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Edited by B. L. Turner, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, and approved August 10, 2010 (received for review April 30, 2010)
Abstract
Vocal actors within policy and practice contend that environmental variability and shocks, such as drought and prolonged heat waves, drive civil wars in Africa. Recently, a widely publicized scientific article appears to substantiate this claim. This paper investigates the empirical foundation for the claimed relationship in detail. Using a host of different model specifications and alternative measures of drought, heat, and civil war, the paper concludes that climate variability is a poor predictor of armed conflict. Instead, African civil wars can be explained by generic structural and contextual conditions: prevalent ethno-political exclusion, poor national economy, and the collapse of the Cold War system.
Footnotes
- 1E-mail: halvardb{at}prio.no.
Author contributions: H.B. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
The author declares no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: Replication data are available from PRIO's data repository at http://www.prio.no/CSCW/Datasets/.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Climate not to blame for African civil wars
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