I
would offer a much simpler explanation. What climate change is doing
is reallocating "resources", whether they be air, fresh
water, rainfall, or food production based upon what can grow, or
reproduce in a given climate. And all wars, from the beginning of
wars have been about resources. "To the victor go the spoils".
--Mike
Ruppert
Will
climate change trigger endless war?
If
we don't change prevailing business-as-usual political economies,
probably - but we can still say 'no' and mean it
Nafeez
Ahmed
2
August, 2013
A
new study published in the journal Science finds that climate change
is strongly linked to human violence around the world. Based on more
data than ever studied before - and looking at all major regions of
the world from the United States to Somalia - the study unearthed a
pattern of conflict linked to even minor climatic changes, including
increased droughts or higher than average temperatures.
The
study covered all major types of conflict, from the standard
"Intergroup violence and political instability, like civil wars,
riots, ethnic violence, and land invasions" to the less studied
categories of "Personal violence and crime such as murder,
assault, rape, and domestic violence" - and even covered:
"Institutional breakdowns, such as abrupt and major changes in
governing institutions or the collapse of entire civilizations."
All
three types of conflict exhibit "systematic and large responses
to changes in climate, with the effect on intergroup conflict being
the most pronounced". In particular, the study found a positive
relationship between high temperatures and greater violence.
With
a business-as-usual scenario of CO2 emissions heading for a minimum
3-4 Celsius (C) rise in global average temperatures by as early as
mid-century, the study's findings suggest that violent conflict will
get more pronounced for the foreseeable future if we don't do
something to mitigate climate change - in the study's own words:
"...
amplified rates of human conflict could represent a large and
critical impact of anthropogenic climate change."
But
the big mystery is why?
"We
can show that climatic events cause conflict, but we can't yet
exactly say why," said lead author Dr Solomon Hsiang, an
assistant professor at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy.
"Currently,
there are several hypotheses explaining why the climate might
influence conflict. For example, we know that changes in climate
shape prevailing economic conditions, particularly in agrarian
economies, and studies suggest that people are more likely to take up
arms when the economy deteriorates, perhaps in part to maintain their
livelihoods."
Yet
how firm are the study's conclusions? A 2010 study in Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), for instance, contradicted
previous studies claiming that conflict in Africa was driven by
climate change. The main driver of conflict, rather, has been
poverty, economic inequalities, socio-political tensions, and
'identity politics' mobilising around ethnicity.
At
the time, PNAS author Dr Halvard Buhaug from Oslo's Peace Research
Institute said:
"Even
if you found that conflict, defined in a particular way, appeared to
be associated with climate, if you applied a number of complementary
measures - which you should do in order to determine the robustness
of the apparent connection - then you would find, in almost all
cases, the two were actually unrelated."
Dr
Buhaug is deeply sceptical of the latest comprehensive study - which
focuses entirely on quantitative analysis that excludes other complex
social factors:
"I
disagree with the sweeping conclusion (the authors) draw and believe
that their strong statement about a general causal link between
climate and conflict is unwarranted by the empirical analysis that
they provide. I was surprised to see not a single reference to a
real-world conflict that plausibly would not have occurred in the
absence of observed climatic extremes. If the authors wish to claim a
strong causal link, providing some form of case validation is
critical."
In
reality, both approaches are flawed. While the new Science study
focuses on correlations between climate change and different forms of
violence without exploring the role of other social factors, the 2010
PNAS study dismissed too easily the role of climate change as a
potential amplifier of such factors.
By
demonstrating strong correlations between climate change and
incidents of violence, the Science study makes a compelling case for
a link between the two. But the elephant in the room is the authors'
inability to coherently explain why the two should be linked at all,
beyond vague references to 'the economy' or 'physiology'.
Missing
from the analysis is the reality that climate change is always
refracted through the complex socio-political, economic and cultural
relations of different societies. It is precisely the way in which
climate change might impact on those relations, and the way that
those societies then choose to respond to those impacts, that
determines the trajectory toward violence.
The
PNAS study of conflict in Africa provides an important antidote to
assuming that climate change in itself guarantees a rise in violence,
by highlighting the political, economic and ideological complexity of
African societies.
A
fundamental issue is the new economy of war in which the impact of
neoliberal capitalism and IMF-World Bank structural adjustment has
devastated societies, ramping up infant mortality rates, widening
inequalities, and entrenching regional states with unsustainable
debt.
The
result in many cases has been a rise in 'identity politics' - where
the unravelling of communities in the face of mounting crises is
exploited by political groups who project the cause of this
unravelling against what is most easy and visible to oppose - 'the
Other', whether defined by ethnicity, tribe, political affiliation,
or simply location. In this way, economic and social dislocation can
become refracted into war. Thus, by focusing only on climate change,
the Science study obscures the entrenched national and global power
disparities that play a central role in converting
environmental-induced resources stressors into a propensity for
violence.
Where
the PNAS study falls short, however, is in recognising that climate
change impacts play a key role in exacerbating the socio-political
factors that might speed up this process of communal unravelling -
whether by generating new resource challenges affecting food, water
and energy that existing systems are ill-equipped to deal with, or by
escalating natural disasters that destroy such systems altogether.
But
in themselves such processes do not 'necessitate' conflict. The fact
that they might end up resulting in violence more often than not, is
a question of the nature of the political and economic systems at
stake, and the choices that political and economic actors make in
pursuit of narrow vested interests.
So
will climate change trigger endless war? On a business as usual
trajectory, quite probably. But not necessarily - we can say 'no'.
Dr
Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy
Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis
of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on
Twitter @nafeezahmed
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