Climate Change And Political Conflict In Africa: Focus On Migration And Refugees In The Continent

1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Conflict is the incompatibility of goals and values between two or more parties in a relationship, combined with the attempt to control each other and antagonistic feelings towards each other. It is a state of discord caused by the actual or perceived opposition of needs, values and interests. Conflict usually exist whenever incompatible activities occur. An activity that is incompatible with another is one that prevents, blocks or interferes with the occurrence or effectiveness of the second activity.Climate change has the potentials of engendering conflicts and snowball the existing staggering population of refugees in the African continent.Most analyses on the impacts of climate change that have influenced United Nation Frame Work Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreements focus on medium- to long-term projections of carbon emissions and forecasting models of global warming, and cover mainly countries and regions for which relevant data are readily available. This leaves out most developing countries and regions, particularly Africa, due to unavailable data and trajectories. From an African perspective, this omission is serious and costly. Africa is considered most susceptible to climate change due to its vulnerability and inability to cope with the physical, human and socioeconomic consequences of climate extremes.Due to the limited relevance of past and current global climate change agreements to Africa’s climate and environmental problems, the hardest hit region has benefited least from the international climate change regime, which relates almost exclusively to funding and investments for green, low carbon growth. For example, Africa’s participation to date in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and carbon trading arrangements under the Kyoto Protocol has been minimal.

The incompatibility or differences may exist in reality or may only be perceived by the parties involved. Nonetheless, the opposing actions and the hostile emotions are very real hallmark between people in all kind of human relationship and in al social settings. As a result of the wide range of potential differences between people, the absence of conflict usually signals the absence of meaningful interaction. A conflict can be as small as a perceived disagreement or as large as war. It can originate in the person, between two or more people or between two or more groups. Conflict by itself is neither good nor bad but the manner in which conflict is handled determines whether it is constructive or destructive.A conflict is different from competition and cooperation because in competitive situations, the two or more individuals or parties have mutually inconsistent goals as either party tries to reach its goals, it undermine the attempt of the others to reach theirs. Therefore, competitive situations will by their nature cause conflict. Conflict can also occur in cooperative situation, in which two or more individuals or parties have consistent goals because the manner in which one party tries to reach its goal may undermine the other individual or party. A clash of interests, values, action or directions often sparks a conflict and conflict is also seen as the existence of the clash. The world ‘conflict’ is applicable from the instant the clash occurs. Even when it is described as a potential conflict, it is implying that there is already conflict of direction even though a clash has not occurred. As a result, conflict can occur whenever there is interaction. Leo Otoide describe this situation in the international system thus:When states interact there is competition for power and prestige and in the process, the international system elicits a picture of perpetual conflict, of survival of the fittest, where the desire for power and influence determines the attitudes of states and the course of events.Conflict occurs in different levels, the first is interpersonal conflict. Interpersonal conflict is when two people have incompatible needs; goals, or approaches in their relationship.5 Communication breakdown is often an important source of interpersonal conflict and learning communication skills is valuable in preventing and resolving such difficulties. At the same time, very real differences occur between people that cannot be resolved by any amount of improved communication. Personality conflict refers to very strong differences in motives, values or styles in dealing with people that are not resolvable. For instance, if both parties in a relationship have a high need for power and both want to be dominant in the relationship, there is no way for both to be satisfied, and a power struggle ensures common tactics used in interpersonal power struggles includes the exaggerated used of reward and punishments, deception and evasion, threats and emotional blackmail and flattery or integration. Unresolved power conflict usually recycles and escalates to the point of relationship breakdown and termination.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 

Climate is a global phenomenon that affects all countries and regions in the world to a different extent. The general trend suggests an increase in global surface temperatures, but climate data of the twentieth first century shows that Africa is and will continuously be warming faster than the global average. Scholars are certain that there will be no generalized, single effect of climate change/variability on Africa, because of the long geographical stretch of the continent. Climate change, due to natural gas emissions into the atmosphere, will particularly affect the variability of environment and water resources globally. Considering the expectation of more frequent droughts and floods, the forecast of river flows and its interaction with extreme variation in precipitation becomes crucial. In recent studies climate scientists are debating if the current models are giving a sufficient estimate of future precipitation, and argue even that current ‘models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming’ (Min et al. 2011: 378).Migration which is a dynamic component of population with reference to movement of people from one geographical area to another, has been on the increase in Africa as immigrants tends to seek for greener pasture and this poses political conflicts in the region. 

The researcher intend to look at the possible causes of migration to the region with respect to climate change and political conflict in Africa.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 

The main objective of this study is on climate change and political conflict in Africa, focusing more on migration and refugees in the continent. The researcher intend to outline the following sub-objectives during the course of the study; 

i) To examine the link between climate change, migration, governance and security threats in respect to political conflicts in Africa. 

ii) To analyse the response of the United Nations and other African States in formulating climate change policies to ensure future security and preventconflict.

iii) To identifyif there are any available policy options and recommends mitigating measures to counter the perceived and real effects of climate change in Africa.

iv) To ascertain if there is any significant relationship between climate change and political conflict in Africa. 

v) To proffer possible solutions to the identified challenges associated with migration, climate change and political conflict in Africa.