Climate Conflict Research Articles

Community perception of climate events as a security issue: the case of Hatiya Island, Bangladesh

This study delves into the multifaceted dynamics linking climate change and conflict on Hatiya Island, Bangladesh. Examining perceptions and responses to climate-induced stress, insecurity and potential conflicts, our research draws insights from literature reviews and focus group discussions. Despite the heightened stress resulting from unpredictable climate events, islanders perceive recent improvements in food security. They continue to struggle with periodic shortages and inaccessible health care and education. Many are entrapped in a cycle of poverty, debt and political marginalisation, further compounded by exploitative economic relations, power dynamics and government policies that intensify grievances. Climate change impacts are not perceived locally as an (immediate) threat: other issues seem to have more priority. Our findings emphasise the importance of prioritising social and political dynamics, alongside structural constraints, in understanding the climate–conflict nexus. This should not be taken to mean that climate change is irrelevant, though, as it has an impact on the bedrock of long-term poverty and distress. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

Climate, food (in)security and conflict in the Bangladesh delta: Myths and puzzles

Bangladesh is customarily presented as a poster child for climate change and conflict given its dense population and susceptibility to climate variability. This vulnerability exacerbates existing challenges such as food insecurity and conflict potential. Crises like pandemics and conflicts are external drivers stressing already compromised domestic governance, such as violent politics, poor rule of law, and corruption, further compounding the challenges of land and water resource management and affecting food (in)security in Bangladesh. While we will argue that Bangladesh’s all-out (‘securitised’) efforts to achieve food security are largely successful and there is no evidence of climate conflict related to food, this does not obviate very real food security challenges in remote areas. However, these have not built up to the sense of frustration associated with food riots or community violence. Navigating the possible linkages between climate, food (in)security, and conflict requires debunking common myths and identifying unresolved research puzzles in Bangladesh’s context. These myths promote the oversimplification of complex issues and may lead to misinformed policies and actions. Future research needs to be focused on understanding how climate factors interact with local economic, political, and social dynamics, including governance mechanisms, religious and ethnic tensions, economic inequality, grievances, and political exclusion.

From climate conflicts to environmental peacebuilding: Exploring local dimensions

Environmental change and armed conflict are major challenges of the 21st century. Meanwhile, scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize the environment and natural resources as not only sources of conflict and violence but also as potential means for peacebuilding. While research on both fronts is rapidly progressing, the literature on the climate–conflict nexus and environmental peacebuilding has remained disconnected, although climate conflicts will (and already) require peacebuilding efforts. We address this gap by identifying overlaps that open opportunities for an integrated research agenda. Particularly, we call for a deeper exploration of the local dimensions of climate-related conflicts and environmental peacebuilding. Local actors, knowledge, networks, and identities shape peacebuilding outcomes and are key in building climate-resilient peace. However, romanticizing the local sphere might also mask significant inequalities, power differences, and ethical concerns.

Be a man: A theory of climate change, masculinities and violence

Experts increasingly agree that the impacts of climate change are likely to create new violent conflict risks and exacerbate existing ones. However, the extent of this link and the specific causal pathways are much less clear, and the role of gender in this process is under-examined. This paper theorizes that gendered norms, especially the expectations of how men perform their masculinities, are an intervening variable that might explain some of this relationship. In doing so, it engages with the emerging debate around the extent to which climate change influences the evolution of violent conflict, theorizing with an illustrative observation of the events of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Syria. I find that there are plausible explanations for climate–conflict links involving gendered expectations of men’s behaviour serving as an intervening variable between climate change and violent conflict and discuss the implications of this for moving away from securitized approaches, future study and peacebuilding work.

Unveiling the climate–conflict nexus: Examining the influence of weather extremes on conflict emergence in the Philippine Bangsamoro

Extreme weather events have been closely associated with the escalation of violent conflicts. This article introduces empirical evidence that underscores the vulnerability of conflict emergence to extended deficit rainfall values within Maguindanao, a province situated in the Bangsamoro region of the southern Philippines. Using a combination of satellite data, hydrological analysis and an examination of conflict databases, our study unveils the pivotal role played by protracted droughts and intensified precipitation in fostering human insecurity, consequently elevating the likelihood of violent conflicts. Our research spotlights the climate–conflict nexus within this relatively less-explored geographical area. Our findings underscore a robust association between instances of violent conflicts, protracted deficits or episodes of intense rainfall, and the subsequent surge in food prices. Notably, disruptions in food prices align temporally with heightened participation in violent conflicts by individuals. In essence, the emergence of violent conflicts exacerbates fragility, thereby engendering a vicious cycle that intertwines climate change, conflict dynamics and the pursuit of peace.

