TY - JOUR

T1 - Extreme weather and civil war

T2 - does drought fuel conflict in Somalia through livestock price shocks?

AU - Maystadt, Jean-Francois

AU - Ecker, Olivier

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - Climate change leads to more frequent and more intense droughts in Somalia. In a global context weather shocks have been found to perpetuate poverty and fuel civil conflict. By relating regional and temporal variations in violent conflict outbreaks and drought incidence and severity, we show that this causality is also valid for Somalia at the local level. We find that livestock price shocks drive drought-induced conflicts through reducing the opportunity costs of conflict participation. Our estimation results indicate that a temperature rise of around 3.2 degree Celcius—corresponding to the median IPCC scenario for Eastern Africa by the end of the century—would lower cattle prices by about 4 percent and, in turn, increase the number of violent conflict by about 58 percent. Hence climate change will further aggravate Somalia’s security challenges and calls for decisive action to strengthen both drought and conflict resilience, especially in pastoralist and agropastoralist livelihoods.

AB - Climate change leads to more frequent and more intense droughts in Somalia. In a global context weather shocks have been found to perpetuate poverty and fuel civil conflict. By relating regional and temporal variations in violent conflict outbreaks and drought incidence and severity, we show that this causality is also valid for Somalia at the local level. We find that livestock price shocks drive drought-induced conflicts through reducing the opportunity costs of conflict participation. Our estimation results indicate that a temperature rise of around 3.2 degree Celcius—corresponding to the median IPCC scenario for Eastern Africa by the end of the century—would lower cattle prices by about 4 percent and, in turn, increase the number of violent conflict by about 58 percent. Hence climate change will further aggravate Somalia’s security challenges and calls for decisive action to strengthen both drought and conflict resilience, especially in pastoralist and agropastoralist livelihoods.

U2 - 10.1093/ajae/aau010

DO - 10.1093/ajae/aau010

M3 - Journal article

VL - 96

SP - 1157

EP - 1182

JO - American Journal of Agricultural Economics

JF - American Journal of Agricultural Economics

SN - 0002-9092

IS - 4

ER -