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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
  • Guest Contributor  //  On the Beat

    Climate-Security Linkages Lost in Translation

    September 13, 2010 By Marc Levy
    A recent news story summarizing some interesting research by Halvard Buhaug carried the headline “Civil war in Africa has no link to climate change.” This is unfortunate because there’s nothing in Buhaug’s results, which were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to support that conclusion.

    In fact, the possibility that climate change might trigger conflict remains very real. Understanding why the headline writers got it wrong will help us better meet the growing demand for usable information about climate-conflict linkages.

    First, the headline writer made a simple mistake by translating Buhaug’s modest model results — that under certain specifications climate variables were not statistically significant — into a much stronger causal conclusion: that climate is unrelated to conflict. A more responsible summary is that the historical relationship between climate and conflict depends on how the model is specified. But this is harder to squeeze into a headline — and much less likely to lure distracted online readers.

    Buhaug tests 11 different models, but none of the 11 corresponds to what I would consider the emerging view on how climate shapes conflict. Using Miguel et al. (2004) as a reasonable representation of this view, and supported by other studies, there seems to be a strong likelihood that climatic shocks — due to their negative impacts on livelihoods — increase the likelihood that high-intensity civil wars will break out. None of Buhaug’s 11 models tested that view precisely.

    If we are going to make progress as a community, we need to be specific about theoretically informed causal mechanisms. Our case studies and statistical tests should promote comparable results, around a discrete number of relevant mechanisms.

    Second, a more profound confusion reflected in the headline concerns the term “climate change.” Buhaug’s research did not look at climate change at all, but rather historical climate variability. Variability of past climate is surely relevant to understanding the possible impacts of climate change, but there’s no way that, by itself, it can answer the question headline writers and policymakers want answered: Will climate change spark more conflict? For that we need to engage in a much richer combination of scenario analysis and model testing than we have done so far.

    We are in a period in which climate change assessments have become highly politicized and climate politics are enormously contentious. The post-Copenhagen agenda for coming to grips with mitigation and adaptation remains primitive and unclear. Under these circumstances, we need to work extra hard to make sure that our research adds clarity and does not fan the flames of confusion. Buhaug’s paper is a good model in this regard, but the media coverage does not reflect its complexity. (Editor’s note: A few outlets – Nature, and TIME’s Ecocentric blog – did compare the clashing conclusions of Buhaug’s work and an earlier PNAS paper by Marshall Burke.)

    The stakes are high. This isn’t a “normal” case of having trouble translating nuanced science into accessible news coverage. There is a gigantic disinformation machine with a well-funded cadre of “confusionistas” actively distorting and misrepresenting climate science. Scientists need to make it harder for them to succeed, not easier.

    Here’s how I would characterize what we know and we are trying to learn:
    1) Economic deprivation almost certainly heightens the risk of internal war.
    2) Economic shocks, as a form of deprivation, almost certainly heighten the risk of internal war.
    3) Sharp declines in rainfall, compared to average, almost certainly generate economic shocks and deprivation.
    4) Therefore, we are almost certain that sharp declines in rainfall raise the risk of internal war.
    To understand how climate change might affect future conflict, we need to know much more. We need to understand how changing climate patterns interact with year-to-year variability to affect deprivation and shocks. We need to construct plausible socioeconomic scenarios of change to enable us to explore how the dynamics of climate, economics, demography, and politics will interact and unfold to shape conflict risk.

    The same scenarios that generate future climate change also typically assume high levels of economic growth in Africa and other developing regions. If development is consistent with these projections, the risk of conflict will lessen over time as economies develop and democratic institutions spread.

    To say something credible about climate change and conflict, we need to be able to articulate future pathways of economics and politics, because we know these will have a major impact on conflict in addition to climate change. Since we currently lack this ability, we must build it.

    Marc Levy is deputy director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), a research and data center of the Earth Institute of Columbia University.

    Photo Credit: “KE139S11 World Bank” courtesy of flickr user World Bank Photo Collection.

    Topics: Africa, climate change, conflict, development, economics, environmental security, Guest Contributor, livelihoods, On the Beat, security
    • Anonymous

      I think Halvard would agree with all of this (I was a discussant on a previous version of this paper). His analysis simply points out problems with the Burke et al paper's model specification. Buhaug's is a modest contribution about model specification and appropriate data; it should be read as a response to an earlier paper rather than as a definitive statement about climate change and conflict. The headline is certainly provocative and unfortunate. However, he makes a useful corrective to overly simplistic causal claims, which typically dominate the popular literature on climate change and conflict. Yes, he could have been a little more modest with the title and with the conclusions, but then again, so could Burke and his colleagues. -Idean Salehyan

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/01565562305101694274 Cullen

      Marc's assessment is spot-on, so I won't belabor the point other than to reiterate that Halvard is making a limited point about specific empirical relationships and causal pathways.

