Environmental degradation in the Greater Horn of Africa: Some impacts and future implications

Environmental degradation has been a major contributory factor in the making of droughts and famines. Writing against the backdrop of the 2009 famine that ravaged the Horn of Africa region, Kidane Mengisteab examines some of the important human activities which have contributed to the region's environmental degradation and their resulting impacts.

THE Horn of Africa has faced an alarming rate of environmental degradation, which has produced famines, massive economic and social dislocations, and widespread resource-based conflicts. Over the last half a century the region's temperature has shown a rising trend while rainfall has had a decreasing trend. During the same time period large parts of the region, which are arid or semi-arid, have faced rapid rates of degradation, in the form of deforestation, loss of vegetation and biodiversity, increased soil erosion, desiccation, and desertification. While the causes for the worsening degradation may not be fully understood, they relate to global climatic changes and various types of local human activities. The actual effects and potential implications of the growing rates of degradation are also hard to map out accurately. There is little doubt, however, that they pose a growing threat to human security in the region.

This article has four objectives. The first part of the article attempts to examine the most important local human activities that have contributed to the region's environmental degradation. The second part examines some of the massive socioeconomic dislocations, including social conflicts, that have resulted from the environmental degradation. The third part attempts to shed light on the future potential implications, if the countries of the region fail to contain the worsening degradation process. The concluding part briefly explores the factors that are likely to hinder the region's ability to contain the pending environmental crisis by linking the region's environmental crisis with its broader socioeconomic conditions.

Factors behind environmental degradation

As noted above, the Horn of Africa's environmental crisis is attributable to two broad factors. One relates to global climatic changes, which have affected many regions of the world, albeit differently. The second relates to regional human activities that lead to changes in land use and land cover. While there is much debate about the factors that cause global climatic changes, there is little doubt that human activities are major culprits. Global deforestation is related to the increase in the emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Changes in land use and land cover are important drivers of water, soil, and air pollution. Vegetation removal by land clearing and harvesting of trees leaves soils vulnerable to erosion. Mining and industrial emissions are also major contributors to global warming through emission of various greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The destruction of the ozone layer by the emission of ozone-depleting substances, including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrous oxide, is said to be a major factor in global climatic changes. Agricultural chemicals, including herbicides and pesticides, are also contaminants of water and soil and pose health risks to humans and animals. Dumping toxic waste in the high seas, which perhaps constitutes the cruelest human activity, has also been a factor of degradation.

The Horn of Africa is one of the regions of the world which have been most seriously affected by the adverse impacts of global climatic changes, although the region is an insignificant player in the production of the industrial emissions that generate global warming. The attention of this article, however, is on the role of regional human factors. A range of human activities have contributed to the degradation of the region's environment. Among them is the rapid population growth that has occurred over the last half a century. The region's population has more than doubled since the early 1960s. As a result, notable changes have taken place in the rate, extent, and intensity of land use and land cover. More land is cleared for agriculture and more trees are cut for construction and firewood. Another regional factor that has contributed to the environmental degradation is the resilience of the peasant and pastoral modes of production. Despite rapid growth in urbanisation, the region still hosts the largest clusters of pastoralists in the world. With a growing population and increasing numbers of livestock and longer and more frequent droughts, overgrazing and shortages of quality pasture have become serious problems in many parts of the region.

Declining standards of living and declining adherence to traditional conservation measures are other factors. Many of the communities in the Horn of Africa, such as the Borona of southern Ethiopia, the Meru and the Mijikenda of central and coastal Kenya respectively, had a strong culture of environmental conservation. With downward pressure on their standard of living, however, their traditional conservation measures are increasingly undermined. Marginal and more vulnerable land is increasingly brought under cultivation and grazing, due to growing land constraint. It is also rather common for peasants and nomads to engage in cutting of trees to sell wood and charcoal in order to earn a living, even though such activities are viewed as undignified, if not socially taboo, in much of the region.

