Intervention at the Side Event 'West Africa at the Precipice: Visualizing Climate Stress and Insecurity'

Thank you for giving me the floor.

Allow me to take this opportunity to thank the Permanent Missions of Germany, Niger and Switzerland with the support of the ICRC and the Igarapé Institute for convening this important meeting. I am particularly intrigued by Dr. Robert Muggah's presentation on the main findings of the data visualization and report entitled 'West Africa at the precipice: visualizing climate stress and insecurity.

Excellencies, Ladies & Gentlemen,

The findings of the data visualization shows that climate change is undoubtedly a risk multiplier posing a major threat to international peace and security by exacerbating existing tensions and triggering new conflicts in the quest for limited resources which threatens to destabilize conflict regions even further.

West Africa and the Sahel region in particular are characterized by some of the most variable climates on the planet resulting in agricultural losses, recurrent food crises, water scarcity and migration into the hands of violent extremists.

Allow me to make three observations and ask Dr. Robert Muggah two questions:

Firstly, there is an urgent need for synergetic policy responses that are aimed at conflict prevention in situations where effects of climate change have diminished traditional sources of income. If peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding plans and strategies are to be truly sustainable, they must take into account climate change impacts at all policy stages. In this regard, climate related security threats should be incorporated in the mandates of multilateral peace operations such as MINUSMA and the G5 Sahel Joint Force.

Secondly, the efficient implementation of adaptation policies and programmes, at multiple scales, could help avert climate change and other environmental stresses from becoming triggers of conflict. Adaptation must therefore take into account existing social, political and economic tensions.

Thirdly, is to emphasize the need for robust science-based research and data with African institutions that take into account early warning and predictive systems that will enable us to identify and to map climate change hotspots with a view to procuring critical and verifiable data that will enable informed decision making and conflict prevention at the national, regional and international levels.

This leads me to my first question for Mr. Robert Muggah: What collaboration are you undertaking with African experts in this crucial field? I ask this because partnership with African experts in such initiatives will not only help to build local capacities, but most importantly, will facilitate an injection of local knowledge and expertise - leading to higher levels of relevance and acceptability of the findings.

I would additionally like to ask about the perspectives of the experts on the applicability of the data collection approach as well as the applicability of the findings of the study in other regions whose security is disproportionally affected by climate variability such as the Horn of Africa and Small island States.

I thank you.