A2 · Elementary
9 min
climategeopoliticsafricaenvironmentconflict
The Sahel: When Climate Makes a War
El Sahel: Cuando el Clima Crea una Guerra
Russia confirms it will keep its forces in Mali to fight extremism. But behind that decision lies something deeper: the Sahel, one of the most climate-stressed regions on earth, where drought and desertification are fueling a conflict no outside army can solve.
Rusia confirma que mantendrá sus tropas en Malí para luchar contra el extremismo. Pero detrás de esa decisión hay algo más profundo: el Sahel, una de las regiones más castigadas por el cambio climático del mundo.
8 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| seco | dry | El río está seco en el verano. |
| lluvia | rain | No hay lluvia en esta región. |
| tierra | land, earth, soil | La tierra está muy seca aquí. |
| agua | water | Las personas necesitan agua para vivir. |
| hace calor | it is hot (weather expression) | En el Sahel hace mucho calor. |
| árbol | tree | Hay pocos árboles en el desierto. |
| trabajo | work, job | No hay trabajo para los jóvenes. |
| zona | zone, area | Esta zona es muy seca en verano. |
Russia announced this week that its forces are staying in Mali.
And my first reaction was: of course they are.
But then I started pulling the thread, and the thing underneath the military story is actually a climate story.
Sí, Malí tiene un problema muy grande.
Yes, Mali has a very big problem.
El clima cambia mucho allí.
The climate changes a lot there.
Right, and I want to make sure we actually explain that, because I think most people hear "Mali" and they picture the conflict, they picture the jihadist groups, they picture the coups.
They don't necessarily connect it to what's happening to the land.
El Sahel es una zona muy seca.
The Sahel is a very dry zone.
Hay muy poca lluvia.
There is very little rain.
The Sahel, for anyone who needs the geography, is a belt of semi-arid land that runs across Africa just below the Sahara.
It stretches from Senegal in the west all the way to Ethiopia in the east.
Mali sits right in the middle of it.
El Sahara crece cada año.
The Sahara grows every year.
Es un problema muy serio.
It is a very serious problem.
The Sahara is expanding southward, into the Sahel, at a rate scientists find genuinely alarming.
We're not talking about a slow geological process.
Farmers who were growing millet a generation ago are watching the soil turn to dust in their lifetimes.
Los agricultores no tienen agua.
The farmers have no water.
No tienen comida.
They have no food.
Esto es muy difícil.
This is very hard.
And when farmers can't grow food, they move.
And when they move, they compete with other communities for whatever land is left.
And that competition turns violent.
That's not a metaphor, that's documented.
Los pastores y los agricultores pelean por la tierra.
Herders and farmers fight over land.
Siempre hay problemas.
There are always problems.
That conflict between herders and farmers, it goes back centuries in the Sahel.
But climate change is turning up the pressure on a system that was already under strain.
Less water, less land, more people, more weapons.
Y los grupos extremistas usan este problema.
And extremist groups use this problem.
Dicen: ven con nosotros.
They say: come with us.
That's the piece I kept coming back to when I was reading about the Russian announcement.
The jihadist groups operating in Mali, in Burkina Faso, in Niger, they're not just ideological recruiters.
They're offering young men with no land and no income a wage and a purpose.
Un chico sin trabajo, sin tierra...
A boy with no job, no land...
el grupo extremista dice: hay dinero aquí.
the extremist group says: there is money here.
Exactly.
And that's what makes this so hard to solve with soldiers.
You can't shoot your way out of a desertification crisis.
Francia intentó esto por muchos años.
France tried this for many years.
No funciona solo con soldados.
It doesn't work with soldiers alone.
France had troops in Mali for nearly a decade, Operation Barkhane, and they killed a lot of jihadists.
They also made a lot of enemies.
The Malian government eventually told them to leave in 2022, and the Wagner Group, which is now rebranded as the Africa Corps, walked right in.
Los rusos llegaron muy rápido.
The Russians arrived very quickly.
El gobierno de Malí quería ayuda.
The Mali government wanted help.
And Russia, to be completely direct about this, is not in Mali because it cares about the Sahelian climate emergency.
Russia is in Mali because Mali has gold, uranium, and a government that was happy to pay in resource contracts.
Sí, Malí tiene mucho oro.
Yes, Mali has a lot of gold.
Es muy importante para Rusia.
It is very important for Russia.
What's almost darkly poetic about it is that the resources Russia is extracting, the gold especially, require enormous water use in processing.
In a country that's running out of water.
There's a word for that kind of arrangement, and it isn't "partnership."
Para los malienses, la situación es muy difícil.
For Malians, the situation is very hard.
El agua es un tesoro.
Water is a treasure.
Let's go back a bit, because I want to establish how bad the numbers actually are.
The Sahel has warmed at roughly one and a half times the global average rate since the 1970s.
That's not a rounding error, that's a structural difference.
En el norte de Malí, hay zonas donde no llueve casi nunca.
In northern Mali, there are areas where it almost never rains.
