Originally published on the CGS blog on August 15, 2012.
Much has been made of the sizzling weather this summer. You’ve heard about it around the water cooler and in line at Starbucks. This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July was the hottest month in United States history. 3,215 daily high temperature records were set or tied in June. More than 63 percent of the country in the lower 48 states is experiencing drought. Whether the high temperatures are caused by a broader climate change trend is unclear, but the heat will inevitably affect short-term crop supply, meat prices, and land arability. Moreover, the heat, if part of a climate change regime, could also affect the frequency, duration, and intensity of armed conflicts.
The side supporting the idea, partially made popular by Jeffrey Sachs, says areas most affected by rising temperatures such as the Sahel and Horn of Africa will also experience more armed conflicts. The causes of the conflicts will be droughts, desertification, water and food scarcity, and population pressure. Sachs cites long-term conflicts in Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan as places where “tribal and often pastoralist communities [struggle] to survive deepening ecological crises.” This fight for survival eventually turns into armed conflict in those communities.
The side denying the link claims that conflicts exclusively arise because of political, social, or economic tension not caused by environmental stress. John Ransom of Townhall.com claimed that wars in the Global South are “so numerous that [he] could probably make a statistical argument that one in five wars are due to the AFC winning the Super Bowl” alleging an erroneous correlation between climate change and conflict.
There are two moderate positions that bridge the divide between the absolutist stances above: climate as a conflict multiplier and climate as a conflict intensifier. The conflict multiplier theory states that climate change causes new conflicts and prolongs existing ones. This is the more radical of the two bridge theories in that it projects an increased frequency in conflicts. Conversely, the conflict intensifier theory claims that climate change will intensify and potentially lengthen conflicts caused by tensions relatively unrelated to environmental stress.
Reconciling the two moderate positions is a separate project, but noting key complicating factors is essential. First, conflicts are caused by many stressors that bring a situation from cold and tense to hot and violent. Political tension, leadership transitions, economic shock, rights suppression, weapons acquisition, state aggression and minority rule are among thousands of other conflict-drivers. Often, if not always, these drivers overlap to cause large-scale violence. Conflict in Sudan is not only driven by ethnic tension; conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not only caused by outside intervention; conflict in Burma is not only caused by military control of government. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that environmental stress caused by climate change should be included in the set of factors that cause, reinforce, and intensify conflict.
Clearly climate change and conflict are both complex issues which makes drawing a direct connection between the two difficult. Unlike conflict-drivers such as leadership transitions, it must be proven that climate change caused sufficient environmental stress which damaged local economies enough to spark violent tension. For example, Habyarimana’s death in mid-1994 almost certainly sparked violence in Rwanda that killed about 800,000 people in three months. But the link between environmental stress and genocide in Darfur, deemed the first “climate conflict,” is weaker, but still plausible. Minority ethnic groups in Darfur scrambled for resources throughout the late 1990’s and 2000’s while the central government in Khartoum rushed to secure arable land and water as sanctions crippled their economic infrastructure. However, it’s equally plausible that Khartoum’s aggression and the Darfuri response was caused by a mix of ethnic tension, state instability, and economic woes unrelated to climate change.
Viewing conflict through a climate change lens could be an opportunity for the atrocities prevention community for two reasons. First, it provides an opportunity to connect the environmental and civilian protection movements. The two are largely considered to be mutually exclusive, in youth and adult circles, but drawing a clearer line between the two would expand the respective constituencies and provoke innovative thought leadership. Suddenly, the Sierra Club, Enough Project, and 350.org have a reason to collaborate. Second, it helps solve a problem plaguing civilian protection communities. Often people do not engage with the movement because it does not affect them directly. Civilians dying in Darfur or North Kivu are seen as too far away by the average US citizen and too disconnected from their daily lives. If climate change is added to the list of reasons mass atrocities and genocides occur, advocates can potentially connect their neighbors’ transportation methods, eating habits, and housing choices to conflict thousands of miles away. Simply, our everyday choices can cause and heighten existing tension.
The connection also opens new space for legislators interested in curbing domestic greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental advocates are often plagued with the stigmas of being a “tree hugger” or those pesky people reminding us to turn down the air conditioning. However, a link to conflict allows climate change to be a national security issue rather than a special interest, making it an easier sell in Congress. If lawmakers address greenhouse gas emissions, they are ensuring a more stable environment, but they are also preventing violent threats. Moreover, climate change as a prevention measure could also be seen as in the US’s economic interests (the other easy sell in Congress). A Friends Committee on National Legislation statistic (one of the most valuable for prevention advocates) says for every one dollar spent on conflict prevention sixty dollars are spent on conflict response. Food aid, democracy-building, and early warning systems are some of the conventional prevention strategies, but climate change efforts could feasibly be included in that group.
It is in the best interest of the atrocities prevention community to make the link between climate change and armed conflict more explicit. More evidence, fewer abstractions, and clearer language would bolster it’s efforts on the grassroots and national levels. The argument would inevitably meet resistance from climate change deniers and traditional conflict analysts, but would benefit both causes in the long-term. At a Holocaust Museum event last month, Yale professor Tim Snyder said climate change acts as a “multiplier of other resource crises” that will “lead to mass killings in the decades to come” but “the gap between sound foreign policy and genocide prevention might be rather small.”
