While climate change scenarios for the Sahel vary and are uncertain, the most popularized prediction says there will progressively be drier conditions with more erratic rainfall. According to some, an increase in violent conflicts over scarce resources should also be expected. This article investigates the climate–conflict nexus in detail, focusing on a distinct area at the heart of the Sahel, the inland delta of the Niger river in the Mopti region of Mali. Two complementary analytical approaches are applied. The first consists of collection and analysis of court data on land-use conflicts, 1992–2009, from the regional Court of Appeal in Mopti. A comparison of the conflict data with statistics on contemporaneous climatic conditions gives little substance to claims that climate variability is an important driver of these conflicts. Second, we carried out a qualitative analysis of one of the many land-use conflicts in the region. Again, we find that factors other than those directly related to environmental conditions and resource scarcity dominate as plausible explanations of the violent conflict. We argue that three structural factors are the main drivers behind these conflicts: agricultural encroachment that obstructed the mobility of herders and livestock, opportunistic behavior of rural actors as a consequence of an increasing political vacuum, and corruption and rent seeking among government officials.

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Since the Rio+20 conference, 'greening' economies and growth has been key in international politics. Leading policy actors and businesses frame the emerging green economy as an opportunity to realize a triple-bottom line – people, planet and profit – and support sustainable development. In practice, two key trends stand out: in the global North, the main component of the green shift seems to imply technological and market-based solutions in the renewable energy sector. While this is also important in the global South, here green economy implementation is often interpreted as environmental protection along with modernization of, and shifts in access to and control over, natural resources ('green sectors'). In the case of the latter, combined with persisting high rates of poverty, we claim that the post-Rio+20 context has revitalized a 'green' version of modernization to become the leading discourse and approach within international development; namely green modernization. A wide range of development initiatives across the global South – with significant support from international businesses amidst a general private turn of aid – are framed in this light. We use the new, Green Revolution in Africa to illustrate how modernization discourses are reasserted under the green economy. What is new at the current conjuncture is the way in which powerful actors adopt and promote green narratives around long-standing modernization ideas. They recast the modernization trope as 'green.' In particular, we focus our discussion on three linked components; technology and 'productivism', the role of capital and 'underutilized' resources, and, lastly, mobility of land and people.Keywords: green economy; green modernization; the new Green Revolution in Africa; agri-business; climate smart agriculture; development discourse

This paper discusses how persisting, powerful narratives inform and shape the green economy in the Global South. Green economy strategies often evolve around market-based and technological solutions to the planetary crises, particularly in industrialized countries. In developing countries with rich resource bases, however, green transitions often imply various forms of modernization of the ways in which natural resources are managed, utilized and controlled. This, I argue, is a result of the process in which the green economy agenda is shaped by elites through narratives that feed into and inform green economy discourses and policies in resource-rich countries in the Global South. While much literature discusses variegated green economy schemes in the Global South and their outcomes, this paper discusses how these practices and policies are driven by powerful narratives that essentially shape green economy agendas. I argue that a persisting neo-Malthusian narrative of resource scarcity, degradation and overpopulation coexists with a resource abundance narrative, holding that pristine natural resources are vast, but under threat, and that capital, 'know-how' and technology can protect and develop these resources while at the same time accumulate economic growth. As a result, the green economy in the Global South is often narrated and implemented under a discourse of modernization of natural resource management.