Weather, wheat, and war: Security implications of climate variability for conflict in Syria

Abstract

We examine how Syria’s local growing seasons and precipitation variability affected patterns of violence during the country’s civil war (2011–19). Among Syria’s 272 subdistricts ( nahiyah), we study conflict events initiated by the Assad regime or its allies, and, separately, by other armed non-government groups (‘rebels’). Throughout the war, violence to capture agriculture has been used regularly to control valuable cropland and harvests. Combatants also seek to deny their adversaries access to these resources by deploying violence to destroy agriculture. We test the hypothesis that conflict was most likely during local growing seasons due to both of these motivations. Additionally, we examine whether unusually dry conditions further elevated the risk of conflict during growing season months. A theory for why higher levels of conflict would occur during unusually dry conditions is that livelihood losses elevate incentives to control scarce crops and also facilitate recruitment of militants or their sympathizers. We find that violent events initiated by the government and rebel groups are both more likely during the growing season than other times of the year. There is also evidence that dry conditions during the growing season led to an increase in government-initiated attacks over the duration of the war. We find the strongest relationship between precipitation deficits and both government- and rebel-initiated violence in later years of the war. Compared with our growing season results, the rainfall deviation estimates are less consistent across models.

Security implications of climate change: A decade of scientific progress

“…The contributions of articles in this issue help identify under what circumstances spatial and temporal agricultural production variations influence the risk of several conflict-related outcomes. Focusing on the dynamics of the Syrian Civil War, Linke & Ruether (2021) show that drought during the growing season increases the likelihood of violent events, but patterns differ by conflict actors. According to their analysis, the growing season is generally a time of heightened conflict activity.…”

Introducing AfroGrid, a unified framework for environmental conflict research in Africa

“…Quantitative, mixed methods, and even qualitative social scientists increasingly rely on high resolution data to study local-level political and economic development. This is especially true for environmental conflict analysis, which examined the impact of temperature 1 , 2 , precipitation 3 – 5 , food (in)security 6 – 8 , water (in)security 9 , and environmental migrants 10 , 11 , among others. While earlier work relied on country level indicators, quantitative and mixed methods researchers turn to geographically disaggregated data to capture subnational conflict dynamics 12 , 13 .…”

Climate variability, crop and conflict: Exploring the impacts of spatial concentration in agricultural production

“…Spatially heterogeneous crop failures will disproportionately restrain local populations’ access to food, reduce rural households’ means of sustenance, induce peaks in food prices (Arezki & Brueckner, 2014) which reduce consumers’ purchasing power (Berazneva & Lee, 2013), and affect agricultural income (Roche et al, 2020), all in all leading to a heavier deterioration of the local livelihood in some regions, while others are relatively better off. The relative deprivation induced by a heterogeneous livelihood impairment and shifts in food entitlements will in turn (a) foster grievances, especially when intertwining with extant societal fractures (Heslin, 2020) or ethnic exclusion (Ide, Kristensen & Bartuseviĉius, 2021), (b) trigger resource competition and deliberate efforts to deny adversaries’ access to harvests (Linke & Ruether, 2021), and (c) decrease the opportunity cost of conflicts for the poor and thereby motivate the use of collective violence and increase the predisposition to armed conflict (Pinstrup-Andersen & Shimokawa, 2008).…”