UN Chief Says Climate Change Fuelling Crisis In Nigeria, Mali, Others

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, on Monday, said that worsening climate conditions is fuelling competition for shrinking resources in the Sahel region of Africa, which includes Northern Nigeria.

Speaking in Geneva, Switzerland, at the 42nd session of the Human Rights Council, Bachelet said climate change will have a telling impact on the political, economic and socio-cultural fabric of the world.

She said, “In the Sahel region of Africa, degradation of arable land is intensifying competition for already scarce resources.

“The world has never seen a threat to human rights of this scope.”

The Thompson Reuters Foundation had in August published a report revealing that satellite footage showed the quantity of grass that sprouted in the desert countries of Mali and Mauritania to be inadequate for the consumption of their roaming cattle herd, due to late rainfall.

With the governments within the West and Central African sub regions unwilling to find a regional solution to nomadic cattle breeding, Nigeria’s fertile Savanah planes and other scarce fertile parts of the two sub regions are bound to experience escalating feuds between cattle and farmers searching for water and hay for their animals.