Is climate change a driver of armed conflict?

Theisen, Ole Magnus; Gleditsch, Nils Petter; Buhaug, Halvard

doi:10.1007/s10584-012-0649-4

Cited by 174 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…This perspective fits within a growing body of literature that investigates links between climate-related disasters and conflict in different parts of the world (Bernauer et al 2012, Theisen et al 2013, Schleussner et al 2016. In this paper, we highlight the importance of looking at the actual vegetation changes taking place on the ground in connection to the reduction in precipitation during the drought years.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 78%

Differences in resource management affects drought vulnerability across the borders between Iraq, Syria, and Turkey

Eklund¹,

Thompson²

2017

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Much discussion has taken place exploring a potential connection between the 2007-2009 Fertile Crescent drought and Syria's uprising-turned civil war beginning in 2011. This study takes an integrated perspective on the 2007-2009 drought in the border region of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey by looking at the meteorological, agricultural, and socioeconomic aspects of drought vulnerability. Satellite-based precipitation and vegetation data help outline the drought's spatial and temporal properties. In order to understand the context in which this drought happened, we also look at the trends in vegetation productivity between 2001 and 2015, as well as each country's different politico-economic factors affecting land and water resource management leading up to the drought. The findings show that, although the drought was severe in Syria, it was not the only country affected, nor necessarily the worst hit meteorologically. The agricultural drought lasted 2 yr in most affected areas on the Iraqi and Syrian sides, however, only 1 yr in the affected areas on the Turkish side. The vegetation trend analysis shows a striking difference between the Syrian and Turkish sides of the border. Turkey experienced a general improvement in land productivity between 2001 and 2015, whereas Iraq and Syria show a generally negative productivity trend. The fact that the decline in rainfall had different effects on crops in each of the three countries highlights the role government and private sector resource management and infrastructure play in reducing drought vulnerability. The findings of this study highlight the need for an integrated approach to research that investigates the interconnection between climate and conflict.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 78%

Differences in resource management affects drought vulnerability across the borders between Iraq, Syria, and Turkey

Eklund¹,

Thompson²

2017

E&S

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“…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%

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.

288

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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“…For a more comprehensive review of the empirical literature, see Theisen, Gleditsch, and Buhaug (2013). It should be noted that the four theoretical approaches are overlapping in the sense that they predict the same macro-level relationship between climate and conflict, and for that reason it may be challenging to evaluate and compare their accuracy in a large-N empirical framework.…”

Section: Linking Climate Anomalies To Armed Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

On climate variability and civil war in Asia

Wischnath

Buhaug

2014

Climatic Change

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Effects of climate change are frequently claimed to be responsible for widespread civil violence. Yet, scientists remain divided on this issue, and recent studies suggest that conflict risk increases with higher rainfall, loss of rainfall, higher temperatures or none of the above. Lack of scientific consensus is driven by differences in data, methods, and samples, but may also reflect a fragile and inconsistent correlation for the habitual spatiotemporal domain, Sub-Saharan Africa post-1980. This study presents a comprehensive, multi-scale empirical evaluation of climateconflict connections across Asia, the continent with the highest conflict rate per country. We find little evidence that interannual climate variability and anomalies are linked to historical conflict risk in the simple and general manner proposed by some earlier research. Although a significant parameter coefficient can be obtained under certain specifications, the direction and magnitude of the climate effects are inconsistent and sensitive to research design. Instead, Asian civil wars share central features with violent events elsewhere, proving the main correlates of contemporary armed conflict to be economic and socio-political rather than climatological.

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Is climate change a driver of armed conflict?

Cited by 174 publications

References 67 publications

Differences in resource management affects drought vulnerability across the borders between Iraq, Syria, and Turkey

Differences in resource management affects drought vulnerability across the borders between Iraq, Syria, and Turkey

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

On climate variability and civil war in Asia

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