In a paper released by PNAS, Nina von Uexkull, Mihai Croicu, Hanne Fjelde, and Halvard Buhaug argue that the lack of consensus among researchers working on the connection between climate change and conflict is tied to the inadequate attention given to “the context in which droughts and other climatic extremes increase the risk of violent mobilization.” This is an essential consideration in order to move beyond broad generalizations and identify group motivations and vulnerabilities. The authors address the problem by analyzing the relationship between drought and conflict through a socioeconomic lens. They draw on recent conflict event data for Asia and Africa and combine it with data on ethnic settlement and agricultural land use. This allows them to examine how “politically relevant” ethnic groups respond to drought during growing seasons across a range of political and socioeconomic contexts. By approaching the issue in this context-sensitive manner, their results contradict previous “naive” models that have suggested drought has little impact on conflict. The authors suggest there is a reciprocal relationship between drought and conflict, in which “violent conflict and environmental shock constitute a vicious circle, each phenomenon increasing the group’s vulnerability to the other.”

This book review was published by the Wilson Center. Contributions from the Wilson Center originally appear on New Security Beat, the blog of the Environmental Change and Security Program.

Sources: Climatic Change, PNAS.