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The current debate on global environmental change (GEC)-induced security risks suggests that climate change will exacerbate existing resource conflicts that might lead to violence, particularly around food, land and water (WBGU, 2008). An extreme position is that ‘climate wars’ may break out, driven by the inequitable distribution of loss and harm associated with climate change(Welzer, 2008). Catastrophic scenarios have been put forth, entailing dwindling resources, natural disasters, spreading epidemics and plummeting agricultural yields that trigger economic collapse, political turmoil and the destabilization of entire regions (Dyer, 2008). One recent media story claimed that ‘More than hundred countries with 2.7 billion people are at high risk of political chaos and climate change-induced violence’ (McKie, 2007). Conflicts around food often play centre stage in these violent scenarios, following the hypotheses of supply-induced scarcity as a driver of violence (Homer-Dixon, 1999). One recent study, for example, found a statistically significant linkage between temperature and civil conflict in Africa, and explains this linkage by the implications of temperature stress on agricultural production and livelihood security (Burke et al, 2009). |
