Desertification, Refugees and Regional Conflict in West Africa

This article documents the potential for inter‐state conflict in the migration of hundreds of thousands of famine refugees across international borders in West Africa. Nigeria and Ghana, for example, have to deal not only with the effects of land degradation in their northern territories but also with the influx of famine victims from Mali, Niger, Chad and Burkino Faso. These migrations put an enormous extra burden on the fragile and already overstretched social and economic infrastructures of the host countries. The construction of dams for irrigation and electricity generation in international river basins, is another cause of inter‐state conflict related to land degradation. The capacity of West African states to find peaceful solutions to these problems is being undermined by the increasing impoverishment and marginalisation of their populations. A self‐serving neo‐colonialist governing elite is caught in the economic stranglehold of the advanced capitalist nations. While there is thus no short term solution to the problem of land degradation, immediate steps should at least be taken to give legal protection to those who are forced to cross international borders because of drought and famine. Copyright © 1990, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved