Introduction
In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the Sahel has become one of the regions where global security concerns and environmental crises overlap most sharply. Stretching between the Sahara Desert and the tropical zones, this wide climatic belt has historically been home to nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples. Over the past decade, however, the region has emerged as an epicentre of both climatic shifts and violent conflict. Today the Sahel is associated with poverty, political instability, foreign military interventions, and the steady spread of terrorism. Climate change in this region acts both as a process of ecological degradation and as a systemic threat multiplier that deepens existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities, ethnic tensions, and governance gaps. Climatic variability is eroding the basic livelihoods of local communities. At the same time, it intensifies competition over scarce natural resources, allowing local disputes to escalate into national and regional security crises. In this way, the climate crisis in the Sahel produces socioeconomic pressures that, in turn, fuel violent conflict.
The Climatic Profile of the Sahel and Warming Trends
Because of its biophysical features, the Sahel is one of the most exposed regions in the world to climatic shocks. Its semi-arid climate sharply limits the region’s capacity to adapt and undermines traditional coping mechanisms. The most recent figures available indicate that warming in the Sahel is advancing far faster than the global average and is placing severe pressure on regional ecosystems.
The Sahel is one of the fastest-warming regions on the planet. Between 1961 and 1990, the average temperature increase in the region was 0.2 °C, but between 1991 and 2022 it climbed to 0.3 °C. This means the region is warming roughly 1.5 times faster than the global average, according to the IPCC. The extreme heatwaves recorded across Mali and Burkina Faso in March and April 2024 made the destructive potential of this trend painfully clear. In the Malian city of Kayes, record temperatures of 48.5°C were logged. Hospitals in Bamako reported a sharp rise in sudden deaths during these episodes. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), temperatures in the Sahel are projected to rise by at least 2°C in the short term, between 2021 and 2040, according to its assessments. By the end of the century, temperatures are expected to climb by between 3°C and 6°C, according to current estimates. Such temperature increases are not simply numbers on a thermometer; they translate into the loss of soil moisture, the rapid evaporation of water resources, and the outright collapse of agricultural production.
Rainfall patterns in the Sahel are highly sensitive to shifts in sea surface temperatures. Over the past three decades, the region has seen a sharp rise in the frequency of both severe droughts and destructive floods. What is changing is less the total amount of rainfall than its character: precipitation now tends to be shorter but far more intense. These bursts overwhelm the soil’s absorption capacity, triggering flash floods that drive erosion and damage infrastructure. Since 2022, droughts and floods have severely disrupted crop production in parts of the region. In the same period, flooding has displaced thousands of communities in countries such as Niger and Mali, deepening an already fragile humanitarian situation.
Access to water is a strategic constraint in the Sahel. In Burkina Faso, around 50 percent of the population lacks reliable access to safe drinking water; and the country ranks 177th out of 182 nations on this measure. In Mali, the recharge rate of critical aquifers in the south such as the Klela basin could fall by as much as 49 percent by 2050, according to studies. Land degradation, or the steady advance of desertification, is one of the gravest threats facing communities that depend on traditional farming and pastoralism. In Niger alone, between 100,000 and 120,000 hectares of arable land are lost each year to soil erosion. At the regional level, around 65 percent of soils are degraded to varying degrees, undermining the long-term viability of the rural economy.
Economic Vulnerability and the Erosion of Livelihoods
Sahelian economies rest heavily on agriculture and livestock, two sectors that are extremely sensitive to climate. This structural dependence means that every additional degree of warming translates directly into hunger and household poverty.
Yields of staple crops such as maize, millet, and sorghum have already suffered serious declines due to climate change. By 2050, losses of up to 50 percent in the productivity of these crops are projected. As a general rule for tropical regions, every 1°C rise in average temperature cuts staple-crop yields by roughly 10 percent. In Niger, cereal production fell by 12 percent during the 2019-2020 season. This loss in productivity feeds straight into food prices, eroding household consumption and driving chronic food insecurity. In 2023, around 45,000 people in the Sahel experienced catastrophic levels of hunger.
Pastoralism is the Sahel’s most important historical adaptation strategy in the face of ecological uncertainty. Yet shrinking pastures and drying water sources are pushing pastoralist communities such as the Fulani off their traditional routes. Over the past three decades, ecological zones have shifted between 50 and 200 kilometres south, sharply narrowing available grazing land. Herders are forced to descend earlier, and stay longer, in the southern areas where farmland is concentrated. This forced movement is fuelling violent disputes between settled farming communities and mobile herders over land use and water access.
Security Problems
Security crises in the Sahel have taken on a multi-dimensional character as climatic pressures activate social and political fault lines. The region has long been marked by clashes between settled farmers and nomadic herders. Climate change acts as a multiplier on these conflicts, systematically raising both their frequency and their intensity. Evidence from across the Sahel shows that competition over dwindling water sources is increasingly the trigger for such confrontations. In Nigeria, fighting between Fulani herders and farmers between 2016 and 2018 left more than 3,600 people dead. These confrontations typically run along ethnic lines. Fulani communities are widely identified with pastoralism, while farming communities tend to come from different ethnic groups. The combination of pure resource competition with ethnic grievances pushes the violence into more personal, revenge-driven cycles.
Terrorist organisations active in the region, such as JNIM and IS-Sahel, exploit climate-driven economic desperation and state weakness to their advantage. These groups attract support for both ideological and pragmatic reasons.
