Climate change and war - UN peacekeeping in S Sudan and Darfur would cost $2.7 billion annually - for how many years?

"On the list of the presently largest relief operations in the world Darfur is number one and Southern Sudan number two," writes UN SRSG Jan Pronk in his weblog September 22, 2006. Excerpt:

"Close to 90.000 metric tons of food aid were provided to 1.3 million people throughout South Sudan. Nearly 400 anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines and more than 16.000 unexploded objects were collected and destroyed, amongst others along 265 km roads. The reopening of these roads made humanitarian and commercial traffic possible. This was further facilitated by the construction of nearly 900 km roads and the rehabilitation of seven airfields. About 800 new water points were established. More than 750 schools were rehabilitated and about 4500 teachers were trained. Several millions of children were reached through the vaccination and immunization rounds, amongst others against measles and polio.

To cover the humanitarian needs for this year, 2006, in both Darfur and Southern Sudan we have presented an aid program to the international community amounting to 1.6 billion dollar. So far we have received 1.1 billion. It means that we had to cut assistance again.

Presently UNMIS, with 10.000 military, costs another one billion dollar per annum. If we are going to deploy in Darfur as well, as has been stipulated in resolutions of the Security Council, this will increase to 2.7 billion dollar annually.

WHEN WILL A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT BE REACHED?

I say Mr Pronk, $2.7 billion annually for something the majority of Sudanese don't seem to want? How long will it go on for? ... 2 years? 20 years? 200 years? When will the insurgents reach a political settlement? How many water pumps cost $2.7 billion? When is walk away time? Who decides when enough is enough? The insurgents claim to be fighting in the best interests of "their" people but how old will they be when they reach a political settlement? When they get old and grey and peg out, will their children carry on the fight? The point I am making here is, the warring parties in Sudan may as well reach a political settlement NOW and get started on pulling together to PUMP WATER before it's too late, otherwise Darfur will be uninhabitable. Maybe that's what they want, to be left alone with the oil. Read on:

CLIMATE CHANGE AND WAR

Visiting Africa's Sahel region, Jeffrey Sachs says it's clear that climate change is already driving warfare in Ethiopia and Sudan. This time, peacekeepers, sanctions and humanitarian aid are not going to cut it. Instead, the developed world needs to cut its emissions drastically while helping developing countries adapt - and fast. See commentary by Jeffrey Sachs at Global Policy Forum on "Climate Change and War" 1 March 2005. Excerpt:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has declared that the two issues at the center of the G-8 Summit this July will be African poverty and global climate change. These may seem to be distinct issues. In fact, they are linked. A trip I took to a village in the Tigre region in northern Ethiopia shows why.

One morning, I was taken to a dry riverbed at the village's edge. Farmers were digging a pit in the riverbed, down to the water table approximately two meters below ground level. They explained that, until recently, this was a perennial river - one that flows throughout the year. But now, the river stops flowing during the dry season. Only when the annual rains begin in the summer does water reappear in the river bed. Until then, water-starved communities dig for water - if they can find it and if they can afford to pump it out.

In northern Ethiopia, as in much of Africa, the rain cycle has changed markedly in recent years. Ethiopian village life has long depended on two crops, one during a short rain in March and April, and the main crop during the long rain in the summer months. In recent years, the short rains have failed entirely, and long rains have been erratic. Hunger is omnipresent. Perhaps half of the children are severely underweight.

Much of arid sub-Saharan Africa, notably in the Sahel (the region just south of the Sahara desert), has experienced a pronounced drop in rainfall over the past quarter-century. This decline coincided with a rise in the surface temperature of the neighboring Indian Ocean, a hint that the decline in rainfall is in fact part of the longer-term process of man-made global warming.

Failures of rainfall contribute not only to famines and chronic hunger, but also to the onset of violence when hungry people clash over scarce food and water. When violence erupts in water-starved regions such as Darfur, Sudan, political leaders tend to view the problems in narrow political terms. If they act at all, they mobilize peacekeepers, international sanctions and humanitarian aid. But Darfur, like Tigre, needs a development strategy to fight hunger and drought even more than it needs peacekeepers. Soldiers cannot keep peace among desperately hungry people.

One course of action must be to help impoverished African regions to "adapt" to climate change and to escape the poverty trap. Water-stressed regions like Ethiopia and Sudan can adapt, at least in part, through improved technologies such as "drip irrigation," rainwater harvesting, improved water storage facilities, deep wells, and agro-forestry techniques that make best use of scarce rainfall. Better land-management practices (the re-planting of degraded forests, for example) can recharge underground water aquifers.

Poor countries cannot afford these technologies on their own - nor should they have to. Help for poor countries in Africa and elsewhere to adapt to climate change should not be described as charity or aid, but rather as compensation for damages being imposed on the poorest people on the planet. Greater help for these countries to escape from extreme poverty has been promised for decades but has not been delivered.

In addition to adapting to climate change, the world must also reduce future risks to the planet by cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions, which are the source of man-made climate change. While adaptation to climate change is necessary - because it is already occurring - it is not enough. If the world fails to mitigate future climate change, the effects of rising temperatures, increasing droughts, more numerous and severe tropical storms, rising sea levels and a spread of tropical diseases will pose huge threats to the entire planet. The famines in Ethiopia and the violence in Darfur suggest what can lie ahead.

Photo: Click on image for details of Sudan's Chinese backed Merowe Dam.