Geopolitical ecology: Climate change geopolitics and farmer–herder conflicts in West Africa

Abstract

Climate change impacts various social systems and has been linked to conflicts, especially resource conflicts in dry and semi-dry lands of West Africa. Climate change exacerbates conflicts by influencing the migration of pastoralists towards southern West Africa. Thus, resolving farmer–herder conflicts can be placed in the context of addressing climate change impacts. The political imbroglio in negotiating the climate change regime has impacted communities exposed to climate change. The difficulty of reaching a global binding regime that addresses climate change ethically because of power struggles among states defines climate change geopolitics. Climate change geopolitics thus remains a challenge to addressing farmer–herder conflicts and sustainable development goals 15 and 16 concerning sustainable use of land and promoting peace, respectively. This article argues that the geopolitical ecology framework can help analyse the link between climate change geopolitics and farmer–herder conflicts that address the limitation of the eco-violence thesis. Building on the emerging literature on conservation geopolitics dubbed ‘geopolitical ecology’, it demonstrates how integrating the critical geopolitics perspective that has received little attention in the farmer–herder conflicts literature with the blossoming ‘access to resource’ framework of political ecology helps to achieve this.