Climate variability, food production shocks, and violent conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

By Halvard Buhaug, T. Benjaminsen, E. Sjaastad, Ole Magnus Theisen. 2015

162 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Earlier research that reports a correlational pattern between climate anomalies and violent conflict routinely refers to drought-induced agricultural shocks and adverse economic spillover effects as a key causal mechanism linking the two phenomena. Comparing half a century of statistics on climate variability, food production, and political violence across Sub-Saharan Africa, this study offers the most precise and theoretically consistent empirical assessment to date of the purported indirect relationship. The analysis reveals a robust link between weather patterns and food production where more rainfall generally is associated with higher yields. However, the second step in the causal model is not supported; agricultural output and violent conflict are only weakly and inconsistently connected, even in the specific contexts where production shocks are believed to have particularly devastating social consequences. Although this null result could, in theory, be fully compatible with recent reports of food price-related riots, it suggests that the wider socioeconomic and political context is much more important than drought and crop failures in explaining violent conflict in contemporary Africa.

Subfields: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Sociology and Political Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/afbc16a3cdb5b641aa1e69f1a887349a35c05f47

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Citations in the corpus

• Armed Conflicts and Food Insecurity: Evidence from Boko Haram's Attacks (2019, background): “In these studies, the identified foodinsecurity related variables leading to conflict include food price shocks (Fjelde 2015), climate change (Buhaug et al. 2015), poor health and nutritional status (Pinstrup-Andersen and Shimokawa 2008), and dietary changes (Legwegoh et al. 2015).”