Civil war, climate change, and development: A scenario study for sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: We construct a model of development, civil war, and climate change. There are multiple interactions. Economic growth reduces the probability of civil war and the vulnerability to climate change. Climate change increases the probability of civil war. The impacts of climate change, civil war, and civil war in the neighbouring countries reduce economic growth. The model has two potential poverty traps -a climate-change-induced one and a civil-war-induced one -and the two poverty traps may reinforce one another. We calibrate the model to Sub-Saharan Africa and conduct a double Monte Carlo analysis accounting for both parameter uncertainty and stochasticity. We find the following. Although we use the SRES scenarios as our baseline, and thus assume rapid economic growth in Africa and convergence of African living standards to the rest of the world, the impact of civil war and climate change (ignored in SRES) are sufficiently strong to keep a number of countries in Africa in deep poverty with a high probability. Other countries enjoy exponential growth; and some countries may either be trapped in poverty or experience rapid growth. The SRES scenarios were wrong to ignore the impact of climate change and civil war on economic development. Terms of use: Documents in

Vulnerability Assessment in African Villages under Conditions of Land Use and Climate Change: Case Studies from Mkomazi and Keiskamma

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Climate-related natural disasters, economic growth, and armed civil conflict

“…None of these change the results. 23 For an attempt to predict the future, see Devitt and Tol (2012) who simulate a model with climate change, civil war and development. changes caused by climatic disasters.…”

Whither the Weather?

“…Most of them use empirical data for the past few decades and assess the empirical regularities that can be assumed to continue at least in the near future. Only two of the articles (Bernauer/Siegfried 2012;De Stefano et al 2012) cite projections from climate models as well, while Devitt/Tol (2012) In a wide-ranging review of possible security implications of climate change, Scheffran/Battaglini (2011) include sea-level change as a source of potential conflict in South Asia.…”

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