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Climate Change and Conflict

The security implications of climate change are attracting increased attention, and for good reason. Scientific evidence shows that the earth is warming due largely to human activities and at a potentially unprecedented rate. Long-term changes in climate already have occurred and are projected to continue, including sea-level rises, more intense and longer droughts, more intense tropical storms, and more frequent heat waves and heavy precipitation events.

The potential consequences of these changes and of the environmental degradation associated with them are grave. They include food and water shortages, population shifts and economic losses. These in turn may increase a range of risks to human security, including the risk of deadly conflict.

Yet the relationship between climate change and conflict is complex and not yet sufficiently understood. This is in part because climate projections are somewhat limited in geographic and temporal specificity, and different societies have different capacities to adapt to changes and related effects. But it is also because the processes that produce violent conflict in any particular situation are often complicated. Although environmental change likely never has been and never will be the sole or proximate cause of deadly conflict, it can contribute to conditions that make it more likely or severe.

A key challenge today is to better understand the relationship between climate change, environmental degradation and conflict and to effectively manage associated risks through appropriate conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms. To address this important issue, Crisis Group has created the following brief overview and resource page.

1. Past and projected climate changes

2. Effects of climate changes and impact on conflict

3. Links to key resources on the web

4. Crisis Group reports and briefings

1. Past and Projected Climate Changes

There is broad agreement within the scientific community that human activities are increasing global surface temperatures at a rapid rate, and that those temperatures will continue to rise through 2100 and beyond, even if concentrations of greenhouse gases are stabilised. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading forum for climate analysis, confirmed this view in February 2007 with the contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, presented in Climate Change 2007 – The Physical Science Basis. (The complete Fourth Assessment Report is due to be released in November 2007). The findings largely track those of the previous three assessments (in 1990, 1995 and 2001) but are more robust, due to the availability of new and more comprehensive data, improvements in data simulation and modelling and more extensive exploration of uncertainty ranges. The IPCC uses a range of "emission scenarios" to make projections about what realistically may occur given different assumptions about the future.
 
Key findings of the IPCC regarding the current state of climate change, its drivers and projections for the future include:

  • warming of the climate system is now unequivocal;
  • the rate of warming in the last century is historically high;
  • the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, due primarily to fossil fuel use, land-use change and agriculture;
  • most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (greater than 90 per cent) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (i.e., caused by human activity) greenhouse gas concentrations;
  • long-term changes in climate have already been observed, including changes in Arctic temperature and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and intensity of tropical cyclones;
  • from 1900 to 2005, drying has been observed in the Sahel, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and parts of southern Asia;
  • more intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics;
  • continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those of the 20th century;
  • projections for the 21st century include a greater chance that more areas will be affected by drought, that intense tropical cyclone activity will increase, that the incidence of extreme high sea levels will increase, and that heat waves and heavy precipitation events will be more frequent; and
  • even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilised, anthropogenic warming and sea-level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks.

The IPCC and other influential scientific assessments reflect important advances in the understanding of global warming and climate change. Perhaps most critically they demonstrate the historic magnitude of the pace and nature of these changes and underline the urgency of efforts to reduce carbon emissions and to develop mechanisms to cope with climate impacts that cannot be avoided. 

Although broad climactic trends are known with great certainty, there are some limitations when it comes to modelling specific climates or patterns with precision. For instance, gaps in data and the decline of observational networks in many parts of the world, often in developing countries and particularly in those affected by conflict, impede systematic and sustained observation of 20th century climate trends, which is essential to climate process studies and modelling. In addition, in making future projections, it is difficult to account for potential "feedback" effects of global warming – secondary climate processes triggered by warming that may increase or decrease future warming. For example, if increased temperatures cause glaciers and sea-ice to melt, more land and open water could be exposed to solar radiation and absorb more of it because they are less reflective than ice, resulting in more warming (and melting). In contrast, if increased temperatures cause particular cloud cover changes, incoming solar radiation could be reduced and warming limited. The geographic distribution of climate pressures also can be difficult to predict because of the number of considerations at the sub-system level. As a result of these and other factors, climate projections for certain regions and sub-regions may be inconsistent or general. 

Still, substantial efforts are being made to make them more precise, often for the purpose of assessing risks that flow from them. Institutions such as the Met Office Hadley Centre, the UK's official centre for climate change research, and the provider of the core scientific input to the October 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, have extensive tools and data sets to make climate projections and are constantly working to improve them. Equally important, significant work has been and continues to be done to understand and map the society-specific vulnerabilities to climate changes and their effects.


