Directions for Research on Climate and Conflict.

The potential links between climate and conflict are well studied, yet disagreement about the specific mechanisms and their significance for societies persists. Here, we build on assessment of the relationship between climate and organized armed conflict to define crosscutting priorities for future directions of research. They include (1) deepening insight into climate-conflict linkages and conditions under which they manifest, (2) ambitiously integrating research designs, (3) systematically exploring future risks and response options, responsive to ongoing decision-making, and (4) evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to manage climate-conflict links. The implications of this expanding scientific domain unfold in real time.

Climate as a risk factor for armed conflict.

Research findings on the relationship between climate and conflict are diverse and contested. Here we assess the current understanding of the relationship between climate and conflict, based on the structured judgments of experts from diverse disciplines. These experts agree that climate has affected organized armed conflict within countries. However, other drivers, such as low socioeconomic development and low capabilities of the state, are judged to be substantially more influential, and the mechanisms of climate-conflict linkages remain a key uncertainty. Intensifying climate change is estimated to increase future risks of conflict.

Civil war: is it all about disease and xenophobia? A comment on Letendre, Fincher & Thornhill.

Letendre, Fincher & Thornhill (2010) argue that pathogen intensity provides the ultimate explanation for why some countries are more prone to civil war than others. They argue that the economic and political factors highlighted in previous research on civil war are largely caused by underlying differences in pathogen intensity, and contend that disease proneness increases the risk of civil war through its effects on resource competition and xenophobia. They present empirical evidence that they interpret as consistent with their argument: a statistically significant correlation between pathogen intensity and civil war onset. In this comment, we raise concerns over their interpretation of the empirical evidence and their proposed causal mechanisms. We find that the data provide stronger evidence for the reverse causal relationship, namely that civil war causes disease to become more prevalent. This finding is consistent with the literatures on the public health effects of civil war as well as research on state capacity and public health.