Climate change, disasters and violent conflict

Dr Tobias Ide, 27 November 2019.

The frequency and intensity of disasters related to natural hazards, such as droughts, storms or floods, will increase in the future. Along with the growth of population and assets in vulnerable areas, climate change is one driver of this. There has been widespread speculation about the security implications of climate change, with both scholars and policy makers being concerned that climate-related disasters increase the risk of violent conflict. This talk traces the potential pathways connecting disasters to conflict and exemplifies them using the Syrian civil war as a case study. Afterwards, it presents new, multi-method evidence on the topic, showing that climate-related disasters increase the risk of violent conflict onset in certain contexts.