Retrospective and crisis typology
To what extent do climatic or environmental factors play a role in triggering crises or even conflicts? This question still has no clear answer. Research has produced a number of reports examining the links between climate change and the outbreak of violence, but without clearly establishing the existence and nature of causal links. This report aims to contribute to this debate.
To what extent do climatic or environmental factors play a role in triggering crises or even conflicts1 ? This question still has no precise answer. While it is recognised that the physical and geographical environment, through the resources it offers and the perspectives it provides, has always been an object of covetousness and a tool for projecting power, the way in which it is positioned among the factors provoking conflict is still a matter of debate. Unquestionably, although access to resources is a recognised grid for interpreting conflicts and it is agreed that climate change will have an impact on their availability as well as on access to territories, the links and dynamics that can lead to conflict are only very partially understood. The existence of a direct causal link is thus widely disputed in the scientific literature, while the presence of indirect links is the subject of a relative consensus (Gemenne et al., 2014; Rüttinger et al., 2015). The IPCC itself acknowledges that ‘collectively, the research does not conclude that there is a strong and positive relationship between warming and armed conflict’ (Adger et al., 2014).
The great unknown obviously lies in the potential of climate and environmental change to act as a threat multiplier or risk amplifier in a complex international context where the desire to defend national interests and multiple interdependencies clash. The prospective study of the impacts of climate change is first carried out at the physical, climatic level. This is the work of climatologists, glaciologists, meteorologists, hydrologists and biologists who compile field observations, use historical data and model current climate trends by extrapolation. This difficult task serves as a basis for researchers in the human and social sciences who work on the hypotheses of translation in terms of conflict within societies or regional sub-spaces, subject to the influences of a very large number of political, economic, demographic, cultural and ethnic factors.
Since then, research has produced a number of reports examining the links between climate change and the eruption of violence, without however succeeding in clearly establishing the existence and nature of causal links. With the aim of contributing to this debate, this report is organised in several parts:
– First, it identifies and presents the environmental and climatic factors that may be involved in the emergence of violence, and then recalls the main issues and controversies in the current debate on the links between climate change and conflict;
– Secondly, based on three examples of past or current conflicts (Darfur, Syria, Nigeria), lessons will be drawn concerning the relative responsibility of environmental and climatic factors in the origin and dynamics of these crises;
– Thirdly, we propose elements for reflection aimed at developing a typology of the different types of conflict likely to emerge, at least in part, as a result of environmental and climatic changes, and which will be specified in future reports.
