Environment the key to peace in Sudan, Africa - UN

By Heather Lima Jun 22, 2007, 15:25 GMT

Geneva - Environmental factors hold the key to a long lasting peace in Sudan and other African countries, according to the UN and world church leaders Friday.

A new study on post conflict Sudan carried out by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and published Friday said millions of dollars of investment was needed to try to repair years of neglect.

Competition for dwindling resources has become a more significant source of disputes and that was now exacerbated by climate change, the report said.

Increasing desertification, water shortages and deforestation were the root causes of decades of social strife. Even with 75 per cent of Sudan now at peace, there would be no return to the pre-conflict situation after 22 years.

The scale of climate change in Sudan's northern Darfur was almost unprecedented, said the study.

Parts of Sudan were facing 'ecological collapse,' said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. One of the worst affected places was the war-torn Darfur province.

'In northern Darfur, rainfall has fallen by a third in the past eighty years,' said Steiner. 'Just a few percentage points of reduction in rainfall can translate into a loss of up to 20 per cent of agricultural production.'

Deserts had spread south by up to 100 kilometres in the past forty years and many areas were suffering a 'deforestation crisis' - almost 12 per cent of the country's forests had vanished in just 15 years.

At the same time the country had seen an explosion in agricultural activity with the number of livestock increasing from 27 million to 130 million since the 1960s.

'You have expanding production, demand and use and pressure against a backdrop of a desert line that is moving southwards,' said Steiner.

The Darfur conflict has raged for four years, since rebels from predominantly African tribes attacked government positions in the region, complaining that remote Darfur remained undeveloped due to neglect by Sudan's powerful Islamist regime.

Sudan is charged with unleashing Arab militias known as Janjaweed to crush the rebellion using a savage campaign of rape and murder.

Experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million others been made homeless by the conflict, which has also spilled over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic, displacing tens of thousands more.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) agrees that water shortages was the root of the conflict in Darfur. Disputes between groups of black African farmers and Arab herding communities had spiralled.

It is not just in Sudan - in Kenya more than 60,000 people have been displaced and 200 killed due to a conflict in the Mount Elgon region.

'The conflict is around access to land and water which is fast diminishing,' said the Reverend Maritim Rirei, of the Anglican Church of Kenya which is running peace programmes.

While peace has been restored now to much of Sudan, the UNEP report warns that fighting could easily break out again if pressing environmental issues are ignored.

It proposes spending 120 million US dollars in the next three to five years on more than 80 recommendations involving investment in environmental management, including climate adaptation measures, increasing political awareness and institution building to deal with environmental factors.

With its oil wealth, most of the bill could be picked up by Sudan.

The country was entering a new phase with one of the highest economic rates of growth in Africa and huge investment resources available.

The situation today had been exacerbated by conflict but had arisen from the exhaustion of the resources available.

The UNEP post conflict study was 'very sobering,' said Steiner. 'For millions of displaced people there is no returning to the status quo.'

He said he believed the UNEP study explained a situation that had become untenable. 'It shows that investing in the environment now is not a distraction,' he said. 'It is one of the keys to peace building.'