Climate Change and Violence: Insights from Political Science
Publisher: Current Climate Change Reports
Author(s): Ole Magnus Theisen
Date: 2017
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes, Governance
Armed conflict is said to be development in reverse. Growing awareness of negative social consequences of climate change has triggered an upsurge in studies on its implications for violence. This review assesses the role climate change could play in triggering collective violence from a broad political science perspective. The form of violent conflict (hereafter referred to as conflict) studied here is collective, has two parties to it, and the aim is political rather than criminal. This review is based on studies published on January 1, 2014–May 31, 2017 in the 44 most prominent political science journals and cross-disciplinary journals where studies on the subject matter have clustered, aiming for complete coverage of statistical and case studies on weather or climate and studies that criticize how climate change has been linked to collective violence. Studies on wider concepts of security not focused on collective violence, of the pre-modern world, theoretical works, and reviews are excluded if not necessary for the argument. Disciplinary journals from economics, history, and geography should be consulted for a fuller picture.