, Algeria faces a future made increasingly difficult
by the effects of climate change, including increasing temperatures,
decreasing rainfall, and a rising sea level. Water is of particular
concern—the country already ranks second among African states in terms
of water scarcity—as is desertification.
Additionally, climate variability in sub-Saharan Africa has the
potential to indirectly affect Algeria by contributing to migration
along the arc of tension and other migratory paths. The southern spread
of the Sahara Desert is already thought to contribute to seasonal
migration from sub-Saharan Africa toward Algeria and the Maghreb.
Algeria experienced a decade of internal violence in the 1990s. This
conflict gave rise to the terrorist organization that eventually became
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Although violence has declined
significantly since the early 2000s, Algeria has still experienced close
to 1,000 incidents of political violence since the September 11, 2001
Al Qaeda attacks on New York City and Washington, including kidnappings
and high-profile bombings. Large ungoverned spaces and poor border
controls allow migrants to move north from Niger, but also create space
in which groups such as Al Qaeda can operate. Tamanrasset, a major way
station for migrants in southern Algeria, is the new home of a joint
military command center between Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger,
which is meant to confront the threat from Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb.
The arc of tension ends in Morocco, historically one of
Africa’s most stable states. Like Algeria, water shortage due to climate
change is a serious concern in Morocco. Rainfall is projected to
decrease by roughly 20 percent by the end of the century, according to a
range of projections.
The country faces a rising sea level along the
coast, including in agricultural areas in the north, which may lead to
increasing salinity in freshwater aquifers. With 44 percent of the
country’s workforce engaged in agriculture, this development poses a
fundamental challenge to the current Moroccan economy. Ultimately, the
shifting climate may result in internal migration, forcing rural
populations to move in search of more fertile land and eroding the
geographic separation of ethnic groups.
Morocco is also under pressure from existing flows of international
migrants, many of whom enter the country in an attempt to continue on to
Europe. Two Spanish enclaves on the Mediterranean coast, Ceuta and
Melilla, are key destinations for Africans seeking to enter the European
Union. In 2005 efforts by hundreds of migrants to break through the
fences surrounding the enclaves led to several deaths and resulted in
the erection of more sophisticated border fences. While the impetus for
migration into Morocco is difficult to determine with precision,
researchers focused on the country point to decreasing rain and lower
crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa as a factor in the decision to
migrate.
The same enclaves that have attracted migrants seeking a chance to
enter Europe have also drawn the attention of Al Qaeda. In 2006 Ayman
al-Zawahiri, then Al Qaeda’s second in command, called for the
liberation of Ceuta and Melilla. Thus far the terrorist network has
reportedly not been successful in carrying out an attack in Morocco. An
April 2011 café bombing, however, bore the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda
operation. In January 2011 the Moroccan government arrested 27 alleged
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb members along the border with the
Western Sahara.
What policymakers can do about this arc of tension
The overlapping challenges of climate change, migration, and security
in these four nations pose a critical and complex problem for
policymakers. While it is difficult to draw a direct line of causality
from specific climate change hazards to the decision to migrate or to a
particular conflict, the interrelationships between these factors mean
that viewing and addressing them in isolation is no longer sufficient.
Indeed, this particular nexus demands policy solutions that cut
across levels of governance and drive the U.S. government to synthesize
traditionally distinct fields such as defense, diplomacy, and
development. These new, complex challenges will force the United States
and the international community to finally break from a Cold War-era
understanding of security and move toward a more individual-based
concept of human security.
At a policy level, the Obama administration’s first National Security
Strategy document in 2010 prioritized conflict prevention,
peacekeeping, counterterrorism, access to markets, and the protection of
“carbon sinks” (places in nature that absorb carbon out of the
atmosphere) in Africa, while the 2011 National Military Strategy
emphasized security partnerships in the Trans-Sahel region. These
current efforts are limited and not yet institutionalized, and still do
not fully incorporate the environmental realities underlying the
challenges to the region.
Overall, U.S. foreign assistance to the region is approximately $668
million. Nigeria receives $614 million, primarily for health and police
training; Algeria $2.5 million, for counterterrorism and military
training; Niger $17 million, mostly for food aid; and Morocco
$35
million, for military and development assistance.
Internationally, the International Monetary Fund currently has no
loans to the four countries. Algeria has accepted equity investments and
loans totaling $82 million from the International Finance Corporation,
the equity investment arm of the World Bank, but no loans from the World
Bank itself. Nigeria has $4 billion in outstanding loans to the World
Bank, including its cheapest lending arm, the International Development
Association, with 2011 loans close to half a billion dollars aimed at
stoking economic growth and employment in non-oil sectors.
The World Bank maintains a total commitment of $1.5 billion in
Morocco and plans to disburse $200 million more in 2012 in investment
lending. In addition, the bank has disbursed nearly $1.6 billion to
Niger, including $70 million in 2010 and $41 million in 2011. And the
World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency is currently
mobilizing $1 billion in insurance capacity for the Middle East and
North Africa, including Morocco, to ensure that foreign direct
investment in the region does not suffer because of the nearby Arab
Spring revolutions.
Lastly, the U.S. military’s counterterrorism commitment to the region
was bolstered by the creation of African Command, or AFRICOM, in 2008,
tasked with developing the region’s professional military capabilities.
In 2006 the United States allocated $500 million for the Trans-Saharan
Counter-Terrorism Partnership to train and equip African armed forces,
including the four states in this report.
These are the traditional instruments of development and security,
but the conversation about national security and military strategy in
the United States is changing. With the U.S. government facing at least
several years of austerity budgets, defense and foreign affairs spending
will not escape the cuts unscathed. If properly executed, budget cuts
could pare down unnecessary spending in the United States’ massive
defense budget (now larger than at the height of President Ronald
Reagan’s Cold War buildup), while protecting the core defense,
diplomacy, and development capabilities needed to confront complex
crises.
If mishandled, though, the cuts could have a dramatic impact on
nonmilitary international affairs funding. Rebalancing and reorienting
these capabilities will help the United States create more effective and
efficient programs in countries like Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, and
Morocco. The United States cannot hope to encourage stable, fair, and
effective governance if we continue to understaff and underfund our
civilian aid and foreign-affairs capabilities. Thus, a thorough review
of the relationship between defense, diplomacy, and development is
required. The division of labor between these three branches of our
foreign and security policy establishment must be adapted to a new and
rapidly changing post-Cold War environment.
This report examines the arc of tension to understand how prepared we
are to achieve this new balance. Through analysis of the climate,
migration, and security factors outlined above, it lays out a series of
recommendations to reorient U.S. and international policy.
These
recommendations are also intended to inform the transatlantic and
multilateral conversation on the climate, migration, and security nexus.
Briefly, we recommend a new approach.
Niger and Nigeria are rarely discussed in conjunction with Algeria
and Morocco. The first two countries are usually considered separately,
as part of Sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb, respectively. The United
States pursues very different forms of engagement, development
assistance, and diplomacy with each of these countries, despite existing
migratory flows that link all four nations. We argue that this practice
is outdated.
Secondly, the nexus of climate change, migration, and conflict
produces pressure points that need comprehensive regional approaches.
From a regional perspective, and based upon four case studies, we
highlight priority issues facing the United States, the international
community, and regional policy actors in addressing this unprecedented
challenge and provide recommendations to shape the future of U.S. and
international foreign assistance.
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