Climate Change and Conflict

This Friday I went to an ENST Brown Bag in which Dr. Janpeter Shilling presented his research on the relationship between climate change and violent conflict. I thought this might be relevant to our course work in that climate change issues, such as change in precipitation and temperature, affect food security and thus leads to acts of violence as a means of survival. This discussion highlighted how, with decreasing resources and thus a decrease in the viability of subsistence living, there will continue to be increases in violent conflicts in areas highly vulnerable to change. What follows is a summary of Shillings presentation titled "On Raids and Rains - Climate Change and Conflict with a focus on North Africa and Kenya."

Shilling begins by outlining how a decrease in resources results in a change in land use and thus can spark conflict between those of differing interests. This causal relationship can also go the other way with conflict sparking resource depletion, though other factors, as he later acknowledges, could be at work. He uses the Homer-Dixon Environmental Scarcity Theory to acknowledge the various compounding variables that could lead to violent conflict. This theory gives us the following variables which must be considered in determining the causality of violent conflict, environmental change, population growth, unequal resource distribution, poverty and previous violent conflict. All of these factors interact with one another in the production of violence due to climate change.

Shilling then outlined three factors which determine the degree to which communities are vulnerable to climate change to further acknowledge the complexity of his research. The first is the adaptive capacity of the society (their knowledge base and technology available for mitigating negative effects.) The second is the sensitivity of the community to resource depletion (i.e. their reliance upon said resource, it’s availability and degree importance to their lives.) The third variable is the society’s exposure to the effects of change (i.e. the rate and or variation of changes and their effects.) These factors interact and are presented differently according to the specific situation of a place denoting and measuring the impact climate change has across a wide variety of peoples and places.

Shillings first research subject was North Africa and he began by detailing the unique situation of this area in relation to climate change. First, the population of North Africa is expected to grow over time increasing the demand and strain on the environment. This area is highly sensitive to changes in climate since most countries are based on rain-fed agriculture (except Egypt with its access to the Nile River.) The projections for the future show an increase in temperature and a decrease in precipitation in an area where water is already scarce. There is also a history of conflict in these areas over land use. For example in Mali two tribes, the Songhai a rice dependent society and the Tuareg herders, both use the same water source but for different purposes. This Shilling claims is a recipe for tribal conflict as both groups are highly reliant on this resource and have very low adaptability.

Shillings second area of research was Kenya, specifically Turkana, a place with a history of violent conflict (mostly in the form of raids by others competing for the same resources,) an arid climate, a heavily marginalized and impoverished community with high levels of sensitivity and exposure and low adaptability. The people there rely upon relief food and foreign aid for survival and this hunger, combined with drought, is the motive behind the armed conflict. When a certain threshold of resource scarcity is reached the raiding on both sides increases dramatically. Usually raids are carried out during the rainy season which provides better raiding conditions however, in 2009 during an extreme drought raiding reached an all time high due to the survival needs of the people. Hence variations in precipitation and temperature, or climate change, have a causal relationship to the level of violent conflict experienced. However Shilling concludes that in order to understand this complex relationship between climate change and conflict we must understand the variables of vulnerability and look beyond correlation to causation. He also proposes that the solution to climate change inspired conflict is making conflict management a role of the national government. However these political actors need the ability and incentive to act. This I believe is the downfall to his proposed solution since in reality the areas he studies are politically and economically unstable and thus they lack the ability and incentive to act however immoral this inaction may be.