Come rain or shine: An analysis of conflict and climate variability in East Africa
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343311427754 |
| Author | Dominic Kniveton,Clionadh Raleigh |
| Published date | 01 January 2012 |
| Date | 01 January 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Come rain or shine: An analysis of
conflict and climate variability in
East Africa
Clionadh Raleigh
Trinity College Dublin & Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
Dominic Kniveton
University of Sussex
Abstract
Previous research on environment and security has contested the existence, nature and significance of a climate
driver of conflict. In this study, we have focused on small-scale conflict over East Africa where the link between
resource availability and conflict is assumed to be more immediate and direct. Using the parameter of rainfall
variability to explore the marginal influence of the climate on conflict, the article shows that in locations that
experience rebel or communal conflict events, the frequency of these events increases in periods of extreme
rainfall variation, irrespective of the sign of the rainfall change. Further, these results lend support to both a
‘zero-sum’ narrative, where conflicting groups use force and violence to compete for ever-scarcer resources, and
an ‘abundance’ narrative, where resources spur rent-seeking/wealth-seeking and recruitment of people to partic-
ipate in violence. Within the context of current uncertainty regarding the future direction of rainfall change over
much of Africa, these results imply that small-scale conflict is likely to be exacerbated with increases in rainfall
variability if the mean climate remains largely unchanged; preferentially higher rates of rebel conflict will be
exhibited in anomalously dry conditions, while higher rates of communal conflict are expected in increasingly
anomalous wet conditions.
Keywords
civil war, communal violence, East Africa, environment, rainfall
Introduction
Recent research has speculated that future climate-
related shocks might spark violent conflict in a number
of regions in the world (Swart, 1996; Sachs, 2005;
Homer-Dixon, 2007; Stern, 2007). The fears that vio-
lent conflict will increase in the future are largely based
on the reasoning that resource scarcity has historically
been conceptualized as a driver for large-scale violence
and because climate change is widely predicted to have
a detrimental impact on resource availability. An
oft-cited example of a recent climate-related violent con-
flict is the Darfur crisis (e.g. former UN Under-
Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland,
cited in Nordås & Gleditsch, 2007; United Nations
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cited in Salehyan,
2008).
This view of resource scarcity as a cause of the Darfur
crisis, however, has been challenged by a number of
authors (e.g. Butler, 2007; Kevane & Gray, 2008) who
support a wider narrative in the conflict literature that
refutes a climate change–civil war relationship. For
example, a recent debate in the PNAS began with an
assertion by Burke et al. (2009) that increases in
Corresponding author:
raleighc@tcd.ie
Journal of Peace Research
49(1) 51–64
ªThe Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343311427754
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