It is increasingly realised that mitigation and adaptation should not be pursued independently of each other but as complements. Integrating mitigation and adaptation into climate change concerns is not a completely new idea in the African Sahel where the local populations in this region, through their indigenous knowledge systems, have developed and implemented extensive mitigation and adaptation strategies that have enabled them to reduce their vulnerability to past climate variability and change.

Using a human security perspective, this report identifies and analyses local and international non-governmental organisation (NGO) interventions in cases of conflicts related to the environment and environmental change in the southern Sahel of Sudan. The research largely focused on conflicts between and within pastoralist, agro-pastoralist and farmer communities in the context of these same challenges – making the argument and then building on the premise that the study area is relevant from which to draw lessons for climate adaption.

This study aims to understand the extent to which refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) have perceived, experienced and responded to climatic variability and long-term negative climatic change in the east and Horn of Africa. The report is based on discussions with 150 IDPs and refugees from Ethiopia and Uganda, many of whom were farmers and pastoralists from Eritrea, Somalia and eastern Sudan.