armed conflict political violence sub saharan africa

The acceleration of climate change in such a precarious context exacerbates tensions and gives way to repeated armed conflicts as well as massive migratory movements (Daccache et al., 2015 Hendrix & Glaser, 2007 Marchiori et al., 2012 Maystadt et al., 2015).Īt the general level, changes in weather conditions present both direct and indirect impacts on human beings (Buhaug, 2015 Burke et al., 2015). Empirical evidence suggests a correlation between changes in temperature and rainfall patterns, that have the effect of worsening living conditions of African populations in vulnerable areas, and the breakout of violence (Dell et al., 2014). We focus on Africa, a continent that is home to some of the most conflict-ridden regions in the world according to Croicu and Sundberg ( 2017). This allows better disclosing temporal and spatial mechanisms that are relevant for integrating climate adaptation policies with peacekeeping actions to fruitfully exploit potential ancillary benefits or to mitigate negative side-effects. The goal of the present paper is to develop an empirical strategy that allows addressing unobservable sources of heterogeneity in the climate-conflict nexus.

One major concern is the prospect of conflicts in regions of the world that are vulnerable to climate events and, also, prone to social instability.

Violent events are hard to predict and difficult to counter as they propagate in unforeseeable directions. The deterioration of living conditions due to climate change is the trigger of a vicious cycle that imperils individual well-being and, ultimately, social order.

Armed conflict political violence sub saharan africa