| 1. |
- Buhaug, Halvard, et al.
(författare)
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A conditional model of local income shock and civil conflict
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Politics. - : University of Chicago Press. - 0022-3816 .- 1468-2508. ; 83:1, s. 354-366
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Common political economy models point to rationalist motives for engaging in conflict but say little about how income shocks translate into collective violence in some cases but not in others. Grievance models, in contrast, focus on structural origins of shared frustration but offer less insight into when the deprived decide to challenge the status quo. Addressing these lacunae, we develop a theoretical model of civil conflict that predicts income loss to trigger violent mobilization primarily when the shock can be linked to pre-existing collective grievances. The conditional argument is supported by results of a comprehensive global statistical analysis of conflict involvement among ethnic groups. Consistent with theory, we find that this relationship is most powerful among recently downgraded groups, especially in the context of agricultural dependence and low local level of development, whereas political downgrading in the absence of adverse economic changes exerts less influence on ethnic conflict risk.
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| 2. |
- Buhaug, Halvard, et al.
(författare)
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Vicious Circles : Violence, Vulnerability, and Climate Change
- 2021
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Ingår i: Annual Review Environment and Resources. - : Annual Reviews. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 46, s. 545-568
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change threatens core dimensions of human security, including economic prosperity, food availability, and societal stability. In recent years, war-torn regions such as Afghanistan and Yemen have harbored severe humanitarian crises, compounded by climate-related hazards. These cases epitomize the powerful but presently incompletely appreciated links between vulnerability, conflict, and climate-related impacts. In this article, we develop a unified conceptual model of these phenomena by connecting three fields of research that traditionally have had little interaction: (a) determinants of social vulnerability to climate change, (b) climatic drivers of armed conflict risk, and (c) societal impacts of armed conflict. In doing so, we demonstrate how many of the conditions that shape vulnerability to climate change also increase the likelihood of climate?conflict interactions and, furthermore, that impacts from armed conflict aggravate these conditions. The end result may be a vicious circle locking affected societies in a trap of violence, vulnerability, and climate change impacts.
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| 3. |
- de Bruin, Sophie P., et al.
(författare)
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Projecting long-term armed conflict risk : An underappreciated field of inquiry?
- 2022
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Ingår i: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier. - 0959-3780 .- 1872-9495. ; 72
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Little research has been done on projecting long-term conflict risks. Such projections are currently neither included in the development of socioeconomic scenarios or climate change impact assessments nor part of global agenda-setting policy processes. In contrast, in other fields of inquiry, long-term projections and scenario studies are established and relevant for both strategical agenda-setting and applied policies. Although making projections of armed conflict risk in response to climate change is surrounded by uncertainty, there are good reasons to further develop such scenario-based projections. In this perspective article we discuss why quantifying implications of climate change for future armed conflict risk is inherently uncertain, but necessary for shaping sustainable future policy agendas. We argue that both quantitative and qualitative projections can have a purpose in future climate change impact assessments and put out the challenges this poses for future research.
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| 4. |
- Hegre, Håvard, et al.
(författare)
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Forecasting civil conflict along the shared socioeconomic pathways
- 2016
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 11:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change and armed civil conflict are both linked to socioeconomic development, although conditions that facilitate peace may not necessarily facilitate mitigation and adaptation to climate change. While economic growth lowers the risk of conflict, it is generally associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions and costs of climate mitigation policies. This study investigates the links between growth, climate change, and conflict by simulating future civil conflict using new scenario data for five alternative socioeconomic pathways with different mitigation and adaptation assumptions, known as the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). We develop a statistical model of the historical effect of key socioeconomic variables on country-specific conflict incidence, 1960-2013. We then forecast the annual incidence of conflict, 2014-2100, along the five SSPs. We find that SSPs with high investments in broad societal development are associated with the largest reduction in conflict risk. This is most pronounced for the least developed countries-poverty alleviation and human capital investments in poor countries are much more effective instruments to attain global peace and stability than further improvements to wealthier economies. Moreover, the SSP that describes a sustainability pathway, which poses the lowest climate change challenges, is as conducive to global peace as the conventional development pathway.
