Syria: Scientists Implicate Climate Change as Potential Cause of the Syrian Civil War

Mar 2, 2015 | Nathan Collins, Pacific Standard, Business Insider
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There's been growing chatter over the years suggesting that global climate change can spark wars, particularly in developing countries where drought conditions could lead to conflict over water rights. Just last week, the New Yorker's Michael Specter wrote that "the result of continued inaction is clear ... water wars are on the horizon."

According to some, those wars are already here. In a paper out today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, climate researcher and PACE fellow Colin Kelley and colleagues at Columbia University argue that the ongoing Syrian civil war was the indirect result of the planet's rising temperature.

The researchers became interested in the subject after reading editorials about the Arab Spring, specifically "about how environmental stresses, different in every Arab Spring country, had been overlooked in their contributions to the uprisings," Kelley writes in an email. "We knew there had been a severe multiyear drought in the years just prior to the Syrian uprising," he continues, which likely precipitated the Syrian conflict. That drought stretched from 2007 to 2010 and decimated the country's wheat production, driving farmers into urban areas and ultimately into conflict with their new neighbors.