2. Effects of Climate Changes and Impact on Conflict

Changes in climate are expected to have major negative consequences in certain parts of the world. Some societies are likely to see significant drops in food production, with increased temperatures possibly accelerating grain sterility, shifts in rainfall patterns accelerating erosion and desertification and rendering land infertile, sea-level increases and flows inundating farmlands and disrupting fish populations, and extreme weather events disturbing agricultural processes. Water scarcity also may increase with shifts in rainfall, while disease may spread with increased temperatures.

The IPCC summarised these trends, and the factors that influence them, in April 2007 with the release of the contribution of Working Group II to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, presented in a Summary for Policymakers [PDF]. It assesses the "current scientific understanding of impacts of climate change on natural, managed and human systems, the capacity of these systems to adapt and their vulnerability". These findings include regional predictions and highlight stark disparities between the developed and developing world.

There is unsurprising consensus that climate change will have disproportionately harmful socio-economic effects on developing countries, even though they have contributed to it least. Another leading report in this area is the Stern Review, prepared for the British government by economist Sir Nicholas Stern. It argues that developing countries are particularly vulnerable because of their topical geography; their high population growth, heavy dependence on agriculture and rapid urbanisation; and their weak infrastructures and lack of resources. It also discusses a broad range of effects that countries or regions may experience.

The Stern report and other studies have suggested that climate-induced scarcities – of food, water and health – will increase poverty, affect migration patterns and potentially lead to or exacerbate deadly conflict. To better understand this climate-conflict link it is important to consider the complex factors that determine the degree to which societies will experience climate effects and those that determine whether deadly conflict will commence and/or persist.

The degree to which societies will experience the negative environmental and socio-economic effects of climate change depends in large part on their vulnerability to it. This vulnerability can be measured by looking at (1) the extent to which societies are dependent on natural resources and ecosystem services, (2) the extent to which the resources and services that societies do rely on are sensitive to changes in climate, and (3) the capacity of societies to adapt to changes in these resources and services ("adaptive capacity"). Thus, while the environmental and socio-economic effects of climate change are projected to be widespread, they will not be uniformly distributed because of varying vulnerabilities. They are also difficult to estimate precisely, given the dynamic nature of the factors that go into the vulnerability calculus.

What is clear is that reducing vulnerability should reduce those negative effects. Thus, appropriate development policies are a critical priority.

Whether deadly conflict will break out under climate stress is also complicated. Studies suggest that climate effects could contribute to violent conflict in a number of ways, including:

  • long-term environmental deterioration may lead to scarcity (especially declining access to water or to land and the returns on use of land), increasing competition over those resources and possibly leading to violence;
  • long-term environmental deterioration may lead to scarcity and contribute to massive migration ("environmental refugees"),  potentially destabilising neighbouring areas; or
  • increased climate variability – intense droughts or floods or natural disasters – may cause short-term economic shocks, reducing employment opportunities – possibly increasing recruitment to armed groups – and leading to violence.

These patterns are cause for concern. Scarcity – particularly of land or water, and whether caused by climate change, mismanagement or other factors – has played an important role in many past and current conflicts. Large population movements present critical security issues under any circumstances. And there is evidence that low income per capita and short-term growth shocks are associated with increased risk of conflict. 

But these factors inevitably interact with others – such as governance, political stability and ethnic issues – making it difficult to predict whether and if so how violence will break out in any particular situation. While climate change can certainly play a role in deadly conflicts, it is highly unlikely to be the sole or primary cause. The key therefore is to reduce risks as much as possible and to focus on environment and resource dimensions of actual and potential conflict situations.  

Importantly, climate and environmental stress may also play a role in producing collaboration instead of violence. Water is an important example. Historically, water scarcity has often – though certainly not always – worked to favour cooperation between states. Interstate dialogue prompted by diminished water supplies, particularly, can build trust, institutionalise cooperation on a broader range of issues and create common regional identities.

For example, water access between India and Pakistan has served as an important feature of conflict resolution negotiations: one of the six committees established to resolve tensions in 2004 is explicitly devoted to water management. And in Latin America, interdependence among countries sharing access to the Lempa basin has been conducive to the development of regional institutional mechanisms to manage supplies (leading to the establishment of the Tri-national Commission in 1997 and subsequent development of the Trifino Plan).

Thus, there are opportunities as well as risks, and both need appropriate attention. The web resources listed below provide background on these important issues.  Crisis Group also addresses natural resource and environmental stresses from time to time in our regular reporting; examples are also listed below.

3. Links to Key Resources Online

Organisations and websites

Specific publications

4. Crisis Group Reports and Briefings

Crisis Group addresses natural resource and environmental stresses from time to time in our regular reporting; some notable examples are listed below.

Crisis Group staff also speak and comment on the security implications of climate change.

 
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