Interventions addressing conflict in communities hosting climate-influenced migrants: Literature review

Existing scholarship hypothesizes a causal chain from climate change to resource availability constraints, to forced migration and conflict risks. Limited research, however, synthesizes findings about the efficacy of interventions to alleviate resources conflict in communities hosting climate migrants. This systematic literature review identified and analyzed 33 studies that explore interventions contributing to climate conflict resolution and environmental peacebuilding in receiving and migrant communities. Despite limitations of current research, the review shows that multi-scale and cross-sectoral interventions are necessary though challenging to establish. Community-level initiatives and local support networks that create social capital are key interventions leading from conflict to cooperation between climate-driven migrants and host communities. However, such interventions often require external resources that come with strings attached. Our analysis also identifies gaps in the extant literature. First, few scholars explore how adaptive capacity—especially influenced by power relations among stakeholders in newly formed communities—evolves over time in response to multiple repeated threat factors. Second, there is limited research on whether and how external interventions can help climate refugees gain access rights to natural resources for long-term conflict avoidance. Finally, there is a lack of community-based performance evaluation metrics to assess long or short-term impacts of interventions.

Barking up the tree wrongly? How national security strategies frame climate and other environmental change as security issues

The right framing of climate and other environmental change is crucial to guide policy responses towards preventing human suffering, displacement, and violent conflict. This study analyzes how ministries of defense and other security policy actors from 93 countries framed climate and other environmental change in national security strategy documents (NSSD) published between 2000 and 2020. An inductive content analysis reveals three shortcomings in the representations of environmental and climate change in these documents: First, representations of direct impacts are overly dominated by a focus on disasters. Second, references to indirect climate impacts do not reflect the current state of research. Third, a share of references to climate and other environmental change represents the planetary dimension of change in problematic ways. Additionally, the global scope of the analysis reveals regional differences in climate securitization: Framings of climate migration were mostly raised by potential destination countries, which often have high historical emissions, fueling concerns of climate injustice. By contrast, questionable statements on environmental and climate conflicts were published in the Global North and South alike. All in all, this suggests that the securitization of environmental and climate change are global phenomena. They do, however, not adequately reflect the planetary uncertainties of the Anthropocene.

Is climate exacerbating the root causes of conflict in Mali? A climate security analysis through a structural equation modeling approach

Climate continues to pose significant challenges to human existence. Notably, in the past decade, the focus on the role of climate on conflict and social unrest has gained traction in academic, development, and policy communities. This article examines the link between climate variability and conflict in Mali. It advances the argument that climate is a threat multiplier, in other words, climate indirectly affects conflict occurrence through numerous pathways. We take the view that maize production and household food security status sequentially mediate the relationship between climate variability and the different conflict types. First, we provide a brief review of the climate conflict pathways in Mali. Second, we employ the path analysis within the structural equation modeling technique to test the hypothesized pathways and answer the research questions. We use the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), a nationally representative data from Mali merged with time and location-specific climate and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) data. Results show that an increase in positive temperature anomalies when sequentially mediated by maize production and household food security status, increase the occurrence of the different conflict types. The results are robust to the use of negative precipitation anomalies (tendency toward less precipitation compared to the historical norm). Our findings highlight two key messages, first, the crucial role of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies and interventions on influencing household food security status and thus reducing conflict occurrence. Second, that efforts to build peace and security should account for the role of climate in exacerbating the root causes of conflict.

Coping with Complexity: Toward Epistemological Pluralism in Climate–Conflict Scholarship

AbstractOver the last two decades, climate security has become an increasingly salient policy agenda in international fora. Yet, despite a large body of research, the empirical links between climate-change and conflict remain highly uncertain. This paper contends that uncertainty around climate–conflict links should be understood as characteristic of complex social–ecological systems rather than a problem that can be fully resolved. Rather than striving to eliminate uncertainty, we suggest that researchers need to learn to cope with it. To this end, this article advances a set of principles for guiding scholarly practice when investigating a complex phenomenon: recognizing epistemological uncertainty, embracing epistemological diversity, and practicing humility and dialogue across difference. Taken together we call this ethos epistemological pluralism, whereby scholars self-consciously recognize the limits of their chosen epistemology for understanding the climate–conflict nexus and engage with other approaches without attempting to usurp them. Reviewing the last decade of climate–conflict scholarship, we show that climate–conflict research already manifests many of these ideals; however, we also identify problematic patterns of engagement across epistemological divides and thus plenty of scope for improvement. To illustrate why a diversity of methods (e.g., qualitative and quantitative) will not suffice, the article critically discusses prior research to illustrate why at least two epistemological approaches—constructivism and positivism—cannot be synthesized or integrated without significant analytical cost, and elaborates why excluding insights from any one would lead to an impoverished understanding of the climate–conflict nexus. We conclude with five practical recommendations of how scholars can help realize the ideal of epistemological pluralism in practice.

