Climate change 'worsening Darfur conflict'

Climate change is partly to blame for the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, where droughts have provoked fighting over water sources, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon claims.

In a newspaper editorial for The Washington Post, he said: “Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers.

“Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic.” Rainfall in Sudan began declining two decades ago, a phenomenon due “to some degree, from man-made global warming”, said Ban, who has made both Darfur and climate change priorities.

Settled farmers and Arab nomadic herders had co-operated until the drought, he wrote, but as conditions worsened, water and food shortages disrupted the peace and “evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today”.

Ban said similar ecological problems are behind conflicts in other countries, including Somalia and Ivory Coast.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudanese leaders are accused of unleashing the pro-government Arab militia, known as the janjaweed, a charge the government denies.