Climate stress, pastoral mobility and hybrid security risks in the Sahel

The Sahel is currently a key place to study the interaction between environmental pressures, competition for resources and security dynamics. Rising temperatures, variability in rainfall, desertification and recurrent droughts are undermining traditional livelihoods and increasing pressure on natural resources. Pastoral mobility, which has played a fundamental role in socio-economic resilience, is undergoing a major transformation in this context. In contexts marked by institutional weaknesses and the expansion of armed actors, community tensions increase due to the scarcity of pastures and uncertain access to water. However, this study seeks to answer the following question: How does climate stress transform pastoral mobility in the Sahel and contribute to the emergence of hybrid political-security crises? Recent advances in climate-security research seek to move beyond narrowly military conceptions of security by incorporating human, social, political, and environmental dimensions. In the Sahel, competition over resources, the fragmentation of pastoral spaces, and the militarization of territories contribute to the emergence of hybrid threats combining economic vulnerability, local conflict, and insecurity. This article examines how climate stress reshapes pastoral mobility and how these transformations interact with resource competition, governance weaknesses, and security dynamics in the Sahel. It is based on a qualitative approach that combines literature review, case studies (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso) and empirical analyses, in an interdisciplinary field that integrates human security and political ecology. The findings suggest that climate stress contributes to insecurity indirectly by altering resource availability, livelihood conditions, and pastoral mobility, particularly where these pressures interact with weak governance, contested resource access, existing insecurity, and armed-actor strategies. Rather than treating pastoral mobility merely as an outcome of climate stress, the study identifies its transformation as an intermediary mechanism through which environmental, governance, livelihood, and security pressures interact.