CLIMATE CONFLICT?: New research suggests that higher average temperatures could create conditions for more civil wars, like the ongoing conflict in Darfur.
Image: © iStockphoto.com / Claudia Dewald
More In This Article
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
Some experts call the genocide in Darfur the world's first conflict caused by climate change. After all, the crisis was sparked, at least in part, by a decline in rainfall over the past 30 years just as the region's population doubled, pitting wandering pastoralists against settled farmers for newly scarce resources, such as arable land.
"Is Darfur the first climate change war?" asked economist and Scientific American columnist Jeffrey Sachs at an event at Columbia University in 2007. "Don't doubt for a moment that places like Darfur are ecological disasters first and political disasters second."
But new research would suggest the answer to Sachs's question is no, at least regarding the novelty of Darfur. Agricultural economist Marshall Burke of the University of California, Berkeley and his colleagues have analyzed the history of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa between 1980 and 2002 in a new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We find that civil wars were much more likely to happen in warmer-than-average years, with one degree Celsius warmer temperatures in a given year associated with a 50 percent higher likelihood of conflict in that year," Burke says. The implication: because average temperatures may warm by at least one degree C by 2030, "climate change could increase the incidences of African civil war by 55 percent by 2030, and this could result in about 390,000 additional battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars."
In fact, temperature change offered a better prediction of impending conflict in the 40 countries surveyed than even changes in rainfall, despite the fact that agriculture in this region is largely dependent on such precipitation. Burke and his fellow authors argue that this could be because many staple crops in the region are vulnerable to reduced yields with temperature changes—10 to 30 percent drops per degree C of warming.
"If temperature rises, crop yields decline and rural incomes fall, and the disadvantaged rural population becomes more likely to take up arms," Burke says. "Fighting for something to eat beats starving in their fields."
Whereas 23 years in 40 countries provides a relatively large data set, it does not exclude other possible explanations, such as violent crime increasing with temperature rise, a drop in farm labor productivity or population growth. "Fast population growth could create resource shortage problems, as well," notes geographer David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong, who previously analyzed world history back to A.D. 1400 to find linkages between war and temperature change. Those results were also published in 2007 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But "the driver for this linkage," Zhang says," is resource shortage, mainly agricultural production, which is caused by climate change."
Burke and his colleagues specifically excluded records from prior to 1980, because of the conflict rampant in the wake of Africa's emerging colonial independence after World War II. "A lag of a couple of decades would leave sufficient time for post-independence turmoil to wear out," Burke argues. "We took the approach that the best analogue to the next few decades were the last few decades."
Proving the link—and providing a specific mechanism for the increase in conflict, whether agricultural productivity or otherwise—remains the next challenge. "I believe that the historical experience of human society of climate change would provide us [with] the evidence of how climate cooling and warming during the last thousand years created human crisis, and also the lessons for human adaptive choices for climate change," Zhang notes.
"We feel that we have very clearly shown the strong link between temperature increases and conflict risk," Burke adds. But "what interventions will make climate-induced conflict less likely?"
The U.S. military, for its part, is concerned about the issue, analyzing the possibility for climate change to destabilize countries in recent reports, such as an essay from members of the CNA Military Advisory Board in November, "Climate and Energy the Dominant Challenges of the 21st Century."
But, given the recent historical record in places like Darfur, the question about intervention may remain unanswered. "We need 18 helicopters but no one has provided it and yet we are so concerned about Darfur," said former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan at an event at Columbia University in September, noting the stretched resources of the peacekeeping forces in that region. "No one can tell me we don't have 18 helicopters. We have thousands."
See what we're tweeting about
17 Comments
Add CommentOne remark I frequently hear from climate change deniers, is that higher temperatures and more CO2 would have a beneficial effect on harvests anyway. I have seen no evidence to back this point of view on a global level...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJuan Cole has suggested that much of the turmoil in Afghanistan could be environmentally related.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is just silly; of course climate change sparks conflict. Witness the Okie's attempts to leave the Dust Bowl in the 1930's and move to California. The question that needs to be asked is are people responsible for climate change?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article speaks nothing to the cause of climate change and is mere propaganda meant to incite fear.