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| 5. |
- Hoch, Jannis M, et al.
(författare)
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Projecting armed conflict risk in Africa towards 2050 along the SSP-RCP scenarios : a machine learning approach
- 2021
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP). - 1748-9326. ; 16:12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the past decade, several efforts have been made to project armed conflict risk into the future. This study broadens current approaches by presenting a first-of-its-kind application of machine learning (ML) methods to project sub-national armed conflict risk over the African continent along three Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios and three Representative Concentration Pathways towards 2050. Results of the open-source ML framework CoPro are consistent with the underlying socioeconomic storylines of the SSPs, and the resulting out-of-sample armed conflict projections obtained with Random Forest classifiers agree with the patterns observed in comparable studies. In SSP1-RCP2.6, conflict risk is low in most regions although the Horn of Africa and parts of East Africa continue to be conflict-prone. Conflict risk increases in the more adverse SSP3-RCP6.0 scenario, especially in Central Africa and large parts of Western Africa. We specifically assessed the role of hydro-climatic indicators as drivers of armed conflict. Overall, their importance is limited compared to main conflict predictors but results suggest that changing climatic conditions may both increase and decrease conflict risk, depending on the location: in Northern Africa and large parts of Eastern Africa climate change increases projected conflict risk whereas for areas in the West and northern part of the Sahel shifting climatic conditions may reduce conflict risk. With our study being at the forefront of ML applications for conflict risk projections, we identify various challenges for this arising scientific field. A major concern is the limited selection of relevant quantified indicators for the SSPs at present. Nevertheless, ML models such as the one presented here are a viable and scalable way forward in the field of armed conflict risk projections, and can help to inform the policy-making process with respect to climate security.
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| 6. |
- Kreutz, Joakim, 1973-
(författare)
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Dismantling the Conflict Trap : Essays on Civil War Resolution and Relapse
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Countries that have experienced civil war suffer a greater risk for new conflict than countries with no prior history of civil war. This empirical finding has been called a conflict trap where the legacy of previous war - unsolved issues, indecisive outcomes, and destruction – leads to renewed fighting. Yet, countries like Cambodia, El Salvador, Indonesia, and Mozambique have managed to overcome decade-long conflicts without relapse. This dissertation addresses this empirical puzzle by seeking to dismantle the conflict trap and look at microlevel explanations for civil war resolution and relapse. It adds to existing scholarship in three ways: first, by using disaggregated empirics on war termination and how fighting resumes; second, by exploring government agency in conflict processes; and third, by disaggregating rebel organizations. Essay I present original data on the start and end dates and means of termination for all armed conflicts, 1946-2005. Contrary to previous work, this data reveal that wars does not always end through victory or peace agreement, but commonly end under unclear circumstances. Essay II addresses how developments exogenous to the conflict influence governments’ decision to engage in a peace process. The results show that after natural disasters when state resources need to be allocated towards disaster relief, governments are more willing to negotiate and conclude ceasefires with insurgents. Essay III focuses on the post-conflict society, and posits that security concerns among former war participants will push them towards remobilizing into rebellion. The findings indicate that if ex-belligerent elite’s security is compromised, the parties of the previous war will resume fighting, while insecurity among former rank-and-file leads to the formation of violent splinter rebel groups. Finally, Essay IV seeks to explain why governments sometimes launch offensives on former rebels in post-conflict countries. The results show that internal power struggles provide leaders with incentives to use force against domestic third parties to strengthen their position against intra-government rivals. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that there is analytical leverage to be had by disaggregating the processes of violence in civil war and post-conflict societies, as well as the actors involved – both the government and rebel sides.
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| 7. |
- Mach, Katharine J., et al.
