The Future of Environmental Peace and Conflict Research

Interest in the intersections of environmental issues, peace and conflict has surged in recent years. Research on the topic has developed along separate research streams, which broadened the knowledge base considerably, but hardly interact across disciplinary, methodological, epistemological and ontological silos. Our forum addresses this gap by bringing into conversation six research streams on the environment, peace and conflict: environmental change and human security, climate change and armed conflict, environmental peacebuilding, political ecology, securitisation of the environment, and decolonizing environmental security. For each research stream, we outline core findings, potentials for mutual enrichment with other streams, and prospects for future research

Pathways from research to sustainable development: insights from ten research projects in sustainability and resilience

Drawing on collective experience from ten collaborative research projects focused on the Global South, we identify three major challenges that impede the translation of research on sustainability and resilience into better-informed choices by individuals and policy-makers that in turn can support transformation to a sustainable future. The three challenges comprise: (i) converting knowledge produced during research projects into successful knowledge application; (ii) scaling up knowledge in time when research projects are short-term and potential impacts are long-term; and (iii) scaling up knowledge across space, from local research sites to larger-scale or even global impact. Some potential pathways for funding agencies to overcome these challenges include providing targeted prolonged funding for dissemination and outreach, and facilitating collaboration and coordination across different sites, research teams, and partner organizations. By systematically documenting these challenges, we hope to pave the way for further innovations in the research cycle

Climate, Conflict and Coping Capacity : The Impact of Climate Variability on Organized Violence

Understanding the conflict potential of climate variability is critical for assessing and dealing with the societal implications of climate change. Yet, it remains poorly understood under what circumstances – and how – extreme weather events and variation in precipitation patterns affect organized violence. This dissertation suggests that the impacts of climate variability on organized violence are conditional on specific climate patterns, the sensitivity of livelihoods, and state governance. These theoretical conjectures are subjected to novel empirical tests in four individual essays. Three essays investigate the relationship between climate variability and communal and civil conflict through sub-national quantitative analysis focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa. The fourth essay sheds light on causal mechanisms leading to participation in land-related conflict based on interview material on 75 ex-participants in violence from Mt. Elgon, Kenya. Essay I suggests that the exposure of vulnerable agricultural livelihoods to sustained drought increases the risk of civil conflict violence. Essay II indicates that rainfall anomalies increase the risk of communal violence, an effect which is amplified by political marginalization. Essay III finds support for the proposition that volatility in resource supply increases the risk of communal conflict over land and water in remote regions, which tend to have limited state presence. Essay IV proposes that individuals depending on agriculture are prone to participate in land-related conflict as they face impediments to leaving a conflict zone, and additionally have high incentives to partake in fighting for land. Taken together, the dissertation furthers our understanding of the specific economic and political context under which climate variability impacts armed conflict. This knowledge is important for conflict-sensitive adaptation to climate change and conflict prevention efforts

Vicious circles: Violence, vulnerability, and climate change

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

Issues and Actors in African Nonstate Conflicts : A New Data Set

Armed nonstate conflict without the direct involvement of the state government is a common phenomenon. Violence between armed gangs, rebel groups, or communal militias is an important source of instability and has gained increasing scholarly attention. In this article, we introduce a data collection on conflict issues and key actor characteristics in armed nonstate conflicts that provides new opportunities for investigating the causes, dynamics, and consequences of this form of organized violence. The data builds on and extends the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Non-State Conflict data set by introducing additional information on what the actors in the conflict are fighting over, alongside actor characteristics. It covers Africa during the time period 1989–2011. The data set distinguishes between two main categories of issues, territory and authority, in addition to a residual category of other issues. Furthermore, we specify sub-issues within these categories, such as agricultural land/water as sub-issue for territory and religious issues for other issues. As actor characteristics, the data set notes whether warring parties received military support by external actors and whether religion and the mode of livelihood were salient in the mobilization of the armed group. The article presents coding processes, key features of the data set, and point to avenues for new research based on these data

Replication Data for: Issues and Actors in African Non-State Conflicts: A new Dataset

Armed non-state conflict without the direct involvement of the state government is a common phenomenon. Violence between armed gangs, rebel groups or communal militias is an important source of instability and has gained increasing scholarly attention. In this article, we introduce a data collection on conflict issues and key actor characteristics in armed non-state conflicts that provides new opportunities for investigating the causes, dynamics and consequences of this form of organized violence. The data builds on and extends the UCDP Non-State Conflict dataset by introducing additional information on what the actors in the conflict are fighting over, alongside actor characteristics. It covers Africa 1989-2011. The dataset distinguishes between two main categories of issues; territory or authority, in addition to a residual category of other issues. Furthermore, we specify sub-issues within these categories, such as agricultural land/water as sub-issue for territory and religious issues for other issues. As actor characteristics, the dataset notes whether warring parties received military support by external actors and whether religion and the mode of livelihood were salient in the mobilization of the armed group. The article presents coding processes, key features of the dataset and point to avenues for new research based on these data

Security implications of climate change : A decade of scientific progress

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

Why do some poor countries see armed conflict while others do not? : A dual sector approach

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

Drought, Resilience, and Support for Violence : Household Survey Evidence from DR Congo

The effects of climate variability and change on security are debated. While this topic has received considerable attention in both policy circles and academia, the microlevel pathways and conditions under which climatic shocks increase conflict risks are poorly understood. We suggest that household resilience provides one key to understanding these relationships. Using novel household survey data from two conflict-affected regions in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, we study variation in the support for violence related to reported exposure to drought and resilience metrics. Using comprehensive multifaceted objective and subjective indicators of resilience, we find that less resilient respondents who report having experienced drought and associated losses are more likely to be supportive of the use of political violence. In contrast, our findings suggest that there is no general association between reporting drought exposure and support for violence.Swedish Research Council, SIDA, and FORMAS, grant no. 2016-06389Research Council of Norway, grant no. 268135/E1

Synergies and Trade-Offs in Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 integrate diverse issues such as addressing hunger, gender equality and clean energy and set a common agenda for all United Nations member states until 2030. The 17 SDGs interact and by working towards achieving one goal countries may further—or jeopardise—progress on others. However, the direction and strength of these interactions are still poorly understood and it remains an analytical challenge to capture the relationships between the multi-dimensional goals, comprising 169 targets and over 200 indicators. Here, we use principal component analysis (PCA), an in this context novel approach, to summarise each goal and interactions in the global SDG agenda. Applying PCA allows us to map trends, synergies and trade-offs at the level of goals for all SDGs while using all available information on indicators. While our approach does not allow us to investigate causal relationships, it provides important evidence of the degree of compatibility of goal attainment over time. Based on global data 2000–2016, our results indicate that synergies between and within the SDGs prevail, both in terms of levels and over time change. An exception is SDG 10 ‘Reducing inequalities’ which has not progressed in tandem with other goals.All authors contributed equally to this work</p