Climate Change and Violent Conflict: A critical literature review
Publisher: Oxfam America
Author(s): Ellen Messer
Date: 2010
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Renewable Resources
Countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Israel, Palestine, Sudan
A burgeoning literature explores climate change as a risk multiplier that will lead to an escalation in armed conflicts. This literature can be referred to as “climate change causes conflict” (CCCC) discourse. Among substantive factors, CCCC proponents examine implications of increasing heat and drought, as well as more-severe weather overall (i.e., more storms with greater intensity). According to CCCC adherents, these factors will cause large-scale, deadly, human migrations away from inundated seacoasts and will also push populations dependent on rainfall or irrigated agriculture to the brink of fierce competition for productive resources. Thus, both directly and indirectly, these population movements in search of access to land and water will lead to increasingly frequent and hostile confrontations. Unless everyone takes action now to mitigate climate change stressors and all impacted world environments, CCCC proponents argue that climate change will multiply the impacts of population growth and environmental degradation, which already lead to confrontations and conflicts, especially in poorly governed places in the developing world.