A Call for Hermeneutical Perspectives on Climate Change and Conflict : The Case of Ethiopia and Eritrea

• Research on climate change and conflict has been conducted in ways that may lead us to overlook risks of conflicts and miss opportunities to prevent them. In response, this article formulates an analytical framework based on hermeneutical perspectives on social action.The main argument is that climate factors are not the main drivers of conflict under conditions of climate change. Instead, the main mechanisms are how actors interpret their historical experiences and roles as guides for future actions and how international structures shape the scope of action in a constitutive fashion.Previous research has tended to construct the past as an objective assemblage of occurrences. However, the past can never be an ‘objective’ series of events and causal connections. Actors always interpret the past and construct it as meaning-laden history. History, in turn, is fundamentally ambiguous; it can be constructed as a story that has to be continued or one that needs to be broken with. An analysis of the relation between Ethiopia and Eritrea illustrates the theoretical framework. It concludes that despite their past enmity, there is no imminent risk of conflict in connection with climate change but strong reasons for both actors to maintain status quo.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Climate Change

Conflict

Causation

Horn of Africa

Systems Theory

Structural IR

Political science

Statsvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)