Peak water not to blame in the escalation of Peruvian socio-environmental conflicts

Over 1.5 billion people rely on more than 46,000 non-polar glaciers across the world for potable water, irrigation, industrial and hydropower usages. The melting of non-polar glaciers and its effects on socio-environmental conflicts are understudied in the rapidly expanding field of climate conflicts. Contrary to existing theoretical models, this article found that the Santa River Basin (SRB), having reached peak water, did not directly increase the number or length of the area’s socio-environmental conflicts. The article identified and examined 23 socio-environmental conflicts in the Peruvian Ombudsman’s monthly reports between 2004 and 2019. Instead of peak water, five other escalation variables were identified: violence, upstream–downstream dynamics, multiple stakeholder cooperation, decrease in the quality/quantity of water and the utilisation of roads for protests.

When Home Disappears: South Asia and the Growing Risk of Climate Conflict

ABSTRACT This article highlights the multiple risks of political violence facing South Asia amid the backdrop of climate change. Specifically, it draws attention to Bangladesh and its shared border with Northeast India, a region with a long history of terrorism and insurgency. As the impact from climate change intensifies, there are several specific vulnerabilities in the region. First, internal migration within Bangladesh threatens to stress already weak infrastructures, especially in urban centers like Dhaka, which already hosts thousands of climate migrants. Internal rural-to-rural migration may further instigate clashes among farmers as they compete for diminishing agricultural resources. Second, cross-border migration from Bangladesh into India threatens to escalate existing tensions between Indians and Bangladeshi migrants, particularly in Northeast India. Violent identity movements within Northeast India are already common and a key grievance has been Bangladeshi presence in the region. These grievances have historically escalated into multiple separatist and terrorist organizations and threaten to escalate again. Hindu nationalist groups threaten to further exploit these existing tensions for political gain. Third, Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh are situated in a location that is at very high-risk for climate disasters. Cyclones and flooding threaten to create a new humanitarian crisis in the region. Finally, both Hindu and Islamic extremist groups may exploit grievances and utilize it for recruitment efforts. Together, these factors make South Asia particularly vulnerable to climate impacts. Using GIS, we map the climate vulnerable areas of Bangladesh alongside locations that have experienced fatal political violence from 2015–2020. We find that each administrative division faces its own unique challenges, but urban centers, areas near water, and border regions are the most vulnerable to climate conflict.

The missing subject: Enabling a postcolonial future for climate conflict research

AbstractThis paper suggests that the dominance of one debate on climate related conflict – establishing whether climate change leads to conflict, or not ‐ is the product of Imperial knowledge produced in the Global North Orientalising the Global South. This debate is also one in which the subdiscipline of political geography has been inadvertently complicit by accepting positivist approaches, that erase the subject and their subjectivities from this discussion, and frame them as science. The argument in this paper problematises the fundamental understanding of ‘climate conflict’, as defined and universalised by Western science in the Western academy. Instead, it argues that the subaltern's lived experience and interpretation of hazards and their relationship with conflicts needs to be located and centred in this conversation – not just as that of a hapless victim but as knowledge producers able to set the agendas and re‐orient the focus of this field. Research examining conflicts around floods and evictions begins to map a new future for how that might be possible.

What is climate security? Framing risks around water, food, and migration in the Middle East and North Africa

AbstractFrom academics to practitioners, many voices have amplified an increasingly popular narrative posing a climate–conflict–migration nexus. This essay reviews the literature on climate security, exploring the human security impacts of climate change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with particular attention to the scholarly literature on vulnerability and adaptation. It also examines the policy implications of discourses that frame water, food, and climate‐induced migration as security threats. This review highlights how incorporating human security perspectives from the fields of development and environmental justice into security studies more adequately illuminates complex issues of “climate security.” Drawing on the human security perspective, this review uses empirical material from the MENA to illustrate the enhanced analytical utility of moving beyond state‐based framings of climate security to include communal and individual well‐being. These alternative understandings of climate security offer promising venues for assessing differential vulnerability and adaptive capacities in the MENA region.This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented Human Water > Water Governance

