Fire and land use change heighten tensions between pastoral nomads and mechanized farmers in Kordofan and White Nile States, Sudan

Environmental degradation and natural resource scarcity are cited as two of the underlying causes of conflict in Sudan. In a study of the rangelands (albaja) of Kordofan and White Nile States, we use biophysical data, interviews, and satellite data to reveal how owners of large-scale, mechanized agriculture operations are progressively modifying the landscape at the expense of pastoral nomads. Our analysis shows that annual vegetation fires are used by the farmers to create buffers around the expanding mechanized farming operations to keep nomads' livestock away. This annual burning in the short term is depriving pastoralists of fodder and in the longer term is degrading the rangeland by favoring tree and grass species unpalatable to livestock. These changes in the landscape render pastoralists and traditional small-scale farmers increasingly marginalized. The competing demands for land are resulting in heightened tensions with parallels to the underlying causes of conflict in the adjacent region of Darfur.