This paper aims to analyse the evidence for the connections between climate change and violent conflict. The paper presents two main levels of analysis. The first level reports what academic research says is happening about climate change and violent conflict. The second level then considers how these studies make their arguments for linking climate change and conflict. Together, these two stages of analysis allow us to evaluate the evidence for whether climate change will accelerate violent conflict, and the likely ways these connections will occur.
The research for this paper was conducted using: a comprehensive search of academic literature, books, newspaper articles and blogs.
Key findings:
- Many of studies on climate change causing violence are based on assumptions. Causal models about how atmospheric changes result in violent conflict are unexplored, unproven, or too simple. According to all reputable predictions, climate change will produce changes in rainfall, temperature, and weather events that will take place in locations with histories of violent conflict, and where there are large numbers of people who have been vulnerable to famine and persecution in the past. Whilst it is likely that significant climatic changes will have impacts in these contexts, the challenge lies in understanding how impacts will occur, and then using that knowledge to develop adequate responses.
- The most common discussions of climate change and conflict have assumed that it is necessary to establish a causal link of the two by looking at very reduced definitions of violent conflict (such as wars that kill more than 25 people a year), or of environmental quality (such as forest cover) that do not indicate much complexity in how people achieve livelihoods or experience resource scarcity. Many other studies also simply assume that atmospheric changes will cause conflict simply by claiming that violence is a likely outcome. Others still adopt very linear assumptions that changes in resources will necessarily cause violence such as riots, crime, ethnic conflict, and terrorism without placing these projections in the context of local practices, history, or concerns. It is a source of concern that so many studies about climate change and conflict seek to present it in terms of a mono-causal or uniform association.
Recommendations:
- There is a need for a more nuanced explanation of the linkages between climate change and conflict, including a more nuanced examination of how both climate change and conflict are conceptualised, that reflects local motivations and responses more than a single mono-causal association. There is also a need to understand more about what causes conflict, and what social practices exist in zones or times that have no violence.
- There is a need to be aware of who benefits from the production of ‘evidence.’ This is a wide-reaching challenge. Some journalists—such as Ross Gelbspan,—have somewhat openly discussed that writing about climate change in sensational terms is a professional opportunity. It is also clear that institutes and academics will achieve more visibility if they write about potential immanent disaster. Plus social-science critics have alleged that the military or authoritarian states are seeking to strengthen their own legitimacy by discussing climate change as a high-stakes question of national security.
- It is worth considering how adaptive capacity, or conflict resolution, are the norms that need to be studied rather than focusing on violence as the subject of study. For example, there are long-standing examples of adaptation to scarcity that are not labelled ‘conflict’ or ‘security.’ Finding out about how people live with scarcity and unpredictability might be more useful for locally-relevant governance of climate change than trying to prove that individuals will respond with violence to climate change.