Climatic Disruptions, Natural Resources, and Conflict: The Challenges to Governance
Publisher: Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences
Author(s): Margarita Alario, Leda Nath, and Steve Carlton-Ford
Date: 2016
Topics: Climate Change, Governance
Natural resources are identified as a significant variable explaining intrastate conflict since the end of the Cold War. There are sound reasons for this to be the case, as social scientists struggle to make sense of conflicts in the post-Cold War era. As climatic disruptions and climate change are predicted to create extreme conditions and adversely affect natural resources accessibility, we wonder whether the capacity of nations to govern their natural resources rent-driven economies is of explanatory value. Hence, we hypothesize that what we have termed the governance capacity curse (GCC) may play an equal or greater role in our understanding of natural resources-driven internal wars than the so-called natural resources curse (NRC).