For a young person whose harvest has been wiped out by drought or whose livestock has died, joining an armed group can become a survival strategy. Radical groups exploit this need by promising wages, food, and protection. Five years ago, a typical militant’s monthly salary was around 600 dollars, with bonuses of up to 800 dollars paid out to those who actually carried out attacks.
In rural areas beyond the state’s reach, terrorist organisations step into the role of arbitrator in land and water disputes. The Katiba Macina group in Mali, for instance, sets its own rules for access to pasture, building social legitimacy in the process. Where the state cannot provide basic services, these groups behave like a parallel administration, trying to make local communities dependent on them.
Human Mobility: A Migration and Displacement Crisis
Climate change in the Sahel is also driving waves of migration. In Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, what was once a long-standing adaptation strategy has now turned into a crisis. Migration flows in Niger rose by 34 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year. Climate change is forcing households from their homes through both flash floods and prolonged droughts. This mobility is not just a demographic shift; it also signals new security risks. Most of those displaced remain inside their own countries and concentrate around major cities.
The unplanned settlements that have sprung up around cities like Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey are placing public services under severe strain. Young people who reach these cities and cannot find work become easy targets for criminal networks and the urban cells of radical groups. In areas where resources are already scarce, friction also develops between local populations and newly arrived migrants, driven by exclusion and competition over what little is available.
The 2026 Food Security Outlook and Humanitarian Situation
Climate-driven shocks, a fuel crisis, and ongoing conflicts are pushing the Sahel into a nutrition emergency in 2026. Data from the FAO and WFP confirms that the region is on the brink of disaster. According to analyses published in January 2026, around 52.8 million people across West Africa and the Sahel are expected to face acute food insecurity between June and August 2026. That figure represents a 26 percent increase compared with the same period the previous year. In Borno State, Nigeria, more than 15,000 people are at risk of slipping into “Phase 5” (Catastrophic Famine), according to current assessments. Phase 5 is the highest and most dangerous level on the international food security scale (IPC). It signals that mass starvation has begun in a given area and that people are dying directly from hunger.
While needs in the region are growing, international humanitarian assistance is shrinking sharply. Only 19 percent of UNHCR’s 2025 funding appeal was actually met. The budget required for the humanitarian response plan in Mali fell from 285 million dollars in 2024 to 141 million dollars in 2025. This funding gap is forcing health facilities to close and depriving children of nutritional support.
Despite the depth of the crisis, Sahelian countries and international organisations are launching a range of initiatives aimed at preventing climate stress from sliding fully into a security crisis. These efforts treat adaptation to climate change not just as an economic goal, but as a peace strategy that helps avert conflict.
The Liptako-Gourma Climate, Peace and Security Action Plan (2026-2030)
The Liptako-Gourma Authority (LGA) has launched the world’s first “National Strategic and Action Plans on Climate, Peace and Security.” A budget of around 500 billion CFA francs (approximately 820 million US dollars) has been earmarked for implementation. The plan frames environmental restoration as a form of peace infrastructure. By restoring land in border zones, it aims to ease competition between farmers and herders and, in doing so, narrow the recruitment base for terrorist groups. Through infrastructure investments that distribute water more fairly between stakeholders, it also seeks to rebuild the social contract.
Launched in 2007, the Great Green Wall Initiative aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. As of 2024, around 30 percent of that target (some 30 million hectares) has been achieved. However, owing to terrorist activity, political instability, and underfunding, the project is at risk of collapsing in parts of the region, according to recent reports. Projects such as the “Olympic Forest”, established jointly with the IOC in Mali and Senegal, are trying to build resilience by integrating native species back into local economies.
Future Impacts of the Climate Crisis
Mali, where temperatures are projected to rise by between 1.2°C and 3.6°C by 2060, is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the region. The country’s low Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.43 points to weak societal resilience. The fact that as much as 80 percent of the workforce is employed in agriculture ties the economy directly to weather and climate events. Within this fragile structure, around 3.6 million people are currently struggling with food insecurity. Erratic rainfall and sudden flash floods remain the country’s most critical climate risks.
Niger faces the highest projected temperature rise of the countries examined here, with increases of up to 4°C anticipated. With an estimated HDI of 0.40, it has the lowest level of human development on the list. Around 70 percent of the population depends on agriculture for its livelihood. This leaves the country highly exposed to environmental disasters such as desertification and chronic drought. With 2.4 million people already food insecure, rising temperatures are expected to push agricultural productivity even lower.
Burkina Faso, with an HDI of 0.45, looks relatively better off than its neighbours, yet it still faces serious environmental challenges. Temperatures are expected to rise by as much as 4.2°C by 2080, according to current projections. Although the share of the workforce in agriculture is lower than in the other two countries, sitting between 25 and 50 percent, the fact that 3.2 million people are food insecure shows that the situation remains serious. The biggest ecological threats to the country’s future are water stress and soil erosion.
Conclusion
The crisis in the Sahel is too complex to be reduced to any single cause; climate change, however, plays the role of a “risk multiplier” that pushes the situation toward becoming unmanageable. Climate-related shocks dismantle traditional livelihoods and deepen poverty, which in turn inflames ethnic tensions and creates fertile ground for radical groups to recruit fighters and build local support.
Lasting stability in the Sahel depends on the close integration of security strategies with climate adaptation policies. Military operations can only succeed where they are backed by land restoration and the fair management of natural resources. The international community must therefore go beyond military equipment in its assistance and help build a “green social contract” that restores people’s trust in their land and their future. Every investment in climate resilience, in this sense, is one of the most effective blows that can be struck against terrorism.
