• woodrow wilson center
  • ecsp

New Security Beat

Subscribe:
  • rss
  • mail-to
  • Who We Are
  • Topics
    • Population
    • Environment
    • Security
    • Health
    • Development
  • Columns
    • China Environment Forum
    • Choke Point
    • Dot-Mom
    • Friday Podcasts
    • Navigating the Poles
    • Reading Radar
  • Multimedia
    • Water Stories (Podcast Series)
    • Backdraft (Podcast Series)
    • Tracking the Energy Titans (Interactive)
  • Films
    • Water, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Animated Short)
    • Paving the Way (Ethiopia)
    • Broken Landscape (India)
    • Scaling the Mountain (Nepal)
    • Healthy People, Healthy Environment (Tanzania)
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Contact Us

NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category Sahel.
  • Investing in Girls and Women Could Set Stage for Peace, Development in Sahel

    ›
    Africa in Transition  //  Guest Contributor  //  April 21, 2020  //  By Alisha Graves
    6909831401_100950f913_c

    The coronavirus pandemic has people throughout the world pondering how humankind should respond to a public health crisis. While individual countries are managing the crisis with varying degrees of success, we can all agree that the Covid-19 pandemic is commanding the international community’s attention. By contrast, it is much harder to get the world to care about the long-term public health crisis unfolding in the West African Sahel.

    MORE
  • Emulating Botswana’s Approach to Reproductive Health Services Could Speed Development in the Sahel

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  January 27, 2020  //  By Richard Cincotta
    106907616_a4bd57663b_c

    The Western Sahel region—a cluster of arid, low-income countries stretching from Senegal, on Africa’s Atlantic coast, inland to Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Chad—is home to the world’s most youthful populations. According to current UN Population Division estimates, about 57 percent of this six-country region’s population is 19 years old or younger. As security conditions deteriorate across the rural Sahel, governments in Europe and North Africa are taking notice of these countries’ demographic status—and for good reasons. Sustained population youthfulness (often called a “youth bulge”) contributes to low levels of educational attainment, joblessness and social immobility, and ultimately to rapid population growth, which tends to drive declines in per-capita availability of freshwater and other critical natural resources: factors that are associated with the risk of persistent violent conflict and represent powerful push factors for migration.

    MORE
  • Urban Elites’ Livestock Exacerbate Herder-Farmer Tensions in Africa’s Sudano-Sahel

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  June 10, 2019  //  By Matt Luizza

    Photo1_CattleHerdIn recent years, conflict between herders and farmers for access to increasingly scarce natural resources in Africa’s Sudano-Sahel has escalated. While the problems fueling these tensions are both hyper-local and transnational in nature, one important piece of the puzzle has been overlooked. The real “elephant in the room” is who owns the livestock.

    MORE
  • The New Slave Trade: Migration, Trafficking, and Terrorists in Libya

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  August 29, 2018  //  By Alexander Farley
    Returnees-from-Libya

    While dismayed Americans watched the “zero tolerance” policy of family separation unfolding at the Mexican border, across the Atlantic, another shocking migration crisis continues to fester. Behind the grueling headlines of drownings in the Mediterranean Sea, migrants run a gauntlet of abuse through the Sahara desert to reach the Libyan coast. Armed militias and terrorist organizations across the Sahel profit by smuggling people displaced by climate, population, and security crises. While European policymakers struggle to cope with arrivals, their containment approach consistently disregards the root causes that force people to take such unimaginable risks. The high value of these human commodities not only exposes vulnerable migrants to torture, extortion, and even enslavement, but also provides funds for terrorist groups intent on attacking the West.

    MORE
  • The Melting Arctic Could Spur Even More Migration in the Sahel, But There Are Some Surprising Solutions

    ›
    Behind the Headlines  //  June 15, 2017  //  By Meaghan Parker
    6909394361_c160a091ec_b

    A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that melting in Greenland could change ocean currents and cause unprecedented drought in Africa’s Sahel region, the Washington Post reported last week: “The consequence could be devastating agricultural losses as the area’s climate shifts. And in the most severe scenarios, tens of millions of people could be forced to migrate from the area.”

    MORE
  • Christophe Angely on Overcoming Pessimism for the Sahel

    ›
    Friday Podcasts  //  May 19, 2017  //  By Winter Wilson

    mentaoThe Sahel region of Africa is a wide band that marks the transition from the Sahara Desert in the north to the wetter, sub-tropical regions in the south. The Sahelian countries have some of the most rapidly growing populations in the world and have faced significant environmental change over the past century. In recent years, insurgencies have surged in several countries, new terrorist groups have become active, there have been several droughts, and migration has increased.

    MORE
  • Fertile Ground? Climate Change and Jihadism in Mali

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  May 8, 2017  //  By Colin Walch
    Mali

    The epicenter of violence in the unstable country of Mali has historically been in the north, a contested region from where Touareg separatist and jihadist armed groups launched an insurgency against the state in 2012. But over the last two years, there has been a marked shift in communal and anti-state violence to the central region, and climate change may have played a role.

    MORE
  • Julia McQuaid on the Complex Link Between Water and Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa

    ›
    Friday Podcasts  //  March 17, 2017  //  By Benjamin Dills

    McQuaid-smallDoes global water stress matter for U.S. national security, and if so, how? That’s a major focus of the next CNA Military Advisory Board report, says Julia McQuaid of the CNA Corporation in this week’s podcast. She talks about the preliminary findings of the report and how the national security community views water.

    MORE
  Older Posts
View full site

Join the Conversation

  • RSS
  • subscribe
  • facebook
  • G+
  • twitter
  • iTunes
  • podomatic
  • youtube
Tweets by NewSecurityBeat

Trending Stories

  • unfccclogo1
  • Pop at COP: Population and Family Planning at the UN Climate Negotiations

Featured Media

Backdraft Podcast

play Backdraft
Podcasts

More »

What You're Saying

  • In the Philippines, High Birth Rates, Pervasive Poverty Are Linked
    Dean Knight: What the fuck is a "Hermophitate"???
  • rio favela1 Climate Change Adaptation and Population Dynamics in Latin America and the Caribbean (Report)
    Elliot Soukup: Bruh this is not fake
  • Reading Radar caregiving photo A Dangerous Dichotomy: Women’s Paid and Unpaid Work During COVID-19
    PeacePromoter: This site censors comments, deletes disagreements. Another reason Democrats performed so poorly...

What We’re Reading

  • - The Washington Post
  • One, two, tree: how AI helped find millions of trees in the Sahara | Environment
  • Building a green economy could stop ‘nightmare’ degradation of Amazon | Amazon rainforest
  • Countries must ′urgently′ adapt to climate change, UN warns | Environment| All topics from climate change to conservation | DW
  • Ethiopians dying, hungry and fearful in war-hit Tigray: agencies
More »
  • woodrow
  • ecsp
  • RSS Feed
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • Publications
  • Events
  • Wilson Center
  • Contact Us
  • Print Friendly Page

© Copyright 2007-2021. Environmental Change and Security Program.

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. All rights reserved.

Developed by Vico Rock Media

Environmental Change and Security Program

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center

  • One Woodrow Wilson Plaza
  • 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
  • Washington, DC 20004-3027

T 202-691-4000