Climate Change and Collective Violence

Abstract:

Climate change causes multiple adverse impacts on public health, including heat-related disorders, respiratory diseases, vector-borne and other infectious diseases, malnutrition, and psychological disorders. There is increasing evidence that climate change, primarily extremes of temperature and rainfall, is an important contributory factor to collective violence. Historical studies and modern-era research, including two major meta-analyses, have supported this association. One pathway by which climate change leads to collective violence occurs when temperature and/or rainfall extremes damage crops and farmland, causing farmers and their families to migrate to urban areas, where their unmet basic needs may add to existing political and socioeconomic instability. A similar situation occurred in Syria, where a severe drought between 2006 and 2010 led to mass rural-to-urban migration, and contributed to the start of the civil war there. This presentation will review studies associating climate change with collective violence and offer recommendations on how the risk of collective violence related to climate change can be reduced.