Climate change and armed conflicts in Africa: temporal persistence, non-linear climate impact and geographical spillovers

Abstract

The paper focuses on the nexus between climate change and armed conflicts with an empirical analysis based on a panel of 2653 georeferenced cells for the African continent between 1990 and 2016. Our econometric approach addresses unobservable heterogeneity in predicting the probability of violent events and the persistency of conflicting behaviour over time. The proposed strategy also accounts for both changes in climatic conditions and spatial dynamics. The two main findings carry policy-relevant implications. First, changes in climatic conditions influence the probability of conflicts over large spatial ranges, thus suggesting that the design of adaptation policies to reduce climate vulnerability should account for multiple spatial interrelations. Second, the persistency of violence calls for planning adaptation strategies for climate resilience jointly designed with measures in support of peacekeeping.

Climate change and within-country inequality: New evidence from a global perspective

“…At the same time, the lack of a statistically significant impact of precipitations anomalies on income disparities in mostly rural and agricultural countries calls for further analysis considering the following aspects. First, agricultural activities are particularly sensitive to the precipitation anomalies during the growing season (see for example Harari and La Ferrara, 2018;Cappelli et al, 2022), hence the time of the year these climate shocks occur may result in highly heterogenous impacts. Unusually low (high) precipitation level may have a negative (positive) impact on economic growth and rural income in developing countries, although the effects are less clear elsewhere (Dell et al, 2014).…”

Healthcare Challenges due to Global Conflict Escalation Amid the Pandemic, Climate, and Economic Dilemmas

“…Since 1989, 75% of non-state armed conflicts have been in Africa (Okiro & Ayieko, 2018). Many authors have argued climate crisis have strong association with conflicts in Africa (O'Loughlin & Witemer, 2014;Burke et al, 2009;Cappelli et al, 2022;Ikoku, 2022). Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of conflicts in the world, with at least a thousand people killed each year on average over the last two decades (Chol et al, 2018).…”

Global conflict escalation during the pandemic, climate, and economic dilemmas: Healthcare sustainability challenges in conflict zones and elsewhere

“…Since 1989, 75% of non-state armed conflicts have been in Africa (Okiro & Ayieko, 2018). Many authors have argued climate crisis have strong association with conflicts in Africa (Burke et al, 2009;Cappelli et al, 2022;Ikoku, 2022;O'Loughlin et al, 2014). Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of conflicts in the world, with at least a thousand people killed each year on average over the last two decades (Chol et al, 2018).…”