海角大神

鈥�A version of this post first appeared on the blog Africa in Transition. The views expressed are the author's own.聽

Recent聽protests in Turkey and Brazil聽are being lionized in the聽financial press聽as products of rising prosperity in 鈥渄eveloping鈥� countries, where economic growth grates against stagnant institutions. Yet simultaneously another powerful force is also聽engendering violent social unrest and revealing institutional deficiencies:聽climate change.聽

Ohio State University professor Geoffrey Parker argues in his new book,聽Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century,聽that聽鈥渢he experience of the seventeenth聽century聽shows that long-term turbulence and unreliability of the weather inevitably produces calamitous outcomes for humanity.鈥� Civil unrest, conflict, disease, government collapse, and commercial disruption are among the dire consequences.

For Parker, close study of the past, of how governments and people coped with climatic catastrophe in previous centuries, can yield聽valuable lessons for dealing with such disasters today. But 鈥渄enial 鈥� the commonest human reaction to environmental catastrophe,鈥� is an obstacle.

鈥淭he worsening droughts, desiccation, and desertification in equatorial Africa over the past forty years have caused massive migrations, famines, and wars that resemble those of the mid-seventeenth century; yet the rest of the world does virtually nothing,鈥� Mr. Parker wrote in an article five years ago. We want to believe that climate change is not happening yet, or at least not to us, he says.

But in Africa, its effects are undeniable and likely to dwarf those of 鈥渂ooming鈥� middle classes. According to a 1990 paper by Ahmadu Bello University professor聽Sabo Bako, members of the Maitatsine sect, active in northern Nigeria in the 1980s and described as the 鈥渇orerunner鈥� of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, included victims of ecological disasters that left them in 鈥渁 chaotic state of absolute poverty and social dislocation in search of food, water, shelter, jobs, and means of livelihood.鈥� 聽Climatic factors are cited in analyses of Boko Haram鈥檚 emergence and, in the view of聽one Nigerian security official, religious violence in the country is strongly correlated with environmental stress.

Terrorism and jihadist ideology dominate analysis of groups such as Boko Haram. But Parker suggests a different approach:聽rewind the tape of history as a means of bringing to light 350 year old coping strategies that could help manage what looks to be the world鈥檚 crisis around climate change. Such strategies are needed in Africa today.