A Climate of War or Peace? The Effect of Droughts on Conflict Dynamics

Abstract:

Although a considerable research effort has targeted the mechanisms connecting climate variability and its impacts to the likelihood of conflict, the majority of quantitative studies so far has focused on the onset or incidence of violence, while little attention has been paid to the role of climate shocks in enduring conflict dynamics. This paper attempts to fill this gap by studying how drought and agricultural factors contribute to state-based conflict escalation. Building on the framework of the Violence Early-Warning System (ViEWS – Hegre et al., 2019), the study tests out-of-sample how droughts contribute to predict violence escalation in Africa at the priogrid-month level. Results suggest that the local livelihood deprivation induced by droughts shapes actors’ incentives and opportunities and thereby contributes to increase conflict escalation. I find that droughts are particularly relevant to predict conflict escalation at the local level for short forecasting horizons and their impact is largely dependent on agricultural production.

Authors:

Paola Vesco