Food and water insecurity as causes of social unrest: Evidence from geolocated Twitter data
| Author | Ore Koren,Benjamin E Bagozzi,Thomas S Benson |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343320975091 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Food and water insecurity as causes of social
unrest: Evidence from geolocated
Twitter data
Ore Koren
Department of Political Science, Indiana University Bloomington
Benjamin E Bagozzi
Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware
Thomas S Benson
Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware
Abstract
Research often fails to account for the specific pathways by which climatic factors can cause social unrest. One
challenge lies in understanding the distinct effects of food insecurity and water insecurity – which we term ‘staple
insecurities’ – while accounting for their interrelated nature, especially at high-resolution spatio-temporal scales. To
unpack these dynamics, we leverage geolocated Twitter data across urban areas in Kenya and deploy a supervised
machine learning approach to separately identify geolocated tweets concerning food and water insecurity, in both
English and Swahili. The data are then aggregated to create daily measures of food and water insecurity for
standardized grid-cells to examine how perceived food insecurity moderates and/or reinforces perceived water
insecurity’s impacts on social unrest, and vice versa. Our findings suggest that food and water insecurities’ respective
effects should be interpreted as mutually reinforcing – in compelling citizens to take to the streets – rather than as
independent. Those concerned with climate change’s impact on conflict should hence endeavor to jointly account for
both forms of insecurity, and their interactive effects.
Keywords
civil disobedience, food security, protests, social conflict, water insecurity
Can foodand water insecurity – both ofwhich we term, for
simplicity,‘staple insecurities’ – causesocial unrest? Extant
research underscores strong linkages between food prices
and civilian mobilization (Tilly, 1971; Taylor, 1996; Bel-
lemare, 2015; Hendrix & Haggard, 2015). Yet, despite
these findings, we know relatively little, in boththeoretical
and empiricalterms, about the ways in whichenvironmen-
tal stress can generate overt dissent in urban areas.
Theoretically, the effects of environmental stress –
and especially the effect of climate change – are complex,
operate through multiple pathways, and often vary
according to actor and context (Theisen, Gleditsch &
Buhaug, 2013; von Uexkull et al., 2016; Do
¨ring,
2020; Koren & Bagozzi, 2017). Such relationships are
often moderated, in that environmental factors have a
dampening or intensifying impact on different socio-
economic determinants of social conflict, rather than a
simple direct effect. There is also the possibility that
where effective capacities are available, people will adapt
to climatic impacts, thus mitigating their severity (Chen,
1991). Moreover, these impacts are rarely disaggregated
by type of insecurity, and most existing studies only
Corresponding author:
okoren@iu.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2021, Vol. 58(1) 67–82
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343320975091
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implicitly equate water insecurity (e.g. via drought) with
food security (e.g. via lower agricultural output). Finally,
there is the possibility that climatic variations can have
different – even opposite – impacts in different contexts,
perhaps most importantly across urban and rural settings
(Theisen, Gleditsch & Buhaug, 2013). Empirically,
researchers rely on a variety of proxies to approximate
staple insecurity, which – notwithstanding the insights
provided by studies that have relied on such variables –
remain limited in their ability to capture the exact effects
of staple insecurities on unrest, especially as these effects
unfold in real time.
Given that staple insecurities occupy a place of
increasing importance in the global policy discourse
(e.g. IPCC, 2018; Bellemare, 2015; Berazneva & Lee,
2013; FAO, 2014), this article takes a closer look at the
relationship(s) between food insecurity, water insecurity,
and social conflict. In doing so, we choose to focus on
urban settings rather than rural areas, considering that
the former constitute a clear potential – arguably most-
likely – scenario for how climate change will impact
politics in the future. In focusing on urban settings, we
consider two important issues. First, we evaluate whether
the relationship between staple insecurities is uncondi-
tional – that is, whether higher levels of each insecurity
directly cause more social unrest – or moderated – namely
whether the different types of staple insecurity exacer-
bates the other’s impact(s). Second, we rely on daily
geolocated Twitter data to identify the causal effects of
each type of staple insecurity on social unrest in real time
and place, using urban centers in Kenya as the focus of
analysis. Communication technologies in Kenyan cities
are well developed, and millions of residents have access
to Twitter (Dowd et al., 2018; Sumbeiywo, 2018),
ensuring these data capture perceived food and water
insecurity levels and their local prevalence in a given day.
Based on daily data at the urban 0.5-degree PRIO-
GRID level (Tollefsen et al., 2012), the empirical results
indicate that between 23 August 2017 and 11 March
2019, rising food and water insecurity did not – inde-
pendently – lead to a noticeable increase in the number
social unrest events. However, we do find that, together,
food insecurity and water insecurity greatly reinforce the
other’s impact on social unrest, with high degrees of both
insecurities increasing the expected counts of unrest
events by approximately one or more events per day,
on average.
Considering the grave possibility that both staple inse-
curities will increase in the coming decades due to chang-
ing climate, especially in tropical developing states
(IPCC, 2018; FAO, 2014; Maxmen, 2018), our
findings suggest social unrest might correspondingly
become more prevalent. Indeed, climate change will also
contribute to ongoing urbanization, as more people relo-
cate from the rural countryside to the cities (Gleick,
2014), meaning that social conflict is more likely to
erupt in urban areas. If there is an immediate causal
relationship between staple insecurities and social unrest,
this could ultimately mean that episodes of social unrest
will occur simultaneously across countries. Therefore, in
addition to the irreversible damage staple insecurities
cause to the health of affected populations, these insecu-
rities also have the capacity to be a destabilizing geopo-
litical force (Bellemare, 2015). As such, and because
dissent can be highly destabilizing and can generate more
violent types of conflict such as civil war and mass killing
(Lagi, Bertrand & Bar-Yam, 2011), these results are rel-
evant to both conflict scholars and policymakers working
to prevent violence.
Of course, this article’s findings do not imply that
staple insecurities are the only – or predominant – cause
of social unrest, as ample research has established (Che-
noweth & Stephan, 2011; Ritter & Conrad, 2016).
Rather, the objective of this article is to evaluate
whether – and when – staple insecurities can contribute
to social unrest, while theorizing about the precise
mechanism(s) through which they do so. Considering
that multicollinearity between the two insecurity types
is not an overriding concern (see Online appendix), our
findings suggest scholars and policymakers should
address food and water security jointly when studying
their effects on unrest.
Theoretical argument
Environmental stress, staple insecurities, and social
conflict
Extant research primarily analyzes environmental stress
and its impact(s) on social conflict through three main
pathways: (i) direct, (ii) indirect, and (iii) threat multi-
plying. In the first pathway, social conflict arises as an
immediate response to a stressor’s effects (Martin-Shields
& Stojetz, 2019). For instance, environmental stressors
can cause sharply diminishing returns in agricultural out-
puts by depleting resources and reducing the number of
daily work hours for rural labor (e.g. Cline, 2007; FAO,
2014). This, in turn, limits the amount of food and
water available in urban areas, causing food and water
shortages and increasing the prices of staple goods.
Although this direct pathway is often analyzed in
studies that link rises in (most often) food prices and
social conflict (Bellemare, 2015; Hendrix & Haggard,
68 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 58(1)
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