Environmental changes and violent conflict

By T. Bernauer, Tobias Böhmelt, V. Koubi. 2012

246 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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

Subfields: General Health Professions, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb3942f2fe17db22545f68556fc34fb3ebaf0afd

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In General Health Professions

1. Tobias Böhmelt
2. Stefan Dercon
3. T. Bernauer
4. V. Koubi
5. W. Adger

In Sociology and Political Science

1. T. Bernauer
2. Tobias Böhmelt
3. Richard Black
4. Stefan Dercon
5. N. Arnell
6. Halvard Buhaug
7. V. Koubi
8. W. Adger

Citations in the corpus

• Focus on environmental risks and migration: causes and consequences (2015, background): “Bernauer et al (2012) review the evidence on direct and indirect interactions that link environmental change with conflict.”
• Demand, supply, and restraint: Determinants of domestic water conflict and cooperation (2014, unknown): “The bulk of this research provides little evidence for a powerful direct link between climate change or variability and armed conflict (Bernauer et al., 2012b; Deligiannis, 2012; Gleditsch, 2012; Scheffran et al., 2012; Meierding, 2013; Theisen et al., 2011; however, see also Hsiang et al., 2013),…”
• Climate variability, food production shocks, and violent conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa (2015, background): “So far, this body of research has failed to converge on a consistent and robust climate effect (Bernauer et al 2012, Adger et al 2014, Buhaug et al 2014, Gemenne et al 2014, Salehyan 2014).”
• Do natural resources matter for interstate and intrastate armed conflict? (2014, background): “Bernauer et al. (2012) have coded data on water-related conflict and cooperation events in 35 Mediterranean, Sahel, and Middle East countries between 1997 and 2009.”