Land of the Fur’: using complex systems science to unpack the relationship between climate change, racialized, gendered and ethnopolitical violence during the genocide in Darfur

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between climate change and racial genocide. Drawing on Complex Systems Science it provides an original analysis of the 2003-2005 conflict in Darfur. It connects the genocidal and reproductive violence(s) committed against black African Darfuri males to environmental, gendered and racial institutional and interpersonal causal factors. Genocidal violence included rape and sex-selective killing, while reproductive violence involved acts of genital harm. I argue that in order to understand the nature and the causes of the genocide in Darfur one must connect phenomena in the natural/physical world - the earth’s climate system - with phenomena located in the social world: gender roles, gendered hierarchies and political institutions. Droughts are caused by severe rainfall shortages. They are extreme weather events caused by climate variability. This analysis reviews the cascade effect of the drought in Darfur, specifically in relation to the racialized, gendered and ethnopolitical violence(s) that followed