      In addition to the issues raised by Idean, I would add that there's an unfortunate tendency to think about social conflict only through the lens of civil war. The environment and conflict literature is dominated by such studies. While civil war is undoubtedly an important subject of inquiry, there are many types of social conflict that could be related to climate change, warming, and environmental shocks. We need to pay increasing attention to conflict that doesn't fit neatly into either the interstate or intrastate war paradigm.
      -Cullen Hendrix

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/08186033047213683502 Michael Renner

      Cullen's comment should be pasted into every article that's written about this field of inquiry. We need a broader, and more sophisticated, understanding of different forms and dynamics of conflict.

      I would add that statistical assessments, by their nature, lose a lot of detail and nuance. It seems to me that it's all about context. I understand that there is great interest in increasing our capacity to predict future events and outcomes, but that may prove not to be possible.

    • http://www.blogger.com/profile/07565358365423841448 Halvard

      I believe we’re all pretty much on the same page here. My article has little to do with climate change per se; instead is focuses on short-term climate variability and the extent to which it affects the risk of intrastate armed conflict. Yet, as climate change is expected to bring about more variability and less predictability in future weather patterns, knowing how past climatic shocks or anomalies relate to armed conflict is relevant.

      I absolutely agree that breaking out of the state-centered understanding of conflict is an important next step. Similarly, as Marc points to, more research is needed on possible scope conditions and longer-term indirect causal links that might connect climate with violent behavior. That said, we should not ignore established, robust correlates of conflict. Climate change is not likely to bring about conflict and war in well-functioning societies, so improving the quality of governance and creating opportunities for sustainable economic growth, regardless of the specific role of climate in all of this, are likely to remain key policy priorities.
      -Halvard Buhaug

    • Jay Ulfelder

      Very well put, Marc. My one point of disagreement would be on the state of current knowledge about the connection between economic shocks and the risk of internal war. Based on my own work and my (hopefully not too selective) reading of prior research, I would say that the evidence remains ambiguous on that important point.

    • http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/directory/faculty/joshua-busby Josh Busby

      In addition to Cullen's comment about needing to broaden our view of what conflicts we're interested in, I also think that we need to widen the aperture of what outcomes constitute a security concern. I'd love to see a dataset created that looks at domestic and international mobilization of military assets for humanitarian relief for climate-related disasters.

    • Adrian Kelleher (ajkelleher(at)hotmail(dot)com)

      Buhaug moved even further from the carefully hedged opinions expressed in his paper with an Aftenposten article titled "The Climate Wars Myth". It's hard to understand how tentative indications could firm up into definite conclusions without any intervening research.

      History past and future will never be a science. The utility of statistics when applied to war is moot, and the discipline might easily be abused to produce evidence desired by either side in the debate. Correlation is treacherous and causation can never be established in situations of such complexity.

      It doesn't take a Metternich or a Kissinger to conclude that climate change will constitute an increasingly powerful driver of conflict over the coming century even if the most optimistic projections are to be believed. The many (partly unrelated) water crises and exploding global demand for primary commodities such as energy and minerals will add to this pressure, as will the inherent instability resulting from the economic rise of China in a world where the USA has global alliances, a global network of bases and uncontested naval mastery.

      An effective and enforceable climate change deal would require each signatory nation to act contrary to its individual interests in pursuit of the greater shared goal of a viable future. Such a feat of diplomacy has never previously been attempted or achieved. Each nation has every incentive to let the others make the effort — to 'defect' in game-theoretic jargon. None of this is intended to deter the pursuit of a treaty, only to illustrate the magnitude of the task and the incapacity of diplomatic arrangements to solve the problem.

      It's important to bear in mind that there's no sign of the world converging on liberal democratic norms as predicted by Fukuyama. Only nuclear weapons add a dubious stability to affairs. The causes of conflict are more starkly obvious now than even in 1900 and a general crisis reminiscent of the 17th century does not seem far fetched.

      While I've no reason to question Buhaug's integrity, his citation of Richard Tol — a Panglossian figure seemingly joined at the hip to Bjorn Lomborg — is cause for concern.

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