Geopolitics of climate change-induced conflict and population displacement in West Africa

ABSTRACT Climate change has remained a major problem around which global development policies are framed. The effects of climate change are rising tremendously and are more evident in Africa with low adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change and where climate change has led to drought and desertification with consequences for safety and security in the region. Although the connection between climate change and conflicts is well studied, there is little research on the geopolitical contribution of climate change to conflicts. Using a dominant qualitative approach based on secondary data and eco-violence theory, this study examines how geopolitics affects climate change-induced conflicts and displacement in West Africa. Drawing largely from Nigeria and Mali, the study argues that, despite the destructive effects of anthropogenic activities created by insufficient competing areas for livelihood and subsistence resources, the implementation of climate resolution among countries and regions of the world has remained obscure. The repercussions of the geopolitics of climate change are the insurgencies and cattle herders’ unrest in Africa, especially the West African region.

Climate Change, Conflict and Peace in the Pacific: Challenges and a Pacific Way Forward

Climate Change, Conflict and Peace in the Pacific: Challenges and a Pacific Way Forward

Understanding the Politics of Climate Security Policy Discourse: The Case of the Lake Chad Basin

ABSTRACT Policy discourse on the conflict and security implications of climate change has repeatedly found it to be overstated, misleading, and out of line with the balance of scientific evidence. However, the reasons for this recurring science-policy divide have not yet been systematically investigated. To explore this issue, we examine the case of Lake Chad, which over the last decade has become a poster child for climate conflict. We seek to understand and explain how this climate security narrative has gained such traction. Drawing on interviews and documentary analysis we examine the key practices, interests and hierarchies underpinning the narrative’s rise and reproduction, and show that it is essentially a political construct, reflecting a combination of questionable epistemic manoeuvres and geopolitical, economic and climate mitigation agendas. Our findings suggest the need for change, and increased caution, in how the climate security community engages with scientific evidence.

A Song of Neither Ice nor Fire: Temperature Extremes had No Impact on Violent Conflict Among European Societies During the 2nd Millennium CE

The second millennium CE in Europe is known for both climatic extremes and bloody conflict. Europeans experienced the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and they suffered history-defining violence like the Wars of the Roses, Hundred Years War, and both World Wars. In this paper, we describe a quantitative study in which we sought to determine whether the climatic extremes affected conflict levels in Europe between 1,005 and 1980 CE. The study involved comparing a well-known annual historical conflict record to four published temperature reconstructions for Central and Western Europe. We developed a Bayesian regression model that allows for potential threshold effects in the climate–conflict relationship and then tested it with simulated data to confirm its efficacy. Next, we ran four analyses, each one involving the historical conflict record as the dependent variable and one of the four temperature reconstructions as the sole covariate. Our results indicated that none of the temperature reconstructions could be used to explain variation in conflict levels. It seems that shifts to extreme climate conditions may have been largely irrelevant to the conflict generating process in Europe during the second millennium CE.

The Climate Conflict Trap: Examining the Impact of Climate Change on Violent Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

As recently as 2019, international security officials reported that international state sponsors of terrorism, such as ISIL, were moving into Sub-Saharan Africa. The causal links between climate change and conflict, especially in an understudied and misunderstood region such as Sub-Saharan Africa, are often complicated and ill-defined. In reality, climate change does not unilaterally or unconditionally strengthen terrorist organizations and, by extension, civil conflict. The circumstances of climate change impact the trajectory of violent non-state armed groups in Sub-Saharan Africa through three primary mechanisms that intersect and interact with one another: natural resource instability, colonialism, and the intensity of intra-state tensions throughout a particular region. Through these three primary lenses, it is evident that, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the effects of climate change exacerbate conditions that, in turn, provide a unique, fertile environment for violent non-state armed groups to develop and thrive.

The Emergence of Planetary Pediatrics.

Pediatrics has witnessed an evolution from primary care, family-centered care, community pediatrics, social pediatrics and global pediatrics, which has shifted our attention beyond the clinic setting to an appreciation of children in their lived environment. We are witnessing the emergence of planetary pediatrics that further broadens the focus of children’s health to include the continued importance of clinical care, but also the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation, child migration, unrelenting war and conflict, social injustice, pandemics and violence against children. If we do not acknowledge the present and ever-increasing adverse planetary changes of what children are experiencing now and in the future, we will have failed to adequately protect them from impending catastrophes. The hope of pediatrics for the future is to improve the health and well-being of all children. This hope remains as relevant today as it was for our predecessors and serves as a beacon for the voyage through the remainder of the twenty-first century.

Introduction

Introduction