Climate Change and Armed Conflict
The impacts of armed conflict on the environment have increasingly gained notice in recent years and recognition of the significance of war’s destructive effects on land, water, and other natural resources has gradually become more widespread. Related to this is the idea that environmental problems such as resource scarcity may fuel human conflict or, similarly, impede the course of recovery from conflict through a “self-reinforcing spiral of violence”[1] wherein environmental degradation resulting from conflict perpetuates further violence through struggles over scarce resources. More recently, climate change has come to be thought of as a potential factor in increasing violent conflict.[2] The Obama Administration now recognizes climate change as a matter of “security and stability,”[3] and studies seek to investigate the connection between climate change and conflict.[4] There are, however, many uncertainties in relating climate change to violence, and the links between climate change and the actual, resulting effects on societies are often tenuous at best.[5] Consequently, there is considerable value in testing this relationship to determine whether climate change may have present and future implications on armed conflict.
My research will examine the notion that climate change may result in increased violence and conflict by considering the following questions: Historically, do incidents of armed conflict correlate with changes in climate? Is climate change likely to increase or result in violent conflict? The null hypothesis for my study is that climate change is not likely to result in violent conflict. The alternative hypothesis, therefore, is that climate change is likely to cause violent conflict because the effects of climate change can fundamentally alter the way in which societies function and relate to their environment, creating pressures to which a society may not be able to easily adapt. In order to answer these questions, I will use existing data on global temperature changes and key climate change-related environmental phenomena (land degradation, water scarcity, and resulting population disruption) within a time frame of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as studies on major armed conflicts during this period to initially determine whether we can detect a global correlation between significant changes in the climate and periods of violent conflict. Because the possible effects of climate change are numerous and varied,[6] my analysis will depend on identifying a few key impacts of climate change (indicated above) that may be associated with resource scarcity and conflict. Additionally, owing to the difficulties in categorically determining whether climate change can be established as the source of these environmental changes in any given area, the “key” impacts I use will serve more as proxies through which I can identify and analyze armed conflicts of significance to my research. My analysis will therefore follow three main steps: first, linking climate change to environmental scarcity through identification of key impacts on the environment, second, identifying instances of armed conflict in which these impacts are present, and third, determining whether conflict arose from the environmental changes. I will use research on a few specific instances of armed conflict to determine whether violence resulted largely because of the pressure of environmental change and resource scarcity or because of other political, economic, or social factors surrounding the conflict.Works Cited/Sources
Barnaby, Wendy. “Do nations go to war over water?” Nature 458 (2009): 282-283.
Barnett, Jon. “Destabilizing the environment-conflict thesis.” Review of International Studies 26 (2000): 271-288.
Barnett, Jon. “Security and Climate Change.” Global Environmental Change 13.1 (2003): 7-17.
Barnett, Jon and Adger, W. Neil. “Climate Change, human security and violent conflict,” Political Geography 26.6. (2007): 639-655.
Hauge, Wenche and Ellingsen, Tanja. “Beyond Environmental Scarcity: Causal Pathways to Conflict.” Journal of Peace Research 35.3 (1998): 299-317.
Hendrix, Cullen S. and Glaser, Sarah M. “Trends and triggers: Climate, climate change and civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Political Geography 26.6 (2007): 695-715.
Homer-Dixon, T. Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Homer-Dixon, T. “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict.” International Security 16.2 (1991): 76-116.
Nordas, Ragnhild and Gleditsch, Nils Peter. “Climate change and conflict.” Political Geography 26.6 (2007): 627-638.
“Obama’s Speech on Climate Change,” New York Times 22 September 2009. 27 September 2009.
Parry, M.L., Canziani, O.F., Palutikof, J.P., Van der Linden, P.J., Hanson, C.E., Eds. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Raleigh, Clionadh and Urdal, Henrik. “Climate change, environmental degradation and armed conflict,” Political Geography 26.6. (2007): 674-694.
Salehyan, Idean. “From Climate Change to Conflict? No Consensus Yet.” Journal of Peace Research 45.3 (2008): 315-326.
Timura, Christopher T. “ ‘Environmental Conflict’ and the Social Life of Environmental Secuirty Discourse.” Anthropological Quarterly 74.3 (2001): 104-113.
Zhang, David D., Brecke, Peter, Lee, Harry F., He, Yuan-Qing, and Zhang, Jane. “Global climate change, war, and population decline in recent human history.” PNAS 104.49 (2007): 19214-19219.
[1] T. Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1999) 5.
[2] Jon Barnett and W. Neil Adger, “Climate Change, human security and violent conflict,” Political Geography August 2007: 26, 6.
[3] “Obama’s Speech on Climate Change,” New York Times 22 September 2009. 27 September 2009.
[4] Jon Barnett, “Security and Climate Change.” Global Environmental Change April 2003: 13, 1.
[5] Clionadh Raleigh and Henrik Urdal, “Climate change, environmental degradation and armed conflict,” Political Geography August 2007: 26, 6.
[6] M. L. Parry, et al., Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 18.