Are We Radically Underestimating the Effects of Climate on Armed Conflict?

Mar 3, 2020 | Cullen Hendrix
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Climate change is widely recognized as a “threat multiplier.” From the United Nations to the G7 to the US Department of Defense, there is emerging consensus that climate change poses risks to both human and natural security through a variety of complex and interrelated channels. The extent of those risks, and how they connect to armed conflict, however, remain widely debated.

In a recent study published in Nature, a team of leading conflict experts concluded climate variability and/or change was only a modest contributor to armed conflict since WWII, with factors like low socioeconomic development, low state capacity, and intergroup inequality emerging as vastly more consequential.