Climate Wars? Assessing the Claim That Drought Breeds Conflict
Climate Wars? Assessing the Claim That Drought Breeds Conflict
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DOI：
10.1162/isec_a_00065
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发表时间：
2012-01
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Ole Magnus Theisen;Helge Holtermann;Halvard Buhaug
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ole Magnus Theisen;Helge Holtermann;Halvard Buhaug
主要的气候模型表明，非洲大部分地区在未来几十年内将经历更大的气候变异和干旱率的增加。这可能会产生严重的社会后果，因为大多数非洲国家的经济和粮食供应依赖于雨水灌溉的农业。根据主要的环境安全学者、政策制定者和非政府组织的说法，也应该预料到稀缺驱动的武装冲突会增加。环境冲突的条件理论预测，干旱主要在袭击农业社会中的弱势和政治边缘化人口时会增加内战的风险。然而，通过一个独特的网格数据集的后殖民地非洲，结合高分辨率的气象数据与地理参考数据的内战爆发和当地的民族政治背景，这一一般性的命题的实证评估显示，干旱冲突的连接的证据很少。相反，当地内战的风险可以用社会政治和地理因素来解释：政治边缘化的人口，高婴儿死亡率，靠近国际边界，以及当地人口密度高。
Dominant climate models suggest that large parts of Africa will experience greater climatic variability and increasing rates of drought in coming decades. This could have severe societal consequences, because the economies and food supplies of most African countries depend on rain-fed agriculture. According to leading environmental security scholars, policymakers, and nongovernmental organizations, an increase in scarcity-driven armed conflicts should also be expected. A conditional theory of environmental conflict predicts that drought increases the risk of civil war primarily when it strikes vulnerable and politically marginalized populations in agrarian societies. However, an empirical evaluation of this general proposition through a unique gridded dataset of postcolonial Africa, which combines high-resolution meteorological data with georeferenced data on civil war onset and the local ethnopolitical context, shows little evidence of a drought-conflict connection. Instead, the local risk of civil war can be explained by sociopolitical and geographic factors: a politically marginalized population, high infant mortality, proximity to international borders, and high local population density.