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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category Burkina Faso.
  • Thomas Sankara’s Lost Legacy

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    Guest Contributor  //  December 6, 2021  //  By Richard Cincotta
    11191502395_3799a404e2_o

    Cet essai a été mis à jour avec une traduction française, disponible après la version anglaise, ci-dessous. 

    Thirty-four years ago, Burkina Faso’s president, Thomas Sankara, was murdered. Only now are his alleged assassins on trial. Had he survived, the arid, landlocked country of more than 20 million people might well have taken a far different path to development.

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  • Climate War in the Sahel? Pastoral Insecurity in West Africa Is Not What It Seems

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    Guest Contributor  //  November 30, 2020  //  By Leif Brottem

    As violence in Mali and Burkina Faso reached a ten-year high this year, the West African Sahel appears to be experiencing the perfect storm of climate stress, resource degradation, and violent extremism. At the center of that storm, one finds livestock herders—pastoralists—who are both vulnerable to environmental changes in the region, and historically marginalized from politics. Conflict in the region looks like a harbinger of the climate wars to come—but is it really? In research produced for Search for Common Ground, Andrew McDonnell and I found that while competition for land and water resources has increased dramatically across the region, violence associated with pastoralism emerges from a much more complex set of factors. Not surprisingly, the decisive conflict variable is governance.

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  • How Gum Acacia Trees Could Help Build Peace in the Sahel

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    Guest Contributor  //  March 30, 2020  //  By Ousseyni Kalilou
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    A special type of tree could facilitate peacebuilding in the Sahel. A stretch of semi-arid land south of the Sahara that runs from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean through 10 countries (Eritrea, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Algeria, Mauritania, and Senegal). But the western subregion covering the Lake Chad area (the intersection of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger) and Liptako-Gourma (the tri-border zone of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger) in the Sahel has been the scene of a growing humanitarian crisis. Armed groups are terrorizing local populations. Rampant insecurity has forced 1 million people to flee their homes. People have been cut off from their livelihoods. Food insecurity is worsening. Casualties continue to mount. And climate change will likely exacerbate conditions, forcing more people to compete for depleted forest resources and land. More food shortages and instability will surely follow.

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  • Pathways to Climate-Smart Agriculture in Africa

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    From the Wilson Center  //  October 17, 2016  //  By Anam Ahmed
    Rwanda-rice-paddies

    “Climate change and food insecurity are the twin crises that may define Africa’s future,” said the World Bank’s Ademola Braimoh at the Wilson Center on September 13. One proposed solution is so-called “climate-smart agriculture” (CSA), an approach to farming that aims to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change while increasing agricultural production and income. But according to a panel of experts, smallholder farmers around the world have either been slow to adopt CSA practices or failed to sustain their usage over time.

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  • Calming the Waters: Why We Need to Better Integrate Climate and Water Policy

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    Guest Contributor  //  August 23, 2016  //  By Sabine Blumstein
    Niamey-Niger

    The Nile River is shared by 11 countries, for which it is vital for food and energy production, freshwater, and as a means of transportation. Sharing the resources of the Nile has, however, been politically difficult. Recently, the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has caused a major dispute with downstream Egypt which fears the dam will affect water flow in its own territory.

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  • Governance in Focus: Insights from the International Expert Forum on Climate Change and Conflict

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    Guest Contributor  //  July 28, 2016  //  By Austin Miles

    The International Expert Forum (IEF) is a series of seminars meant to facilitate dialogue between experts and policymakers on peace and security. Meeting in Stockholm this past May, the forum explored the connections between environmental issues, peacebuilding, and conflict while considering how environmental governance can aid in peacebuilding. The summary brief produced after the forum provides a useful snapshot of a fast-changing field of study.

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  • As African Cities Grow, Rural-Urban Divides Widen Too

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    Eye On  //  July 22, 2015  //  By Josh Feng
    Table Mountain, South Africa

    In 2007, the world crossed a threshold:  for the first time in human history, the majority of people lived in urban areas. Today, Africa and Asia are the only remaining continents where the rural population outnumbers urban, but they are urbanizing at unprecedented rates. This rapid growth is a double-edged sword. While urbanization spurs economic opportunity and often increases access to infrastructure, it is also widening disparities in health and development, according to a new data sheet by the Population Reference Bureau.

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  • USAID’s Sylvia Cabus on the Sahel: “We Help Farmers…and Their Husbands”

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    Friday Podcasts  //  May 22, 2015  //  By Carley Chavara
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    In the Sahel, one of the most food-stressed regions of the world, “women bear the brunt in terms of coping mechanisms that are employed at the community level,” says Sylvia Cabus, gender advisor for USAID’s Bureau for Food Security, in this week’s podcast.

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