CCAPS researchers Joshua Busby, Kaiba White, and Todd Smith released a new German Marshall Fund report on climate change and its security implications in North Africa.  North Africa is a strategically important region for Europe and the broader transatlantic policy community.  This paper aims to reach a better understanding of how climate change and physical sources of vulnerability to natural hazards might intersect with North Africa’s various demographic, social, and political challenges.

Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), researchers mapped the confluence of various sources of vulnerability and extracted maps of regional vulnerability from a broader research effort on the entire continent of Africa.  The maps revealed vulnerability across the region to climate change and other risks.

The results lead researchers to conclude that resources and attention need to be directed to the areas and countries where modest to high physical vulnerability to climate change is likely to be worse because of weak governance and low household and community resilience.  These countries include Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, and Niger.

For countries with higher living standards and better governance such as Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, support for these countries should include more information-sharing to help countries address physical vulnerabilities largely through mobilization of their own internal resources.

The German Marshall Fund report is available here.