Cattle: the new frontier of conflict and climate change in Africa?

Picture a grazing cow - could anything appear more peaceful and soothing? It is difficult to imagine, but cattle seems to sit at the frontline of an expanding frontier of conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. Stretching from coast to coast sits a dryland belt often called the Sudano-Sahel which is the homeland for millions upon millions of cattle tended to by pastoralists. These are traditional nomad herders that criss-cross the region in seasonal rhythms pursuing pastures for their animals. But this pattern, which is called transhumance, seems to have been shifting over the past few years, leading to conflicts with sedentary farmers. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that climate change is involved, with desertification, irratic rainfall and droughts pushing pastoralists further and further south. Add armed groups to the mix and you have an inflamatory situation.

Faced with this picture, the UN and regional organizations in Africa are trying to ramp up their engagements with what increasingly turns out to be a key vector of conflict on the continent. But the UN, wedded as it is to a state-centric perspective and a focus on security, is running into difficulties engaging this complex conundrum.

Based on past and ongoing research efforts in the region, DIIS researcher Peer Schouten was invited to a roundtable convened by the International Peace Institute in New York on 2 July, specifically envisioning to brief UN stakeholders on evidence of the dynamics on the ground, gaps in the evidence and ways forward.

The roundtable discussion, which also involved speakers from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN Peacebuilding Office, the Peacebuilding Fund and experts from regional organizations, quickly converged around a set of interlocking challenges.

'There was a clear realization amongst participants', Schouten reports, 'that this is really a key frontline of ongoing and future conflict in the region. But, to date, the evidence is patchy.There was a clear call in the room for systematic integration of data on regional climate change patterns with cattle-related conflict data. UN stakeholders who want to put the issue on the agenda need ammunition to do so, and there's a real role for the research community to contribute.'

However, data wasn't the only point of discussion. It was repeatedly brought up that pastoralism suffers from a bad reputation among sedentary populations who often make up the majority in the affected countries. Scouten adds: 'But because nomadic pastoralists are notoriously difficult to tax and control, their governments, too, tend to treat them as a problem. In reality, pastoralists are probably the only hope these countries have in stemming the tide of rapidly advancing desertification. It has been proven that pastoralism is the most climate adapted livelihood strategy, one that can help preserve ecoystem services from which farmers also stand to benefit.'

Looking forward, Schouten hopes to expand the ongoing research collaboration with the Belgian International Peace Information Service around cattle and conflict in Central Africa into a regional program. 'It became evident that there is a clear demand on the highest level of international politics for more research based evidence around the linkages between cattle, conflict and climate change. Over the coming months, DIIS and IPIS will take action by convening a meeting bringing together experts around the question of how we can integrate the different kinds of data to produce comprehensive mappings that can help fill the gap.'