(författare)
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Climate as a risk factor for armed conflict
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 571:7764, s. 193-197
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 8. |
- Mach, Katharine J., et al.
(författare)
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Directions for Research on Climate and Conflict
- 2020
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Ingår i: Earth's Future. - 2328-4277. ; 8:7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 9. |
- Rosvold, Elisabeth L., 1989-, et al.
(författare)
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GDIS, a global dataset of geocoded disaster locations
- 2021
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Ingår i: Scientific Data. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2052-4463. ; 8:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article presents a new open source extension to the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) that allows researchers, for the first time, to explore and make use of subnational, geocoded data on major disasters triggered by natural hazards. The Geocoded Disasters (GDIS) dataset provides spatial geometry in the form of GIS polygons and centroid latitude and longitude coordinates for each administrative entity listed as a disaster location in the EM-DAT database. In total, GDIS contains spatial information on 39,953 locations for 9,924 unique disasters occurring worldwide between 1960 and 2018. The dataset facilitates connecting the EM-DAT database to other geographic data sources on the subnational level to enable rigorous empirical analyses of disaster determinants and impacts.
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| 10. |
- Rudolfsen, Ida
(författare)
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Fighting For Food? : Investigating Food Insecurity as a Source of Urban Unrest
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Under what conditions does food insecurity lead to urban unrest? This dissertation contributes to the burgeoning literature on this topic by introducing a multifaceted conceptualization of experienced food insecurity, and by developing a context-specific framework for food-related unrest. It investigates the effect of experienced food insecurity on citizens’ willingness to participate in unrest, and how a favourable structural context in the form of organizational networks moderates this relationship. By going beyond aggregate food insecurity proxies and direct effects, the dissertation makes theoretical and empirical contributions to existing knowledge. The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four independent essays. Essay I reviews the literature on food insecurity and social upheaval, identifies main research gaps, and provides suggestions for future research. Focusing on urban Africa between 1990 to 2014, Essay II examines the moderating role of societal organizations on urban unrest when food prices increase. It finds that the manifestations of food-related unrest are contingent on the level of state repression of societal organizations. Essay III and IV use unique survey data of residents in Johannesburg, South Africa. Essay III applies a vignette experiment to investigate the assumption that food is an especially potent driver for people’s willingness to engage in unrest. The results indicate a higher willingness to engage in unrest when presented with a scenario of increasing living expenses, but this effect does not appear to be stronger for the price of food. Essay IV conceptualizes experienced food insecurity on the individual level, and finds that food insecurity increases unrest participation, where some types of organizational networks act as catalysts in this relationship. Taken together, the dissertation furthers our understanding of the relationship between food insecurity and social upheaval, suggesting that both food-related grievances and a favourable organizational context have significant influence on the likelihood of urban unrest.
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| 11. |
- Theisen, Ole Magnus, et al.
(författare)
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Understanding the potential linkages between climate change and conflict in the Arab region : E/ESCWA/CL6.GCP/2021/TP.9
- 2021
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Rapport (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- The Arab States are affected by a wide range of environmental challenges exacerbated by current and projected impacts of climate change, including, among others, depletion of scarce natural resources such as water and arable land, increasing pollution levels, and the growing number and magnitude of extreme weather events. At the same time, the Arab region has been a hotspot for conflicts during the last decades. This highlights the need among policymakers and practitioners of conflict prevention and peacebuilding to better understand how climate change might contribute to current or future dynamics of conflict. This report provides a conceptual framework for analysts and policymakers in the region that shows how the loss of livelihood, economic contraction, resource competition, migration, poor governance, and other social processes (mechanisms) spurred by climate risk are more likely to increase conflict risk when occurring in certain contexts.
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| 12. |
- Thomson, Henry, et al.