Land takings by the state

Another factor that has exacerbated the degradation of the region's environment is appropriation of communal lands by the state. Oblivious to the land constraint and land-based communal conflicts their populations face, governments in the region have increasingly engaged in awarding land concessions to foreign investors, extinguishing the traditional land rights of their citizens. The governments of the region have been giving land concessions to corporations in extractive industries for decades. In recent years, however, they have also engaged in awarding land to foreign investors in large-scale commercial farming.

Growing food markets in the land or water deficit in Middle Eastern and Asian countries, rising global food prices, and a growing demand for bio-fuels are some of the factors that have stimulated investments in farmlands in the region, as in many other parts of Africa. Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait, along with China, South Korea, and Egypt, are among the newcomers investing in farmland in the Greater Horn region. Sudan and Ethiopia, in particular, have become major targets. Data on the magnitude of land concessions awarded to commercial farmers and on the fate of those stripped of their lands are not easy to assemble, partly because the transactions lack transparency and partly because the process of land-taking is still unfolding. Anecdotal data, however, suggest that land grabs and evictions of peasants and pastoralists are taking place at a rapid rate.

The extractive industries sector is relatively small in the countries of the Horn of Africa. Yet the governments in the region have granted significant land concessions to foreign investors in the sector. Although the exact figures remain unknown, anecdotal evidence suggests that the concessions are significant enough to have an impact on the environment. The countries of the region, with the exception of Djibouti, whose mineral resources seem to be limited, have made efforts to expand their extractive industries.

Despite the absence of accurate estimates, there is little doubt that considerable land is alienated from customary holders in the region. There is also little doubt that the expansion of extractive industries and commercial farming has contributed to environmental degradation both directly and indirectly. Both mining and commercial farming entail the clearing of land, contributing to deforestation, decline in vegetation cover, soil erosion, desiccation and desertification. They also contribute to degradation of the environment by emitting various pollutants to the air, water and soil. Oil spills in Sudan have, for example, become major sources of water and soil pollution.

Land takings have also contributed to the environmental degradation indirectly. They have exacerbated the land, pasture, and water constraints the peasants and nomads in the region face. Such constraints, of course, worsen the problems of overgrazing and over-farming. Since little compensation is given to those who are displaced, the land takings also contribute to the problems of unemployment, underemployment, and declining standards of living of communities, which, in turn, resort to unsustainable use of land and forest resources.

Some critical impacts of the environmental degradation

The environmental degradation has already produced serious socioeconomic problems in the Horn of Africa region. Among the most conspicuous and serious impacts have been famines and food insecurity. With the rains becoming more erratic and droughts becoming more frequent and of longer duration, the Horn of Africa has suffered periodic famines. Ethiopia's 1974 and 1984 famines are the most devastating the region has witnessed in recent years. Beyond these large-scale famines, however, pastoralist and peasant populations in the region regularly face famines and malnutrition, along with livestock starvation. Localised famines have become rather regular occurrences in every country of the region.

The region is also witnessing a growing number of climate refugees. Persistent droughts are forcing peasants and nomads to flock to cities or refugee camps to avoid starvation. The numbers of climate refugees and displacements are difficult to estimate since there are other factors that cause displacements. Climate-induced displacements have become a growing problem. UN officials, for example, estimate that about 10% of the nearly 300,000 refugees at the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya are climate refugees (Edmund Sanders, 25 October 2009).

Water and energy crisis

With increasing frequency of droughts, almost all of the countries in the region are facing growing water and power shortages that are producing serious economic disruptions not only in the peasant and pastoral sectors but also in other sectors of the economy. In July 2009, for example, newspapers in Kenya reported that Lake Kamnarok in Kenya's Rift Valley dried up. The death of the lake brought about the doom of wildlife including an estimated 10,000 crocodiles. Water points in Lake Nakuru National Park also dried up while Lake Naivasha shrank considerably. Nairobi's three reservoirs at Ndakaini, Sasumua, and Mambasa were also dangerously low, causing a water crisis in Nairobi. In addition, the critical power-generating station on the Tana River in Kenya had to be shut down due to a fall in its dam's water levels, causing power shortages. Some factories had to shut down in Nakuru, including Flamingo Bottlers, Coil Product Kenya Limited and Kapi Limited, due to the water crisis.

