After the Rain: Rainfall Variability, Hydro-Meteorological Disasters, and Social Conflict in Africa

Transcription

1 After the Rain: Rainfall Variability, Hydro-Meteorological Disasters, and Social Conflict in Africa Cullen Hendrix and Idean Salehyan University of North Texas Climate Change and Security Conference, Trondheim, NO June 2010

2 Is there a link?

3 Climate change and conflict Scholars, policymakers are concerned that climate change, environmental degradation will lead to conflict Weak and ambiguous findings with respect to interstate, intrastate war Other forms of social conflict may be more likely Interstate wars are rare Insurgency entails significant start-up costs, government is (comparatively) well-armed The state may not be an appropriate target Interstate war Intrastate war Protests, rioting, communal conflict, government repression, strikes

4 Different in kind, not necessarily scale Kenya 2007: marred elections lead to widespread ethnic rioting, 800-1,500 deaths, political compromise Nigeria 1998: Ife-Modakeke ethnic violence kills 3,000 near Osun : Muslim-Christian religious violence kills >1,200 in Jos Zambia Protests in the early 1990s spur multiparty elections Event death totals are higher than many civil conflicts Peter Andrew/Reuters

5 Theory and causal mechanisms Conflict between consumers of water Water shortage/extr eme abundance Price disputes between rural producers and urban consumers Migration out of affected areas Reduction in state revenues and patronage opportunities Political unrest Poor macroeconomic outcomes

6 New data Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD) Covers 47 African countries, Over 6,000 events Protests, riots, strikes, government repression, communal violence, intra-government violence Augments existing data sources on inter-, intrastate war Online database, visualization tools expected August 2010, hosted by Strauss Center, UT-Austin

7 Data generation Searches of AP and AFP ( ) Demonstrations, riots, strikes, repression, anti-government violence, extra- government and intra-government violence Contains information on: Start and end dates Escalation Actors and targets Repression Number of participants Number of deaths Location Issue(s)

8 Social conflict indicators for 47 African countries, Variable Obs. Mean σ Min. Max. Civil Conflict Onset Total Events Nonviolent Events Violent Events Government- Targeted Events Nongovernment- Targeted Events

9 Measures of water scarcity/abundance Different measure of rainfall shocks Deviations from long-term panel means ( ), standardized by the standard deviation of panel mean Mean = 0, σ = 1 A growth year after a decline year could still be a net - year A decline year after a growth year could still be a net + Estimating impact of hydrometeorological disasters: floods and droughts Counts based on CRED data

10 Estimation Civil conflict onset: logit with clustered errors, controls for temporal dependence Events: negative binomial with fixed effects, period dummies, time trend Independent Variables Standardized Rainfall Deviations (linear and squared, present and lagged), Droughts (count), Floods (count) Control Variables Lagged DV, Polity2, Polity2 2, GDP per capita and GDP Growth, Population, Population Growth, Conflict

11 Rainfall Rainfall and civil conflict onset, SD +2 SD +1 SD Mean -1 SD -2 SD -3 SD -63% -49% -30% +40% +101% +190% 0 0,02 0,04 0,06 0,08 0,1 pr(conflict onset), controls at means

12 -3,5-3,3-3,1-2,9-2,7-2,5-2,3-2,1-1,9-1,7-1,5-1,3-1,1-0,9-0,7-0,5-0,3-0,1 0,1 0,3 0,5 0,7 0,9 1,1 1,3 1,5 1,7 1,9 2,1 2,3 2,5 2,7 2,9 3,1 3,3 3,5 % Change in Number of Events Rainfall and social conflict events, Estimated Effect 95% CI Standardized Rainfall Deviation

13 Rainfall Rainfall and social conflict events, by type, SD +1 SD -1 SD -2 SD Nongovernment-Targeted Events Government-Targeted Events Violent Events Nonviolent Events Total Events 0 % 10 % 20 % 30 % 40 % 50 % 60 % Percent Increase in Events from Country Mean

14 Conclusions Civil conflict more likely in wetter years Strong, curvilinear effect of rainfall on social conflict events Violent, nongovernment-targeted conflict more responsive to rainfall abundance Nonviolent, government-targeted conflict more abundant rainfall scarcity No effects for droughts, floods Reporting bias? Politics? Bergholt and Lujala measure probably better Extensions Interactions with political, economic, sociodemographic factors Explaining the strength of these correlations in the cross-section Correlation Strong (r > 0. 45) Moderate (0.45 > r > 0. 2) Negative (r < -0. 2)

15 Supplemental slides

16 Disaggregate? Growing body of work which disaggregates conflict Do local disasters foster local conflicts? However effects may be geographically distant Rural drought affects urban food prices Migration Effects on public employees No reason to expect conflict to be confined to areas with water shortages

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