The Climate-Conflict Nexus: Pathways, Regional Links, and Case Studies
Publisher: Springer
Author(s): Tobias Ide, P. Michael Link, Jürgen Scheffran, and Janpeter Schilling
Date: 2016
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes
Countries: Israel, Kenya, Palestine
The role of climate change as a potential cause of violent conflict has been debated in the scholarly and policy communities for several years. We review the most recent quantitative and qualitative literature and find that research on the issue has produced little consensual findings so far. Further, we discuss major theoretical, conceptual and empirical issues and describe possible pathways linking climate change to violent conflict. To illustrate these issues, we analyse the climate-conflict nexus in different world regions and present three qualitative case studies in north-western Kenya, the Nile Basin, and Israel/Palestine. We find that possible reasons for the lack of scientific consensus may be the difficulties of existing approaches to adequately capture the complex links between climate change, vulnerability, and violent conflict.