Climate crises
A phenomenon can already be observed in the Sahel today that will become more common in the future. Population growth, lawlessness and dwindling resources, accelerated by climate change, are leading to conflicts that leave thousands dead across the Sahel every year.
“Nowhere on Earth is the population growing faster than in the West African Sahel. That this area is at the same time home to the poorest countries is no coincidence. Poverty drives high birth rates, and those make it harder to escape poverty. The longer-term population forecasts for the Sahel are therefore unrealistic. Population figures will not double or triple in the coming decades as has been projected. Under the existing economic conditions and in light of climate change it will be impossible to provide for that many people. Many will leave their homelands or perish from hunger, disease or wars. Only rapid socioeconomic development driven by massive investments in healthcare services, education systems and jobs would be able to prevent this disaster. As soon as people are offered prospects for themselves, birth rates quickly drop and population growth slows down.”
– Reiner Klingholz –
Reiner Klingholz holds a doctorate in chemistry. His research focuses mainly on the devastating impact of homo sapiens on the environment. From 2003 to 2019 he served as managing director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, a think tank on global demographic issues.
Tchika on Lake Chad is a village, that was burnt down as retaliation in an ongoing conflict over the access to grazing land and access to fish between two opposing groups from the same ethnic community of the Bodouma. This conflict has already cost six lives, but tensions run high as the fight over the resources of the lake become a matter of survival for each group if they want to keep on feeding their families.
Chad
Around Lake Chad in Central Africa, climate change has dramatically altered the environment in recent years. Crops are failing. Large areas of the lake have become inaccessible. And because nature can no longer sustain the people who live here, conflict has broken out over the resources that remain. An example of how climate change fuels war.
Scene in a dried up section of Lake Chad. The conflict between migrating pastoralists and farmers in the Sahel is centuries old but becoming increasingly violent due to the impact of climate change and the subsequent pressure on natural resources such as land and access to water. Tens of thousands of people die each year in the wider Lake Chad basin due to tensions over land.
Village chief Mussa Abdoulayi is holding millet, the local crop used mainly on the islands on Lake Chad. Due to the unpredictable weather conditions, with rain falling way later than it used to, harvesting becomes increasingly difficult and the majority of the crops start to rot because of the humidity of the prolonged rainy season.
With the volatile security-situation and changing weather-patterns due to climate change, self-sustainability becomes increasingly difficult for the people around Lake Chad.
Nigerian refugees fleeing Boko Haram can be seen in the Dar es Salam refugee camp in the Lake Chad region. The camp in Bol is giving shelter to around 15.000 Nigerian refugees, that fled the war against Boko Haram in north-eastern Nigeria. Here, the young boys are attending Islamic classes in a makeshift madrassa inside the refugee-camp.
The housing of the refugees is creating tensions with the local people as resources are scarce in the Sahel and particularly so around Lake Chad, with 2,5 million refugees and 10 million people depending on foreign aid.
Scene at a communal manual water pumping station in Baga Sola. The pumps operated by hand are the only ones working reliably. But as the population along the lakeshores is continually rising, the level of ground water is sinking at the same time.
Nigeria
The consequences of these changes to the climate predominantly affect population groups whose livelihoods depend on farming and cattle breeding, for example in Nigeria. Fulani nomads drive their herds hundreds of kilometres to the watering holes in the south of the country. But since more and more people have been competing for water and pastureland that has become increasingly scarce thanks to global warming, conflict between (Christian) farmers and (Muslim) nomads has escalated.
Scene of a group of Fulani herdsmen moving across the Sahel region in Adamawa State, one of the hotspots of the bloody conflict between the Fulani and the mostly Christian farmers of the region.
Picture of a cheap, locally made shotgun-rifle used by both the Fulani as well as the farmers to attack and defend themselves against attacks of the other group.
Portrait of a man in his destroyed house in the Christian village of Dasso under the Numan local government. The village has been attacked and destroyed twice by Fulani herdsmen in retaliation for the killing of their cattle by the farmers, who claim the cattle has been destroying their crops.
Scene with the Christian vigilantes, a group of local hunters from the village of Bare, founded to protect the people of Bare against attacks of the neighboring Fulani community. Armed with poisoned arrows and local shotguns, they patrol around the village, especially during dusk and dawn to spot any possible attacks.
Scene in the riverbed of the river Gongola in Bare, which separates the village of Bare from the Fulani settlements on the other side. But due to the pressure on the local resources because of population growth and insecurity, people from Bare have started working the land on the other side of the river as well, thus increasing the tension in the area even more.
Portrait of Father Daniel Moses in the destroyed Christian village of Dasso. Father Moses still lives in the church premises in Dasso, protected by six Nigerian soldiers guarding the house day and night.
A small Fulani boy in Adamawa State sits next to a calf at the nightly fire, lit to free the cattle from parasites they've caught during the day in the bush.
The cemetery of Dasso, only 1 km away by the main village of Bare to where all the inhabitants of Dasso have fled after the attack, hasn't been used for funerals since month due to the fear of attacks of Fulani.
About the photographer
Andy Spyra, born in 1984 in Hagen, is a German photographer and photojournalist known for his mainly black-and-white photographs from crisis regions. In the spring of 2020 he was one of the last reporters to travel the Sahel before the outbreak of the covid pandemic.
The region has been heavily fought over for years and is characterised by drought, famine, poverty and violence. In his photographs Spyra documents the dramatic impact of global warming on the region. His work reveals how climate change is becoming an accelerant for terror, ethnic conflict and resource wars over water and land, and how violence and hunger drive millions of people to flee their homes.
His photographs have appeared in TIME Magazine, GEO, Stern, FAZ, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and The New Yorker, among others.