As to Afghanistan, get serious, they have been fighting invaders and themselves since the time of Alexander and before. The problem with suddenly "believing" in climate change is that you see evidence for it being evil under every rock and behind every tree.
Climate change is real; has been for billions of years. Doesn't mean it's good or bad... it just is. And it doesn't automatically mean that people are responsible.
Here is some evidence you might be interested in. It came up in a discussion where I had to prove global warming and wanted to do it from a skeptics view point. I found a journal article titled "CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispotential climate change" by Sherwood B. Idso. (Vol. 10: 69–82, 1998 Climate Res... There is a lot of excellent reference material in here. So I'll just post a few as there is way too much
"Consider the fact, impressively supported by literally
hundreds of laboratory and field experiments (Lemon
1983, Cure & Acock 1986, Mortensen 1987, Lawlor &
Mitchell 1991, Drake 1992, Poorter 1993, Idso & Idso
1994, Strain & Cure 1994), that nearly all plants are
better adapted to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations
than those of the present, and that the productivity
of most herbaceous plants rises by 30 to 50% for a
300 to 600 ppm doubling of the air’s CO2 content (Kimball
1983, Idso 1992a), while the growth of many
woody plants rises even more dramatically (Idso &
Kimball 1993, Ceulemans & Mousseau 1994, Wullschleger
et al. 1995, 1997). Because of this stimulatory
effect of elevated carbon dioxide on plant growth and
development, the productivity of the biosphere has
been rising hand-in-hand with the recent historical rise
in the air’s CO2 content (Idso 1995), as is evident in
(1) the ever-increasing amplitude of the seasonal cycle
of the air’s CO2 concentration (Pearman & Hyson 1981,
Cleveland et al. 1983, Bacastow et al. 1985, Keeling
et al. 1985, 1995, 1996, Myneni et al. 1997), (2) the
upward trends in a number of long tree-ring records
that mirror the progression of the Industrial Revolution
(LaMarche et al. 1984, Graybill & Idso 1993), and
(3) the accelerating growth rates of numerous forests
on nearly every continent of the globe over the past
several decades (Kauppi et al. 1992, Phillips & Gentry
1994, Pimm & Sugden 1994, Idso 1995)."
-Lemon ER (1983) CO2 and plants: the response of plants to rising
levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Westview Press,
Boulder
-Cure JD, Acock B (1986) Crop responses to carbon dioxide
doubling: a literature survey. Agric For Meteorol 8:
127–145
Mortensen LM (1987) Review: CO2 enrichment in greenhouses.
Crop responses. Sci Hort 33:1–25
-Kimball BA (1983) Carbon dioxide and agricultural yield: an
assemblage and analysis of 770 prior observations. U.S.
Water Conservation Laboratory, Phoenix
-LaMarche VC Jr, Graybill DA, Fritts HC, Rose MR (1984)
Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide: tree ring evidence
for growth enhancement in natural vegetation. Science
@Shoshin
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we're still alive in the next billion years when the sun starts expanding to the point that our blood boils and you say to me "Climate change is real; has been for billions of years. Doesn't mean it's good or bad... it just is. " Dear god... Of course it is bad. If climate threatens the survival of humans and/or other species of course it is bad.
However I will conceive their is some good as pointed out in Thomas Gale Moore "Global warming:The good, the bad, the ugly and the efficient" in European Molecular Biology Organization journal.
Nimbus : These authors ignore the fact that as CO2 increases growth, plants need additional nutrients, which themselves are not present unless man adds them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecondly, research shows that increased CO2 levels are mirrored by increased temperature. As temperature increases, plants close their stomata to reduce water loss, so growth is slowed. Plants are very sensitive to temperature changes, as is proved by altitude zonation as well as latitude zonation.
Just adding CO2 to plants growing under glass domes is no proof of what happens in reality. And how can you prove that your figures about augmented tree-ring growth are due to extra CO2 and not other factors? Or did you enclose whole forests under glass? There has been some sound research done on the question, but only in the last decade or so.
