Climate and war
Aug. 3rd, 2019 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nairiporterNew study establishes causal link between climate, conflict, and migration
"IIASA-led research has established a causal link between climate, conflict, and migration for the first time, something which has been widely suggested in the media but for which scientific evidence is scarce."
In a nutshell, the effects of global climate change are not limited to just extreme and unusual natural disasters. The changing climate is also a factor for conflict and the resulting mass migration, including the one that has become a major problem for Europe in recent years.
The IIASA research is the one to ever draw a correlation between climate change and the intensifying conflicts and migration in regions severely affected by global warming. More specifically, the research points at climate change as being one of the reasons for the Arab Spring across the Maghreb and the Middle East.
Even more specifically, an example is given with Syria, where the initial popular uprising became a full-out civil war that persists to this day and is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The research demonstrates that one of the prerequisites for this development is the constant rise of the medium temperatures in the region, and the resulting drought. The drinking water shortage, the years over years of bad crops, have all combined to create the perfect storm that has triggered the mass shifting of rural populations to the big cities, where in turn they have faced social problems, shortage of living space, and surging unemployment. Given the concurrent steady rise in food prices (directly caused by drought, and the shotrage of food and resources for the agricultural industry), it is no surprise that popular discontent has evolved into mass protests, political confrontation, and eventually civil war with millions of refugees flooding into neighbouring regions.
The latest UN data (from November 2018) shows that more than 5.6 million Syrians have fled the country, and another 6 million have become internal refugees. The research also mentions similar conditions being the factor for such events in other countries, especially Sub-Saharan Africa.
This is a subject that has been discussed very widely in both scientific and political circles, and yet, too little serious thought is being given by society on the link between these processes, although the correlation is becoming ever more evident.
In order to pinpoint the nature of the relation between climate change and migration, the authors have used a complex model, including a number of researches conducted simultaneously, and then combined into a single result. First they have examined the refugee applications in the 2006/2015 period across 157 countries. Then they have analysed the climate conditions in the countries of origin, combining the two researches into a chronologically consistent dynamic model.
The main indicator for climate change that the research is using is the ratio between rainfall and vapour rates (the so called SPEI index). As for the scope and quantity of conflict, they have used the global armed conflict database of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, which has existed since 1946 (using only data for the direct victims of conflict).
The resulting model also takes a number of other indexes into consideration, like the distance between the country of origin and the destination country, the population size of the two countries, their political status, the presence of ethnic and religious minorities in both, etc.
The results from the research clearly show that for the 2006-2015 period, climate change has played an important role for the size and direction of migration, the more severe droughts causing more conflict, and thus a larger number of casualties, and a heavier social and political impact. We should of course note that the researchers acknowledge that the cause-causal effect between climate change and mass migration remains indirect: it is based on growing social tension, which leads to various conflicts.
While climate change does not necessarily directly lead to conflict and increased migration, in the conditions of inadequate governance and lack of democracy, drastic climate change tends to precipitate conflict, which in essence is about the struggle for limited resources.
"IIASA-led research has established a causal link between climate, conflict, and migration for the first time, something which has been widely suggested in the media but for which scientific evidence is scarce."
In a nutshell, the effects of global climate change are not limited to just extreme and unusual natural disasters. The changing climate is also a factor for conflict and the resulting mass migration, including the one that has become a major problem for Europe in recent years.
The IIASA research is the one to ever draw a correlation between climate change and the intensifying conflicts and migration in regions severely affected by global warming. More specifically, the research points at climate change as being one of the reasons for the Arab Spring across the Maghreb and the Middle East.
Even more specifically, an example is given with Syria, where the initial popular uprising became a full-out civil war that persists to this day and is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The research demonstrates that one of the prerequisites for this development is the constant rise of the medium temperatures in the region, and the resulting drought. The drinking water shortage, the years over years of bad crops, have all combined to create the perfect storm that has triggered the mass shifting of rural populations to the big cities, where in turn they have faced social problems, shortage of living space, and surging unemployment. Given the concurrent steady rise in food prices (directly caused by drought, and the shotrage of food and resources for the agricultural industry), it is no surprise that popular discontent has evolved into mass protests, political confrontation, and eventually civil war with millions of refugees flooding into neighbouring regions.
The latest UN data (from November 2018) shows that more than 5.6 million Syrians have fled the country, and another 6 million have become internal refugees. The research also mentions similar conditions being the factor for such events in other countries, especially Sub-Saharan Africa.
This is a subject that has been discussed very widely in both scientific and political circles, and yet, too little serious thought is being given by society on the link between these processes, although the correlation is becoming ever more evident.
In order to pinpoint the nature of the relation between climate change and migration, the authors have used a complex model, including a number of researches conducted simultaneously, and then combined into a single result. First they have examined the refugee applications in the 2006/2015 period across 157 countries. Then they have analysed the climate conditions in the countries of origin, combining the two researches into a chronologically consistent dynamic model.
The main indicator for climate change that the research is using is the ratio between rainfall and vapour rates (the so called SPEI index). As for the scope and quantity of conflict, they have used the global armed conflict database of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, which has existed since 1946 (using only data for the direct victims of conflict).
The resulting model also takes a number of other indexes into consideration, like the distance between the country of origin and the destination country, the population size of the two countries, their political status, the presence of ethnic and religious minorities in both, etc.
The results from the research clearly show that for the 2006-2015 period, climate change has played an important role for the size and direction of migration, the more severe droughts causing more conflict, and thus a larger number of casualties, and a heavier social and political impact. We should of course note that the researchers acknowledge that the cause-causal effect between climate change and mass migration remains indirect: it is based on growing social tension, which leads to various conflicts.
While climate change does not necessarily directly lead to conflict and increased migration, in the conditions of inadequate governance and lack of democracy, drastic climate change tends to precipitate conflict, which in essence is about the struggle for limited resources.
