Climate and Conflict


Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research

Author(s): Marshall Burke, Solomon M. Hsiang, & Edward Miguel

Date: 2014

Topics: Assessment, Climate Change, Conflict Causes

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Until recently, neither climate nor conflict have been core areas of inquiry within economics, but there has been an explosion of research on both topics in the past decade, with a particularly large body of research emerging at their intersection. In this review, we survey this literature on the interlinkages between climate and conflict, by necessity drawing from both economics and other disciplines given the inherent interdisciplinarity of research in this field. We consider many types of human conflict in the review, including both interpersonal conflict — such as domestic violence, road rage, assault, murder, and rape — and intergroup conflict — including riots, ethnic violence, land invasions, gang violence, civil war and other forms of political instability, such as coups.