A critical assessment of the link between climate change and violent conflict in the context of sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Darfur

Up until the beginning of this century climate change was mostly seen as an environmental issue, although, the issue of violent conflict has been linked to natural resources before. However, in the last decade the focus has increasingly shifted to connecting climate change with, in particular, human security. In contrast to previous debates, contemporary discussions put emphasis on the impacts that climate change has on human lives. Yet, it is not uncontroversial to what extent environmental degradation as well as carbon dioxide emission based economies play and have played an accelerating role. But even if 'climate change sceptics’ or 'climate change deniers’ question the credibility of climate change the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) present a solid base for the international climate debate which is accepted and supported by the majority of academic experts. Nonetheless, there is significant ambiguity about what the negative consequences of climate change could pose on peaceful human co-existence. In 2007, specifically, it was brought to public attention that the effects of a warming climate, such as more intense storms, floods and droughts have severe impacts on the human-wellbeing, especially in more vulnerable areas of the globe. Experts even claimed that, in many parts of the world, climate change would cause dramatic impacts in the form of violent conflicts due to the decrease of drinking water, fertile soil as well as food. Entire states might be weakened and societies could collapse which might lead to severe consequences for conflict resolution institutions and mechanisms, human security as well as migration. However, findings regarding the impacts of climate change on violent conflict are highly controversial and sometimes even contradictory. One reason for that could be that the physical effects of climate change are limited to date. Furthermore, as studies from the 1990s on the consequences of environmental change have shown, it is difficult to disconnect the environmental factor from other societal and political influences that lead to conflict. This thesis explores the politically charged issue as well as academically controversial link between climate change, as one of the environmental changes, and violent conflict by providing a conceptual assessment of the two different bodies of literature, namely the literature on violent conflict and the climate change literature, before examining available literature on the connection of the two phenomena. Finally, the case study of Darfur is analysed with regards to the often misused term climate war in order to conclude that violent conflicts are caused by multiple factors which should not be oversimplified and therefore cannot be traced back to purely environmental reasons. Therefore, the central research questions addressed in this thesis are: what do scholars say about the connection between climate change and violent conflict? Can climate change and its repercussions be seen as a threat multiplier in unstable and therefore vulnerable societies? And can the Darfur conflict be described as one of the first climate wars