ESE: Collaborative Research: Climate Change and Variability and Armed Conflicts in Africa South of the Sahara

University Corporation For Atmospheric Res, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

The number of armed conflicts has declined after the end of the Cold War. There is also a long-term trend towards less severe armed conflicts, though climate change threatens to reverse this favorable trend. Rising in temperatures are likely to cause drought and increase natural hazards (including floods and hurricanes). Resulting migration and in turn, conflict with host communities can lead to local scarcities, increasing the risk of conflict. Climate change will possibly weaken politically-unstable regimes in low-development countries, in turn strengthening the hand of insurgent movements challenging governments and adding to communal conflict. The PIs will look at specific physical phenomena (droughts and natural hazards) whose social and economic effects will then be traced to estimate the probable implications for conflict. The projected impacts of climate change will not result in elevated conflict risk in all societies but depends on country-specific and contextual factors. The investigation will take place at two scales, the regional and the local, for the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Using a predictive model of the coupled natural (climate) and social (violence) systems, with feedback loops and mediating socio-political-economic variables, the PIs will measure the impact of adverse climate change and/or changes in climate variability on the rate of armed conflict, determine which mediating factors influence the rate of this impact, and project the violence outcomes on the basis of different climate change/variability scenarios. The data from the substantial climate, satellite imaged environmental (land-use), socio-economic and violence sources will be integrated in a geographic information system, with 100 kilometers grids being the primary scale of analysis. Local studies in selected contexts in East Africa (with the support of local research networks) will complement the statistical study by exploring the locally-varying processes linking climate/environmental change to violent events. Efforts to assess the security implications of climate change have foundered on the paucity of empirical evidence and the lack of consensus in the scientific literature of the extent of the possible relationship. Recent statements by U.S. and international agencies propose climate change/variability as a threat multiplier to existing problems (poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions) that might threaten domestic stability in weak states. Possible impacts of climate change/variability are mediated by contextual conditions, especially governmental policies, socio-economic resources, and existing fractures along regional and ethnic lines. Sub-Saharan Africa has been identified as the most vulnerable region, with the possibility of significant intra-regional migration/emigration to escape a worsening quality of life leading to communal conflict over declining resources. The research will contribute to policy debates within the US and internationally which, to date, have skirted the issue due to unreliable conflict measures, debatable climate change indicators, information on local differences, and the lack of contact between the natural/climate science and conflict studies communities.