In Africa, they generally don't need an excuse to go to war. And the famine generally results from the war, not the other way around.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNimbus2506:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnthropocentric views of good and bad are irrelevant to science; things are what they are.
eco-steve:
Nice job cherry picking and slicing data. Give it up. Your way of picking and slicing data has been called to the carpet for what it is; Voodoo science.
Take all the data or none, science ain't a buffet, you have to eat everything on the plate.
eco-steve: Unless you've read all those papers, I wouldn't go slamming the authors on what they have or haven't looked at. That small paragraph I quoted contains ~26 peer reviewed journal articles (Just a quick count).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm also interested in this research, reference me?
Shoshin
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs much as I believe science should be emotionless. The concluded results, however, should be given given the right to determine if they are good or not because only then, can management make decisions on our future. If humans can't determine if science is good or bad, then what is the point of science?
Nimbus 2506:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience in and of itself is neither good nor bad. How we use it is good or bad, and that depends on a human judgement.
One of the most difficult things about being a scientist is maintaining objectivity, especially, as the CRU crew found out, when things aren't working out the way you planned and millions of $$ of your research budget is on the line.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Nimbus,
Five words for you: Liebigs Law of the Minimun.
There seems to be news from New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research regarding recent temperature data faking. The technique used in New Zealand to exagerate AGW was to go back into fixed data station records and simply arbitrarily make them seem to be a lot colder in the distant past. When this was done it made more recent data appear to be warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch methods were used in a University of Washington study on Antarctica temperature records released earlier this year which made up for the paucity of ground reporting stations in the 1950's, 60's, and 70's by just making arguments about why it is valid to make up and plug in numbers into empty data grids where no measurements were made, then re-average all the numbers (real and made-up) using these jiggered extrapolations and "prove" that Antarctica was considerably colder five decades or so ago, thereby "proving" that the continent has been warming since.
Is horse puckey a scientific term? You know, when doctors mess up there is a thing called malpractice. When lawyers do an incompetent job there is legal malpractice. What is there when scientists abandon all connections with intellectual honesty?
Sometimes I argue with people who think they have scientific educations and I listen patiently while they explain that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (undebatable, I admit) and also that temperatures generally increased from about 1940 to at least 1998 (since 1998 I will debate quite a bit.)
But then when they are finished tutoring me I ask them if they have ever heard of the basic principle of scientific logic which informs us that correlation is not causation?
Their eyes glaze over. They can't even comprehend what I am talking about because they were taught by enthusiasts for one point of view and one point of view only, who were much too busy being passionately political on campus (thereby getting scholarships, grants, promotions, even chicks) to delve much into how being really rigorously objective is the sine qua non of science.
In their presence at COP 15 Mediators Beyond Borders will be giving examples of climate changed conflict and where mediation has been a mitigating force.There are stories and hard data to support this intervention. We are requesting changes in treaty language to include mediation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMediators Beyond Borders has extensive experience in working with conflict induced by climate change. At the Copenhagen Climate Change conference we will be presenting both stories and hard data. We are looking to have mediation added in the treaty language.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNimbus & Shoshin : My remarks are not aimed at criticising the authors of the article, but to correct inaccurate comments made above.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe writer of this piece is a journalist by education and trade. Without training in scientific method, he conveniently accepted Burke's statement that crop yields would drop by 10-30% with a degree rise in temperature. This may be true for arid regions such as the Sahara, but for areas that have growing seasons defined by the end of winter to the beginning of the next winter, there will be increases in crop yield, due to the increase in the length of the growing season. History bears this out in the case of Europe, for example. And Greenland, which before the last Ice Age was home to sheep and over 300 farms supporting a community of 5,000, once again is looking forward to this warming period, as the inhabitants are witnessing the return of the longer growing season, and they are expecting to produce more crops. The writer needs to look at all data from all regions, before coming to his conclusions, which only add to the fear-mongering associated with climate change fanatics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this