Sahel Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The Sahel is the semiarid zone forming the southern margin of the Sahara Desert, stretching 4,500 kilometers across Africa. It includes parts of Senegal, Mauritania, The Gambia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and the Sudan, and commonly includes parts of the Cape Verde Islands. The word means “shore” or “border” in Arabic. The Sahelian countries are some of the world’s poorest. In addition, the Sahel has a rapidly increasing population of over 50 million people. It has been important as a region of settlement and movement for millennia, but it was the environmental emergency of droughts and famine in the 1970s and 1980s that has brought it to the world’s attention.

The Sahel usually receives more than 150 millimeters and less than 500-700 millimeters of rain per year, restricted to three summer months, and has been one of the world’s hottest regions for over two millennia. The Sahelian climate is “perhaps the most dramatic example of climatic variability that we have quantitatively measured anywhere in the world,” according to Hulme, and the future impacts of climate change are uncertain. Biomass and rainfall are already subject to extreme non-equilibrial variations; therefore the Sahel’s geographical limits fluctuate significantly. Moving north, Acacia savanna changes to grassland. Three major droughts have occurred this century, in 1910-16, 1941-45, and below average rainfall (termed “desiccation”) began in the late-1960s and continued, with some interruptions, into the 1980s. The latter was especially hard for many Sahelian farmers and pastoralists, causing widespread loss of life.

The Sahel has frequently confounded science. The term desertification was misapplied by European scientists in the early 20th century to describe the presumed overexploitation of land and vegetation by local people. However, history shows exogenous drivers such as fire, insect attack, and rainfall have a far greater effect on the local ecology than human actions, except in areas of highly intensive land use. Most researchers now support a variant of this state-and-transition model, and identify a complex landscape, one constantly transformed by human actions, rather than monotonal desertification. The droughts also helped initiate some longer-term externally aided projects that might not otherwise have been supported. There are now thousands of farmer cooperatives, small-scale NGO projects, internationally funded development projects, and programs involved in environmental rehabilitation, soil and water conservation, social development, and other forms of support to rural people.

Around 65 percent of the Sahel’s population is rural, and most draw part of their living from natural resources. Sahelian populations are accustomed to drought and the hardships of aridity. Hunter gathering began over 10,000 years ago, but pastoralism is now the dominant productive activity in the northern Sahel. Mobility is vital to maintain access to water and fodder. Herders have benefited from modern technologies like boreholes and veterinary support, but livelihoods are often precarious unless herd sizes are large and markets for meat and hides are reliable. Pastoral and agro-pastoral groups often compete for resources with farmers, who are usually of different ethnicity, and serious land and water conflicts plague the transition zone. Farming dates back 4,000-5,000 years, latterly assisted by iron tools, but not by wheeled transport. Millet and sorghum are the staples, alongside groundnuts. Cotton is commercially competitive, but Sahelian farmers are disadvantaged on the world market. Agriculture is almost entirely reliant on summer rainfall, except along the banks of the major rivers, lakes, and other seasonal watercourses. Households pursue handicrafts alongside livestock rearing, business, and informal labor (particularly in the long dry season), with individuals sometimes migrating for long or short periods to tap into these alternative income streams. Migration to new regions has allowed Sahelian populations relief when they are faced with drought, land pressures, and poor soil quality. There is a huge Sahelian diaspora stretching from the west African coast to Europe and North America, linked by mobile phones, banking systems, and the internet.

Geographer Mike Mortimore’s research demonstrates that farmers and herders adapt to the risks posed by drought and hazards. He disputes the Sahelian crisis image through empirical illustrations of agricultural intensification without modern inputs. Several areas of the Sahel have in fact seen greening in recent years, also due to extensive soil and water conservation and the irregular rains. But others argue that Sahelian households are mining soil nutrients, intensifying farming onto less suitable soils and exacerbating land degradation. Farming rarely benefits from public support or subsidies. The African variant of the Green Revolution failed to generate more reliable yields for Sahelian staples.