And the Lake Chad situation is the most dramatic illustration of this.
Lake Chad, which borders Mali's eastern neighbors, has lost more than ninety percent of its surface area since the 1960s.
Ninety percent.
Entire fishing communities built around a lake that no longer exists.
El lago Chad era muy grande.
Lake Chad was very big.
Ahora es muy pequeño.
Now it is very small.
Es increíble.
It's incredible.
I covered a story near that region back in the early 2000s, and even then fishermen were talking about how their fathers had cast nets in places that were already scrubland.
The lake was visibly retreating within living memory.
That image has never really left me.
Las personas van al sur, a las ciudades.
People go south, to the cities.
Las ciudades tienen muchos problemas también.
The cities also have many problems.
Bamako, the capital of Mali, has roughly tripled in population since 1990.
Tripled.
And the infrastructure, the water, the sanitation, the housing, hasn't come close to keeping up.
Hay mucha gente y hay poco trabajo.
There are many people and there is little work.
Es una combinación muy mala.
It is a very bad combination.
And here's where I want to push back slightly on the framing that this is purely an African problem or a regional problem.
The Sahel is responsible for almost nothing in terms of historical carbon emissions.
Mali's entire carbon footprint is a rounding error compared to the United States, to China, to Germany.
Malí no usa mucho petróleo, no tiene muchas fábricas.
Mali does not use much oil, it does not have many factories.
Pero sufre mucho el cambio climático.
But it suffers a lot from climate change.
It's one of the most glaring injustices in the entire climate debate.
The countries that contributed least to the problem are absorbing the worst consequences.
And the international response, more troops, more counterterrorism, more resource extraction deals, addresses none of that underlying reality.
Sí, hay mucho dinero para los soldados.
Yes, there is a lot of money for soldiers.
Pero hay poco dinero para el agua, para los árboles.
But there is little money for water, for trees.
The Great Green Wall.
Tell me what you know about that, because it's one of the more ambitious things happening in that part of the world right now.
La Gran Muralla Verde es un plan para plantar árboles.
The Great Green Wall is a plan to plant trees.
Muchos países trabajan juntos.
Many countries work together.
It's an African Union initiative, launched in 2007, to grow an eight-thousand-kilometer wall of trees and vegetation across the entire width of the continent, right along the southern edge of the Sahara.
If it works, it's supposed to restore a hundred million hectares of degraded land by 2030.
Es una buena idea, pero es muy difícil.
It is a good idea, but it is very difficult.
Necesita mucho dinero, mucha agua.
It needs a lot of money, a lot of water.
About fifteen percent of the target had been achieved as of the last major assessment.
Which is...
not nothing.
But it's a long way from what was promised, and the funding, predictably, has been inconsistent.
Los países ricos prometieron dinero.
Rich countries promised money.
Pero a veces no pagan.
But sometimes they don't pay.
Es un problema grande.
It is a big problem.
And that gap between the promise and the follow-through, that's where Russia walks in.
Not with trees, but with guns and mercenaries and a flag to plant.
And the Malian government, facing an insurgency and watching the land dry up, took what was on offer.
Si los países ricos ayudan más, quizás Malí no necesita a Rusia.
If rich countries help more, maybe Mali doesn't need Russia.
Pero es complicado.
But it is complicated.
That's a fair point, and it's an uncomfortable one.
The Russian presence in Mali is partly a story about Russian opportunism, but it's also partly a story about the vacuum that everyone else left.
You can't be absent and then be surprised when someone else shows up.
Y los malienses pagan con su oro, su tierra.
And Malians pay with their gold, their land.
No es justo tampoco.
That is not fair either.
Nobody comes out of this looking good, honestly.
And the people least responsible for any of it, the farmers watching their fields turn to desert, the women walking four hours for water, they're the ones absorbing the cost.
Oye, antes dijiste "la tierra se seca".
Hey, you said earlier "the land dries up".
En español, hay una palabra especial para eso.
In Spanish, there is a special word for that.
Wait, I said it right for once and there's still a lesson coming?
Go on then.
Sí.
Yes.
Decimos "seco" o "seca" para describir algo sin agua.
We say "seco" or "seca" to describe something without water.
"El suelo está seco." "El río está seco."
"The ground is dry." "The river is dry."
So "seco" changes depending on whether the noun is masculine or feminine.
The ground, "el suelo", is masculine, so it's "seco".
The land, "la tierra", is feminine, so you'd say "la tierra está seca".
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y también: "hace mucho calor" para describir el clima.
And also: "hace mucho calor" to describe the weather.
"Hace calor" es muy útil.
"It is hot" is very useful.
"Hace calor." It's hot.
I like that.
Spanish uses "hace", literally "it makes heat", which is a construction English just doesn't have.
We say "it is hot" but you say "it makes heat." Languages reveal what people care about.
En el Sahel, siempre dice la gente: "hace mucho calor." Y cada año es peor.
In the Sahel, people always say: "it is very hot." And every year it is worse.