During the same period Ethiopia witnessed the death of Lake Haramaya in the Oromiya region. The country had also to engage in water and electricity rationing, due to low water levels of power-generating dams. Shortage of water caused the rationing of power, which is likely to have affected the country's overall economy. Even gas stations in various parts of the country were either idle or operating in shifts, due to rationing of power.

The water and energy crisis is not limited to Kenya and Ethiopia. Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and even parts of Uganda have also faced serious drought problems. The dry river bed that cuts through Hargeisa, in Somaliland, gives no indication that the city of roughly 900,000 inhabitants once was blessed with a river flowing through it.

Soil erosion, decline of productivity and extreme poverty

Even when the rains come, they have been of shorter duration. They have also been erratic, sporadic, and torrential, causing massive soil erosion. While topsoil is said to be Ethiopia's largest export, all the other countries in the region face serious erosion problems. A combination of droughts when the rains fail and massive soil erosion when they come has, thus, subjected the inhabitants of the region to declining agricultural productivity and quality of pastures and has made their way of life increasingly more precarious.

Communal conflicts

Another major problem associated with environmental degradation is communal conflicts. The relationship between environmental degradation and conflict is often disputed (Salehyan, 2008). The Horn of Africa, however, provides several cases of conflicts which are at least exacerbated if not entirely caused by environmental degradation.

There is little doubt, for instance, that the worsening environmental degradation has undermined the institutional mechanisms that govern access to land and water in the region. Incursions of pastoralists across customary communal and international boundaries in search of water and pasture have become common occurrences and have led to various clashes in the region. The gruesome conflict in Darfur clearly has links with dislocations brought about by environmental degradation, albeit largely indirectly. Water and land scarcity engendered by persistent droughts have undermined the traditional institutions that governed access to these vital resources by the different claimants, thereby creating conditions for conflicts.

The periodic conflicts between the Borona and Guji and Borona and Somali populations in south-eastern Ethiopia are also, at least in part, caused by shortages of water and pasture exacerbated, if not triggered, by environmental conditions. Environmental degradation is also a factor in the conflicts between the Turkana, Pokot and Karamoja and those between the Pian Karamojong and Bokora ethnic groups in Kenya and Uganda. Cattle rustling, due to depletion of stock by droughts, has also led to many inter-communal conflicts in the region, including those between the Lou-Nuer and Murle groups in the Jonglei of Southern Sudan.

At state level, water scarcity is beginning to build tensions among countries. Ethiopia and Kenya have, for example, faced tensions over the waters of the Gilgel Gibe III hydroelectric dam, under construction by Ethiopia over a section of the Omo River that supplies water to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. The concern on the part of Kenya is, of course, that the construction of the dam might lead to reduction of the volume of water flowing to Lake Turkana. The water flow to the lake should not be affected significantly by the dam, provided that the dam is used for hydroelectric power generation only. The Nile countries have also, so far, failed to reach an agreement on how to share the Nile water.

Health problems

The water and energy crisis has, of course, tremendous implications for the overall economy of the region. It also has serious implications for health. Cases of cholera are, for example, said to be rising in the region, due to sanitation problems.

Wildlife-human conflicts

Shortage of agricultural land and pasture is also a major threat to the co-existence of humans and wildlife as they have to compete for the same resources. The lucrative tourist industry in the region can be damaged if the wildlife habitat is not protected.

Future potential implications of unmitigated environmental degradation

The more the environment is degraded, the more unsustainable land use patterns become, as noted earlier. There is thus little reason to expect that the degradation trend of the last half a century will not continue at an accelerated rate without sustained intervention by all stakeholders in the region, especially the states. If the trend is allowed to continue, the implications for human security in the region are likely to be grave.