(författare)
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Group organization, elections and urban political mobilization in the developing world
- 2021
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Ingår i: Democratization. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1351-0347 .- 1743-890X. ; 28:8, s. 1525-1544
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Elections generate incentives for contention and violence. However, collective action problems mute responses to strategic incentives by unorganized individuals, relative to organized groups. Variation in the severity of collective action problems and the degree of strategic behaviour results in distinct patterns of mobilization across these two types of groups that have been overlooked in previous literature. We explore variation in organized and unorganized political mobilization and violence at elections using new event data for over one hundred cities in the developing world from 1960 to 2014. We find that organized groups are more likely to mobilize before elections to influence their outcome, and under permissive opportunity structures at moderate levels of democracy. Mobilization by unorganized individuals occurs at and directly after elections but does not vary by regime type. Distinct mobilization patterns across group type are a major addition to our understanding of the link between elections, democracy, contention and violence.
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| 13. |
- Vesco, Paola, 1990-, et al.
(författare)
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Climate and Conflict
- 2020
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Ingår i: Routledge handbook of peace, security and development. - Abingdon; New York : Routledge. - 9781351172202 - 9780815397854 ; , s. 105-120
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)
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| 14. |
- Vestby, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Why do some poor countries see armed conflict while others do not? : A dual sector approach
- 2021
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Ingår i: World Development. - : Elsevier. - 0305-750X .- 1873-5991. ; 138
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Low level of GDP per capita is a robust and widely applied predictor of civil war. Yet, GDP is a crude macro-level indicator that masks considerable heterogeneity in economic structures, and it is less well able to explain variation in conflict risk among low-income countries. Here, we consider the merit of classic dual sector theory in improving common economic models of civil war. Two basic expectations are derived: the relative size of the traditional sector increases conflict risk via low opportunity cost and high share of immobile wealth, whereas high relative labor productivity (RLP) in the modern sector compared to the traditional sector facilitates labor mobility and wage growth, thus reducing the viability of rebellion. We evaluate these expectations via out-of-sample prediction analysis of civil conflict involvement, drawing on a unique 10-sector dataset of economic activity among 40 countries across the world since 1969. The analysis provides robust evidence that poor countries with a comparatively productive modern sector are less conflict prone than countries at similar income levels with lower RLP ratios. However, further probing into potential mechanisms producing this relationship does not provide decisive evidence in favor of any potential mechanism. We conclude that replacing GDP per capita with indicators of sector size and relative productivity improves the predictive performance of common civil war models, although more research is needed to assess the generalizability of these findings and to gain further insight into the underlying causal pathways linking relative labor productivity with reduced conflict risk.
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| 15. |
- von Uexkull, Nina, et al.
(författare)
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Civil conflict sensitivity to growing-season drought
- 2016
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 113:44, s. 12391-12396
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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.
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| 16. |
- von Uexkull, Nina, et al.
(författare)
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Security implications of climate change : A decade of scientific progress
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Peace Research. - : Sage Publications. - 0022-3433 .- 1460-3578. ; 58:1, s. 3-17
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The study of security implications of climate change has developed rapidly from a nascent area of academic inquiry into an important and thriving research field that traverses epistemological and disciplinary boundaries. Here, we take stock of scientific progress by benchmarking the latest decade of empirical research against seven core research priorities collectively emphasized in 35 recent literature reviews. On the basis of this evaluation, we discuss key contributions of this special issue. Overall, we find that the research community has made important strides in specifying and evaluating plausible indirect causal pathways between climatic conditions and a wide set of conflict-related outcomes and the scope conditions that shape this relationship. Contributions to this special issue push the research frontier further along these lines. Jointly, they demonstrate significant climate impacts on social unrest in urban settings; they point to the complexity of the climate–migration–unrest link; they identify how agricultural production patterns shape conflict risk; they investigate understudied outcomes in relation to climate change, such as interstate claims and individual trust; and they discuss the relevance of this research for user groups across academia and beyond. We find that the long-term implications of gradual climate change and conflict potential of policy responses are important remaining research gaps that should guide future research.
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