Around 1968, seasonal rains weakened across the Sahel, a semi-arid belt south of the Sahara. The drought reduced harvests and pasture, putting farmers and herders under immediate stress. It also set the stage for a wider crisis as food systems and livestock herds could not recover between bad years.
By the early 1970s, the drought had become a major humanitarian emergency across multiple Sahelian countries. Food shortages and disease caused large numbers of deaths, and herds shrank sharply as grazing failed and animals starved. This crisis pushed governments and donors to treat drought as a regional, cross-border problem rather than only a local disaster.
As the Sahel drought continued, Lake Chad contracted sharply and separated into northern and southern pools, disrupting fishing, farming, and grazing around the lake. The change became a widely cited example of how sustained rainfall deficits can reshape a major water body. It also increased attention to water management and drought monitoring in the central Sahel.
Sahelian states created the Permanent Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) to coordinate drought response and longer-term planning. The organization aimed to support food security, natural-resource management, and cooperation among member states and partners. Its creation reflected a shift toward regional institutions to manage shared climatic risks.
CILSS established the AGRHYMET Regional Center in Niamey, Niger, to train specialists and support operational monitoring of agriculture, meteorology, and water. Better observation and forecasting were intended to improve early warning for drought and food insecurity. This marked an investment in technical capacity as a core part of Sahel resilience.
In 1977, governments met at the United Nations Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) in Nairobi to address land degradation in drylands worldwide. The Sahel drought helped make desertification a major international policy issue. The conference connected local land-use pressures with climate variability and emphasized coordinated planning and prevention.
UNCOD’s main outcome was the Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD), a package of recommendations for national, regional, and international action. It promoted integrated approaches—linking science, land management, and development planning—to slow land degradation. PACD helped standardize desertification as a policy problem that required long-term investment, not only emergency relief.
After UNCOD, follow-up and coordination for implementing the PACD was assigned within the UN system to UNEP. UNEP created a dedicated unit to support assessment and coordination work on desertification. This step aimed to turn conference commitments into ongoing programs and measurable progress.
Even after the early-1970s crisis, the Sahel did not return to the wetter conditions of the 1950s. Studies of multi-decadal rainfall show a long period of below-average precipitation extending through much of the 1970s and 1980s. This persistence shaped policy thinking: drought was no longer treated as a one-time shock, but as a continuing climatic pattern that could last for decades.
In 1983–1984, parts of the Sahel experienced extremely low rainfall again, renewing pressure on crops, pasture, and household food supplies. The episode showed that recovery after the early-1970s famine was fragile and that repeated droughts could arrive within a single generation. Compared with the early 1970s, some countries had stronger coping systems, but risks remained severe for vulnerable communities.
By the mid-1980s, Lake Chad reached one of its lowest recorded phases, reflecting the cumulative impacts of drought across its vast basin. Satellite and hydrological analyses describe a dramatic reduction from the lake’s larger 1960s extent, with major consequences for lakeside livelihoods. The lake’s visible decline reinforced global concern about Sahel drought, water scarcity, and land degradation.
On 17 June 1994, states adopted the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), creating a legally binding global framework focused especially on countries facing serious drought and desertification, particularly in Africa. The convention encouraged long-term national action programs backed by international cooperation. It served as a policy endpoint for the 1968–1994 era: moving from repeated crisis response toward sustained, treaty-based strategies to reduce land degradation and manage drought risk.
Sahel Droughts and Desertification Crises (1968–1994)