Environmental changes and violent conflict

Abstract

This letter reviews the scientific literature on whether and how environmental changesaffect the risk of violent conflict. The available evidence from qualitative case studiesindicates that environmental stress can contribute to violent conflict in some specific cases.Results from quantitative large-N studies, however, strongly suggest that we should becareful in drawing general conclusions. Those large-N studies that we regard as the mostsophisticated ones obtain results that are not robust to alternative model specificationsand, thus, have been debated. This suggests that environmental changes may, underspecific circumstances, increase the risk of violent conflict, but not necessarily in asystematic way and unconditionally. Hence there is, to date, no scientific consensus on theimpact of environmental changes on violent conflict. This letter also highlights the mostimportant challenges for further research on the subject. One of the key issues is that theeffects of environmental changes on violent conflict are likely to be contingent on aset of economic and political conditions that determine adaptation capacity. Inthe authors’ view, the most important indirect effects are likely to lead fromenvironmental changes via economic performance and migration to violent conflict.