Local Warming and Violent Conflict in North and South Sudan

Abstract

Abstract:Weather shocks and natural disasters, it has been argued, represent a major threat to national and international security. Our paper contributes to the emerging micro-level strand of the literature on the link between local variations in weather shocks and conflict by focusing on a pixel-level analysis for North and South Sudan at different geographical and time scales between 1997 and 2009. Temperature anomalies are found to strongly affect the risk of conflict. Compared to the baseline, in the future the risk is expected to magnify in a range of 21 to 30 percent under a median scenario -taking into account uncertainties in both the climate projection and the estimate of the response of violence to temperature variations. Extreme temperature shocks are found to strongly affect the likelihood of violence as well, but the predictive power is hindered by substantial uncertainty. Our paper also sheds light on the vulnerability of areas with particular biophysical characteristics or with vulnerable populations. 1 We are grateful to Marshall Burke (University of California Berkeley) for sharing the projections from the 20 climate projection models and the three scenarios used in the projection exercise and to David Lister (University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit) to provide the data on the location of the weather stations. Jose Funes provided valuable research assistance.

Droughts, Conflict, and the African Slave Trade

“…Both contemporary and historical evidence suggest a strong correlation between droughts and conflict (Calderone, Maystadt and You, 2015;Hsiang, Burke and Miguel, 2013;Miller, 1982;Lovejoy, 2012, 69). In some regions, such as in Angola, the population's faith in its ruler rested on the ruler's ability to control the rains.…”

How to build resilience to conflict: The role of food security

“…Both the adopted model and the magnitude of the results are consistent with recent evidence showing a strong and systematic relationship between higher temperature and civil wars in Africa (Couttenier and Soubeyran 2014; Hsiang, Burke, and Miguel 2013; Hsiang and Meng 2014). There are several possible channels through which higher temperatures may lead to conflict (Calderone, Maystadt, and You 2013), some of which we discuss in the following.…”

“…• To improve people's resilience to weather shocks and lower the incentive for participating in conflict "sustainably," alternative income sources and therefore economic growth and diversification are needed, in addition to social protection mechanisms (see Calderone, Maystadt, and You [2013] for more specific recommendations). Ultimately, poverty reduction is a key factor in conflict prevention.…”

“…Certainly, there is still much to understand about which conditions make the link between resource scarcity and conflict hold in one direction or another. As suggested by Maystadt and Ecker (2014) and Calderone, Maystadt, and You (2013), there is a need to identify the mechanisms behind the climate-conflict nexus that has been recently established (Hsiang, Burke, and Miguel 2013;Hsiang and Meng 2014). Calderone, Maystadt, and You (2013) sought to fill that knowledge gap by shedding light on the validity of the climate-conflict nexus in arid and semiarid lowland (ASAL) areas in North and South Sudan.…”

“…As suggested by Maystadt and Ecker (2014) and Calderone, Maystadt, and You (2013), there is a need to identify the mechanisms behind the climate-conflict nexus that has been recently established (Hsiang, Burke, and Miguel 2013;Hsiang and Meng 2014). Calderone, Maystadt, and You (2013) sought to fill that knowledge gap by shedding light on the validity of the climate-conflict nexus in arid and semiarid lowland (ASAL) areas in North and South Sudan. Using within-pixel variations (with pixel and time-fixed effects and with specific trends and correction for spatial dependency), the authors found a strong relationship between temperature shocks and interpersonal violence.…”