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.

Humanitarian need drives multilateral disaster aid.

As the climate changes, human livelihoods will increasingly be threatened by extreme weather events. To provide adequate disaster relief, states extensively rely on multilateral institutions, in particular the United Nations (UN). However, the determinants of this multilateral disaster aid channeled through the UN are poorly understood. To fill this gap, we examine the determinants of UN disaster aid using a dataset on UN aid covering almost 2,000 climate-related disasters occurring between 2006 and 2017. We make two principal contributions. First, we add to research on disaster impacts by linking existing disaster data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) to a meteorological reanalysis. We generate a uniquely global hazard severity measure that is comparable across different climate-related disaster types, and assess and bolster measurement validity of EM-DAT climate-related disasters. Second, by combining these data with social data on aid and its correlates, we contribute to the literature on aid disbursements. We show that UN disaster aid is primarily shaped by humanitarian considerations, rather than by strategic donor interests. These results are supported by a series of regression and out-of-sample prediction analyses and appear consistent with the view that multilateral institutions are able to shield aid allocation decisions from particular state interests to ensure that aid is motivated by need.

Civil conflict sensitivity to growing-season drought.

To date, the research community has failed to reach a consensus on the nature and significance of the relationship between climate variability and armed conflict. We argue that progress has been hampered by insufficient attention paid to the context in which droughts and other climatic extremes may increase the risk of violent mobilization. Addressing this shortcoming, this study presents an actor-oriented analysis of the drought-conflict relationship, focusing specifically on politically relevant ethnic groups and their sensitivity to growing-season drought under various political and socioeconomic contexts. To this end, we draw on new conflict event data that cover Asia and Africa, 1989-2014, updated spatial ethnic settlement data, and remote sensing data on agricultural land use. Our procedure allows quantifying, for each ethnic group, drought conditions during the growing season of the locally dominant crop. A comprehensive set of multilevel mixed effects models that account for the groups' livelihood, economic, and political vulnerabilities reveals that a drought under most conditions has little effect on the short-term risk that a group challenges the state by military means. However, for agriculturally dependent groups as well as politically excluded groups in very poor countries, a local drought is found to increase the likelihood of sustained violence. We interpret this as evidence of the reciprocal relationship between drought and conflict, whereby each phenomenon makes a group more vulnerable to the other.

Pathways from research to sustainable development: Insights from ten research projects in sustainability and resilience.

Drawing on collective experience from ten collaborative research projects focused on the Global South, we identify three major challenges that impede the translation of research on sustainability and resilience into better-informed choices by individuals and policy-makers that in turn can support transformation to a sustainable future. The three challenges comprise: (i) converting knowledge produced during research projects into successful knowledge application; (ii) scaling up knowledge in time when research projects are short-term and potential impacts are long-term; and (iii) scaling up knowledge across space, from local research sites to larger-scale or even global impact. Some potential pathways for funding agencies to overcome these challenges include providing targeted prolonged funding for dissemination and outreach, and facilitating collaboration and coordination across different sites, research teams, and partner organizations. By systematically documenting these challenges, we hope to pave the way for further innovations in the research cycle.

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.