DESERTIFICATION–A NEW SECURITY CHALLENGE FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN? Policy agenda for recognising and coping with fatal outcomes of global

Desertification (representing soil degradation) is one of the three nature-induced (climate change, hydrological cycle) and of three primarily human-induced challenges (population growth, urbanisation and food) of global environmental change. These six components closely interact and contribute to fatal outcomes: primarily to extreme weather events and hydro-meteorological disasters (drought, flash floods, storms) and environmentally-induced migrations. These two fatal outcomes may have – in some cases – societal repercussions that may trigger or contribute to domestic, regional and international crisis and conflicts and thus they may become an issue of both human, societal, national and international security. To illustrate the causal linkages: for example in Morocco in the 1980s and 1990s, the following chain of events could be observed: severe drought, increase in food prices, hunger riots, general strikes, the police and armed forces interfered to repress these violent upheavals and subsequently hundreds of casualties could be deplored. These cases were not listed as a conflict in the relevant conflict data bases. The paper is organised in three parts: In the first part, the complex casual interactions among six factors of global environment change, two fatal outcomes and three societal repercussions: crises, conflicts and conflict avoidance, prevention and resolution will be discussed. In the second part, different security concepts will be reviewed that may be of relevance for dealing with desertification as a security issue. In the third part, possible security relevance pro-active political strategies will be considered, to avoid, and prevent that desertification issues can pose security challenges, and to contribute to a resolution of the desertification driven violence. 11