Cities are vital to the region’s economy. Some, like Dakar, Bamako, Ouagadougou, Niamey, and Kano predate the colonial period. Major roads and several railways link cities. Urban jobs, however, are concentrated in the informal sector and in the civil service and aid agencies. There is little hope of import substitution, given lingering colonial interests and the cheapness of imports. Nonetheless, there are increasing opportunities for urban speculators to invest in trade, communications, livestock, and farming, and growing linkages between cities and their hinterlands.

Political control of the region has changed hands many times. Camels and horses, introduced by Arab traders, permitted central military control and trading (particularly of gold, salt, and slaves) by the kingdom of Ghana for 300 years, until the 11th century. Saharan Berbers defeated the kingdom of Ghana. The Mali Empire peaked in the 1350s, and the huge Songhai Empire, with elaborate governance structure and a sizeable army, dominated the Sahel until defeated by Moroccans in 1591. Timbuktu, on the banks of the Niger, was its capital and the site of the Islamic university of Sankore. The pastoral Fulani organized and eventually subdued the Hausa and much of the eastern Sahel by the early 1800s, creating a new state that persisted until colonial conquest, alongside the smaller kingdoms like Kanem-Bornu (Nigeria) and the Mossi (Burkina Faso).

Although Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and Britain had long maintained outposts on the west Africa coast for slavery and trading, it was not until 1850 that France extended its control eastwards from the Senegal coast, overrunning the existing ethno-linguistic communities and organized states. France colonized all of the Sahel by the turn of the 20th century, with the exception of Northern Nigeria, The Gambia, and the Cape Verde islands. Because the Sahelian territories had few exploitable resources other than livestock, cotton, and limited minerals, France extracted value through monetary taxation and human labor. Thousands of Sahelians were deployed in plantation agriculture in cottongrowing areas or elsewhere in west Africa, and harsh legal codes were applied in the early years. The colonies were uneconomic, and decolonization occurred swiftly from the mid 1950s.

In the postcolonial period, the record of governments has been mixed. Power was passed to a handful of independence leaders, mostly unelected. Military coups have been frequent, as tensions are played out from religious and ethnic differences and colonial policy. Today’s leaderships are still crippled by persistent national poverty and negative trade balances, and each country has high indebtedness and large international aid contributions. The modern Sahel is experimenting with the devolution of state power, particularly in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Senegal. Decentralization is progressing slowly, largely because of the unwillingness of governments to fully devolve powers, and the limited revenueraising capacity in rural areas. Since the 1970s, when markets were depressed, the Sahelian nations have witnessed an economic transformation, not all of it positive, involving increases in migration and more international trade. Fearing aid dependence, many aid donations are couched as partnership, and debt cancellation is strongly on the agenda.

In summary, the response to the Sahelian droughts of the 1970s and 1980s provoked many changes and substantial investment. However, challenges remain, including persistent poverty, limited access to employment, poor health, social and resource conflicts, land tenure insecurity, and variance in resource entitlements by gender and status. At the national level, the record of governments is checkered, and devolution of state powers is still difficult. The Sahel is seeing a profound transformation in how its people relate to their environment and to each other. Aid, economic adjustment, and modernity and development, though they may transform the Sahel, still coexist with important local traditions and knowledge.

Bibliography:

Land Tenure and Resource Access in West Africa: Issues and Opportunities for the Next Twenty Five Years (International Institute for Environment and Development, 1999);
T.A. Benjaminsen and C. Lund, , Politics, Property and Production in the West African Sahel: Approaches to Natural Resources Management (Nordic Africa Institute/Transaction Publishers, 2001);
Henao and C. Baanante, Agricultural Production and Soil Nutrient Mining in Africa: Implications for Resource Conservation and Policy Development (International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural Development, 2006);
Hulme, “Climatic Perspectives on Sahelian Desiccation: 1973-1998,” Global Environmental Change (v.11/1, 2001);
J. Mortimore and W.M. Adams, Working the Sahel: Environment and Society in Northern Nigeria (Routledge, 1999);
F. Van der Pol, Soil Mining: An Unseen Contributor to Farm Income in Southern Mali (Koninklijk Instituut Voor De Tropen, 1994);
Warren, “The Policy Implications of Sahelian Change,” Journal of Arid Environments (v.63/3, 2005).