One potential implication is that the region can face mega-droughts that lead to worsening poverty rates and widespread famines. More frequent occurrences of such conditions are, in turn, likely to bring about the end of the traditional subsistence farming and nomadic modes of production. These two economic systems, which currently employ over 70% of the region's population, would simply cease to be viable. The region will then face a rapid and large-scale rural-urban migration.

The states of the region under their existing economic systems are simply unlikely to be able to deal with such demographic movements. Huge rates of urban unemployment and urban congestion, along with poor health and educational services, can make the region more unstable than it already is. All these problems are also likely to be exacerbated by lower growth rates, due to increasingly punishing temperatures. The region would also likely lose some of its exports, including livestock and cash crops, which will contribute to a general economic crisis triggered by worsening water and energy shortages.

Can the degradation process be reversed?

As pointed out at the outset of the article, the Horn of Africa's environmental degradation is attributable to global climatic changes and regional human activities. Reversing the global factors, even if possible, is beyond the region's control. Controlling the regional human activities, which contribute to the degradation by changing land use and land cover patterns, is within the region's reach, however. It is also possible, at least theoretically, to reverse the degradation process since there are many policy options that can positively change land use and land cover patterns in the region. Development policy geared towards transforming the subsistence farmers and pastoralists can, for example, create non-farming jobs for those interested in moving to new occupations. This will relieve the land and pasture pressure currently faced by the populations in the most degraded areas and enable them to practise more sustainable resource-use measures. Land cover can also be gradually restored by controlling overgrazing and cutting of trees as well as through large-scale reforestation activities. Rural electrification is also likely to help reduce reliance on wood energy and the cutting of trees for fuel.

Reversing the degradation process would be neither easy nor quick; nevertheless, policies such as those identified above can slowly begin to rehabilitate the environment. The restorative process, however, requires political commitment by the states of the region to reorient their development strategy. It also requires their ability to coordinate the efforts of all stakeholders. Failure by a single country, especially one of the larger ones, such as Ethiopia, to implement the restorative policies can undermine the efforts of all the rest, since the effects of environmental degradation cannot be confined to national boundaries. Whether the region's alarming degradation process is reversed or the region continues in its present trajectory will thus depend on the political will of the states of the region to reorient their development strategies and to coordinate their restorative measures.

Reasons for pessimism

Given the prevailing political conditions in the region, however, one can hardly be optimistic that the region will rise to the challenge and take the urgently needed measures to reverse the degradation process. The environmental degradation is not the only crisis the Greater Horn has faced. As a matter of fact, the environmental crisis is only one aspect of the general socioeconomic crisis that has ravaged the region.

It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss in detail the region's general socioeconomic conditions. However, it is essential to at least identify the various challenges in order to be able to gauge the region's ability to address the environmental challenges. Among the most critical problems that afflict all the countries of the region are: (1) a crisis of nation-building manifested by various ethnic and religious conflicts; (2) a crisis of state-building manifested by regimes that see politics as a zero-sum game and are preoccupied with monopolising power rather than developing institutions of good governance; (3) opposition groups that mostly aspire to trade places with those in power; (4) a general population that has not yet been able to organise and bring the state under its control; (5) regimes that are incapable of adopting development strategies that advance the interests of their populations; (6) regimes that easily become agents of external powers and interests in an effort to secure external support in extending their stay in power; and (7) regimes that are incapable of promoting meaningful regional cooperation, manifested by the various direct and proxy wars they wage against each other.

Given these conditions, the region is unlikely to effectively address the environmental challenge. Sadly, it seems disaster-bound.             

Kidane Mengisteab is a professor at the Department of African and African-American Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. The above is extracted from a chapter in the book Horn of Africa and Peace: The Role of the Environment (edited by Ulf Johansson Dahre, Somalia International Rehabilitation Centre and Lund Horn of Africa Forum, Department of Economic History, Lund University, 2010).

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*Third World Resurgence No. 251/252, July/August 2011, pp 8-12