Jan Egeland, the special advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on conflict and climate change, told AFP in a telephone conversation from Mali.

"There is a moral responsibility for those industrial countries that caused climate change to help countries in the Sahel that did nothing to cause it," Jan Egeland, the special advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on conflict and climate change, told AFP in a telephone conversation from Mali.

"We have to help those who are struggling to survive now," he said on the third day of a week-long visit to the region.

It is "the ultimate irony" that it is hard to get donors to give money to combat the effects of climate change in the Sahel, West Africa's vast semi-arid savannah region, Egeland added.

"We who caused it are not willing to help those who face it," he deplored.

Egeland is touring Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in an effort to help draw attention of the international community to the problems of climate change and small arms proliferation in the Sahel.

In Europe, there is talk about cutting CO2 emission because people are afraid they cannot go skiing in the future, Egeland said, adding that "climate change is not an academic exercise."

"Here, it means that the Niger river has lower water levels and that a once vast lake is now totally dried up," he said.

"The image I will carry with me from this trip is standing in the middle of sand dunes in 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) heat, knowing that before this was a life providing inland sea, a vast lake," Egeland said of his visit to Mali's lake Faguibine near Timbuktu.

"I met a Tuareg leader today who told me: 'I am an orphan of this dead lake that gave us fish and grazing land for so long'," he added.

Some observers warn that climate change also raises a potential risk of more conflicts about resources but Egeland is not one for pessimism.

"The jury is still out on whether eventually climate change will lead to more resource conflicts or more cooperation," he said.

For Africa, the signs are encouraging.

"The Africans have been admirable in their cooperation on dwindling water resources," he said, citing the Niger river where Nigeria, Niger and Mali work together for water management.

However, the current food crisis is another factor that raises the potential for conflict in the region. The rise in food prices has fuelled social unrest in the Sahel.

"The food crisis adds to the tension and the anger," said Egeland.

Already Egeland says the Sahel is "a lethal cocktail of small arms proliferation, more smuggling, drug trafficking and human trafficking."

"All these things come together in the possibility of more violence and more conflicts. We need to ensure cooperation," he insisted.

On his visit to Northern Mali and Niger the UN special advisor said he could clearly see examples of this.

"The nomads are angry, they feel marginalised and then there are drugs smugglers who can give them arms," he explained.

"We need to help them to survive and to cooperate."