Is climate change a security threat?

The frequency and intensity of natural disasters are expected to increase in the future as a result of climate change. Every year thousands to millions of people are forced to leave their homes due to large-scale natural disasters such as floods. As floods sweep across landscapes they destroy natural resources (crops, croplands, forests, pastures, freshwater, and fish) and infrastructure (power lines, roads, and buildings). In turn, the lack of basic needs and resource scarcity ignites Malthusian conflicts in which people compete for limited resources and, often, are forced to migrate to unaffected areas. 

Although analysis of the direct links between natural disasters and conflicts has become more common, there has been less research into the potential indirect channels through which natural disasters can ignite conflict, such as migration and displacement. A study published in World Development looks at this link between flood-induced displacement and civil conflict to understand how intensified environmental scarcity can lead to mass displacement of people. Migration of impacted populations can lead to social unrest and ethnic tension particularly in countries where institutional support is weak or the inflow of migrants is large and disordered.

To understand these flood-induced migrant patterns, the study analyzes historical data from 126 countries from 1985 to 2009. With a two-step econometric estimation approach, the study estimates 1.) the number of people displaced due to flooding as opposed to conflict or other natural disasters, and 2.) the effect of flood-induced displacement on conflict. Since information on indirect migration due to floods is not available, the researchers included in their econometric analysis a range of socioeconomic and political variables to account for the variables that are believed to ignite civil conflicts. These variables include:

Infant mortality rate (as a measure of inequality)

GDP growth (economic growth)

Youth population

Population density

Oil-wealth (studies show that countries with oil-wealth tend to face corruption and weak governance)

Ethnic tensions

Democracy

Instability

Anocracies (as a measure of political robustness, anocracies are political systems which are neither democratic or dictatorial but somewhere in between, they tend to be characterized with instability and proneness to civil war)

Country area in square kilometers

Terrain ruggedness

Conflict in neighboring country, and

Brevity of peace (years since the last conflict in the country).

The results show that developing countries are the most vulnerable to natural disasters such as floods. Eighty-one percent of displacement by natural disasters and approximately 93 percent of recorded conflicts occurred in developing countries. While the average probability of flood-induced conflict incidence is 3.5 percent for worldwide natural disasters and 5.5 percent for natural disasters in developing countries, the data shows that flood-induced displacement only fueled existing conflicts rather than initiating the emergence of new conflicts.

For years academics and policy-makers have predicted that climate change will ignite conflict and pose a security threat. In his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech U.S. President Obama stated that climate change "[will] fuel conflict for decades." Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy said "climate change is already having considerable impacts on security." While climate change has the power to change nature's course and increase the intensity of large natural disaster that may fuel conflict, this study shows that catastrophic floods increase the probability of confrontation in conflict-prone countries rather than igniting new conflicts. The bottom line is that climate change does pose a threat to security, but more so in vulnerable and unstable developing countries.

(Photo: UNICEF/Tomislav Georgiev)