Political Violence Workshop
Date and Time
“Breaking the Link between Climate Change and Civil Conflict”
Abstract: The debate within the natural science community over the occurrence and the causes of global climate change has been mirrored by a parallel debate among political scientists about the security consequences of global warming. Just as most natural scientists now believe that climate change is happening and caused by human activity, many political scientists now believe that climate change will increase the risk of armed conflict in the world, in large part because reduced rainfall will lead to natural resource scarcities in the already fragile states of the developing world. This consensus begs the question: What can governments do about resource deprivation and other consequences of climate change to avoid major civil conflict? I propose writing a book of four Latin American case studies — two in which environmental scarcities have led to violent civil conflict, and two in which scarcities of a similar magnitude have not resulted in significant conflict. The goal is to discern best practices for governments facing the natural resource scarcities that are likely to arise from future climate change. A subsidiary goal is to move the scholarship of climate change and conflict beyond Africa, where it has been mostly focused, and into Latin America, a region much more relevant to American national security interests and similarly vulnerable to climate change-related resource scarcities.
Speaker:
Nathan Black, Post Doctoral Fellow, Center for the Environment and Department of Government, Harvard University.
Chair:
Robert H. Bates, Faculty Associate (on leave 2012–2013); Harvard Academy Senior Scholar. Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, Department of Government; Professor of African and African American Studies, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University.