Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Conditional Relationships Between Drought and Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

Conditional Relationships Between Drought and Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa Much of the literature on climate change adaptation claims the destabilizing consequences of environmental crises are mitigated by sociopolitical conditions that influence a state's susceptibility to scarcity-induced violence. However, few cross-national studies provide evidence of conditional scarcity-conflict relationships. This analysis of drought severity and civil conflict onset in sub-Saharan Africa (1962–2006) uncovers three sociopolitical conditions that influence the link between environmental scarcity and civil conflict: social vulnerability, state capacity, and unequal distribution of resources. Surprisingly, we find drought does not exacerbate the high risk of conflict in the vulnerable, incapable, and unequal states thought to be especially susceptible to increased scarcity. Instead, drought negates the peace-favoring attributes of stable states with less vulnerable populations. During severe drought, states with sociopolitical conditions that would otherwise favor peace are no less likely to suffer conflict than states with sociopolitical conditions that would otherwise increase the risk of violence. These findings, which are robust across several measures of these sociopolitical concepts, suggest environmental scarcity is most likely to increase the risk of conflict where populations have more to lose relative to periods with more favorable weather. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Foreign Policy Analysis Oxford University Press

Conditional Relationships Between Drought and Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

Bell, Curtis; Keys, Patrick W
Foreign Policy Analysis , Volume 14 (1): 23 – Jul 29, 2016
Download PDF
23 pages

Loading next page...
1
 
/lp/ou_press/conditional-relationships-between-drought-and-civil-conflict-in-sub-yiOcEO5MwS

References (85)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
ISSN
1743-8586
eISSN
1743-8594
DOI
10.1093/fpa/orw002
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Much of the literature on climate change adaptation claims the destabilizing consequences of environmental crises are mitigated by sociopolitical conditions that influence a state's susceptibility to scarcity-induced violence. However, few cross-national studies provide evidence of conditional scarcity-conflict relationships. This analysis of drought severity and civil conflict onset in sub-Saharan Africa (1962–2006) uncovers three sociopolitical conditions that influence the link between environmental scarcity and civil conflict: social vulnerability, state capacity, and unequal distribution of resources. Surprisingly, we find drought does not exacerbate the high risk of conflict in the vulnerable, incapable, and unequal states thought to be especially susceptible to increased scarcity. Instead, drought negates the peace-favoring attributes of stable states with less vulnerable populations. During severe drought, states with sociopolitical conditions that would otherwise favor peace are no less likely to suffer conflict than states with sociopolitical conditions that would otherwise increase the risk of violence. These findings, which are robust across several measures of these sociopolitical concepts, suggest environmental scarcity is most likely to increase the risk of conflict where populations have more to lose relative to periods with more favorable weather.

Journal

Foreign Policy Analysis – Oxford University Press

Published: Jul 29, 2016

There are no references for this article.