Catalyzing Cooperation: Disaster Diplomacy and its Potential to Short-Circuit the Climate-Conflict Link

Apr 15, 2015 | Tim Kovach
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Here is a growing chorus of voices claiming climate change will foster more conflict and violence. Books have been released on the impending age of climate wars, while media outlets dutifully report on research that purports to show how global warming will increase violence of every form, from the number of times pitchers bean batters in baseball to the rate of sexual assault.

Concern has become so widespread the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change devoted a chapter of its Fifth Assessment Report to the topic. In it, the authors write, “there is justifiable common concern that climate change or changes in climate variability increase the risk of armed conflict in certain circumstances, even if the strength of the effect is uncertain.”

But is this relationship between climate change and conflict set in stone? Could we leverage changes to the environment to promote peace instead? According to one group of researchers, the answer may be yes.