Climate Change and Violent Conflict

Scheffran, Juergen; Brzoska, Michael; Kominek, Jasmin; Link, P.; Schilling, Janpeter

doi:10.1126/science.1221339

Cited by 259 publications

(157 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The question whether or not climate-related factors have significantly contributed to recent armed-conflict outbreaks has been heavily disputed in the scientific literature (33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38). Although a sequence of studies has suggested that a large number of outbreaks of armed conflicts in modern as well as premodern times have been associated with climatic variability (33,36,37,(39)(40)(41), the robustness of these findings and underlying mechanisms are controversially discussed (10,37,42,43).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A clear shortcoming of most studies investigating the relation between climate change and armed conflicts is that they focus solely on meteorological indices such as temperature or precipitation time series (9,(39)(40)(41)(42)46), thereby neglecting the crucial importance of vulnerability and exposure for the impacts of climate hazards (35,47). This might be one reason for the substantial disagreement on the matter in the literature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

Schleußner

Donges

Donner

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

280

175

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Social and political tensions keep on fueling armed conflicts around the world. Although each conflict is the result of an individual context-specific mixture of interconnected factors, ethnicity appears to play a prominent and almost ubiquitous role in many of them. This overall state of affairs is likely to be exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change and in particular climate-related natural disasters. Ethnic divides might serve as predetermined conflict lines in case of rapidly emerging societal tensions arising from disruptive events like natural disasters. Here, we hypothesize that climate-related disaster occurrence enhances armed-conflict outbreak risk in ethnically fractionalized countries. Using event coincidence analysis, we test this hypothesis based on data on armed-conflict outbreaks and climate-related natural disasters for the period 1980-2010. Globally, we find a coincidence rate of 9% regarding armed-conflict outbreak and disaster occurrence such as heat waves or droughts. Our analysis also reveals that, during the period in question, about 23% of conflict outbreaks in ethnically highly fractionalized countries robustly coincide with climatic calamities. Although we do not report evidence that climate-related disasters act as direct triggers of armed conflicts, the disruptive nature of these events seems to play out in ethnically fractionalized societies in a particularly tragic way. This observation has important implications for future security policies as several of the world's most conflict-prone regions, including North and Central Africa as well as Central Asia, are both exceptionally vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change and characterized by deep ethnic divides.climate-related natural disasters | ethnic fractionalization | armed conflicts | event coincidence analysis

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

Schleußner

Donges

Donner

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

280

175

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…However, work by Buhaug (8, p. 16480) reports that the original findings by Burke et al "do not hold up to closer inspection." This disagreement is widely cited by the media, policymakers, and other researchers (9)(10)(11) as statistical evidence that climatic conditions might not influence modern human conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. The extremity and persistence of this disagreement has recently prompted Solow (12, p. 180) to "call for peace on climate and conflict [research]," suggesting that "such disagreements indicate that a deeper look behind the statistics is warranted.…”

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confidence: 99%

Reconciling disagreement over climate–conflict results in Africa

Hsiang

Meng

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Significance Whether climatic changes affect civil conflicts has been the subject of intense academic debate. Much of this controversy originates from a highly cited dispute between a previous PNAS paper—which finds that civil war incidence in sub-Saharan Africa is associated with increasing local temperature—and a subsequent rebuke of this result, also published in PNAS. We reexamine this apparent disagreement by comparing the statistical models from the two papers using formal tests. When we implement the correct statistical procedure, we find that the evidence presented in the second paper is actually consistent with that of the first. We conclude that the original grounds for the dispute over whether the climate–conflict relationship exists were erroneous.

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“…Review studies until 2013 concluded with that there are limited links between climate anomalies and collective violence [30][31][32][33][34]. A meta-study and accompanying literature reviews by Hsiang, Burke and Miguel found a substantial and significant link [35][36][37].…”

Section: The Climate-conflict Debate Pre-2014mentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Change and Violence: Insights from Political Science

Theisen

2017

Curr Clim Change Rep

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Purpose of Review The aim of this review is to understand the state of the art of research related to climate change and collectively organized violence from a broad political science perspective. Recent Findings An increasing share of quantitative studies find a link between weather anomalies and violence for some forms of violence, but the directions are not always consistent and the mechanisms are not satisfactorily understood. Nonnaturalist scholars note important reservations. Summary Important improvements have been made during the last few years, but much remains to conclude that climate change will increase the risk of violence. An increased focus on the political consequences of adaptation and mitigation is needed.

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Climate Change and Violent Conflict

Abstract: Current debates over the relation between climate change and conflict originate in a lack of data, as well as the complexity of pathways connecting the two phenomena.

Cited by 259 publications

References 25 publications

Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

Reconciling disagreement over climate–conflict results in Africa

Climate Change and Violence: Insights from Political Science

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