Hendrix, Cullen S., and Sarah M. Glaser. 2007. Trends and triggers: Climate, climate change and civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. Political Geography 26, no. 6 (August): 695-715. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2007.06.006.
The Abstract: "The conventional discourse relating climate change to conflict focuses on long term trends in temperature and precipitation that define ecosystems and their subsequent impact on access to renewable resources. Because these changes occur over long time periods they may not capture the proximate factors that trigger conflict. We estimate the impact of both long term trends in climate and short term climatic triggers on civil conflict onset in Sub-Saharan Africa. We find that both operationalizations have a significant impact. Climates more suitable for Eurasian agriculture are associated with a decreased likelihood of conflict, while freshwater resources per capita are positively associated with the likelihood of conflict. Moreover, positive changes in rainfall are associated with a decreased likelihood of conflict in the following year. We also assess the outlook for the future by analyzing simulated changes in precipitation means and variability over the period 2000-2099. We find few statistically significant, positive trends in our measure of interannual variability, suggesting that it is unlikely to be affected dramatically by changes in climate" (695).
There has been much assumed about the link between climate change and conflict, though, "The causal link between climate change and threats to security...is not specified" (696).
One set of literature argues that a decrease in renewable resources will lead to conflict. Another argues that variation in climate will lead to conflict. "We investigate these arguments from two complementary perspectives. First, the effects of climate change on the onset of conflict must be conceived of as (1) long term trends that may lead to a higher baseline probability of conflict, and (2) short term triggers that affect the interannual variability in that probability" (696).
They explore changes in precipitation using the NCAR-PCM model.
"These findings point to two conclusions. The first is that the future for Africa is not necessarily one defined by increasing interannual variability in rainfall, the most significant climatic variable in our analysis of conflict onset. The second regards policy. Our findings suggest that reducing dependence on rainwater for agriculture may mitigate conflict, even as rainfall variability is not predicted to increase over time" (696-7).
Lit Review:
Good review of literature on water availability and conflict.
"Thus framed, we address two open questions in the literature. The first is how to combine stationary trend measures with temporally variant trigger measures in order to model the environmental conditions that lead to conflict. The second regards the neo-Malthusian tendency to assume (a) that resources are dwindling and (b) that fewer resources lead inexorably to conflict" (698).
"...we can generate hypotheses regarding the effects of land degradation, climatic conditions, and freshwater abundance on the likelihood of conflict. Land degradation refers to processes that negatively affect land productivity. If productivity is defined as the expected benefit per unit of effort, then we expect higher levels of land degradation to be associated with lower returns to agriculture and therefore to higher likelihood of conflict, ceterus paribus" (699).
They use PRIO/Uppsala data for their dependent variable.
"Land degradation is defined as the temporary or permanent reduction in the reproductive capacity of land as a result of human action" (701)
"Our findings suggest that interannual variability in rainfall is a more significant determinant of conflict than our measures of climate, land degradation, and freshwater resources. Admittedly, these results may be biased due to stationary in the trend measures, a problem addressed critically in section two but which ultimately proves insurmountable in our analysis due to constraints on available data" (710).
The authors find that the future of Sub-Saharan stability vis-à-vis climate change is relatively positive, as the forecasts to not show large amounts of variability interannual pattern changes. They argue that this is due to a regional bias.
One key take-away from my perspective is that we need to look at interannual variability in forecasts of precipitation.
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