The broader national security policy community has also come to recognise climate change as a “threat multiplier,” increasing the risk of conflict when combined with other factors; however, not enough attention is yet being paid to its importance in conflict prevention and resolution.
Recent studies suggest that climate change, resources and conflict are connected. For example, conflicts in the Middle East have involved rising food prices due to global drought and accessibility of water. In East Africa, climate-exacerbated stresses on pastoral and agricultural communities have precipitated intrastate “range wars.”
The Overseas Development Institute’s (ODI) 2013 report on natural disasters and conflict claims that natural disasters and climate-induced vulnerability influence conflict and instability by exacerbating inter-clan conflict and criminal activity, and by heightening tensions between herding and pastoral peoples.
This resource-stressed conflict is particularly visible in sub-Saharan Africa. As the region is exposed to longer and more extreme droughts and floods, there will be an increased threat of water and food insecurity, migration, and poverty, raising the risk of conflict.
...Measures to reduce risk from climate-induced hazards must be actively used to promote dialogue and prevent conflict. This might best be done through community-based initiatives that build institutional capacity for national-level disaster risk management...
...The limited governmental infrastructure of fragile countries like Somalia poses a hurdle to lessening the effects of climate change on conflict. By using the example of community-based climate adaptation, future effects of climate change on the Somali people, and those in similarly vulnerable states, might be lessened – thereby reducing the risks associated with droughts and famine...
Your new post is loading...
