Skip to main content
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses

New Research In

Physical Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Applied Mathematics
  • Applied Physical Sciences
  • Astronomy
  • Computer Sciences
  • Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
  • Engineering
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Mathematics
  • Statistics

Social Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Economic Sciences
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Political Sciences
  • Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
  • Social Sciences

Biological Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Agricultural Sciences
  • Anthropology
  • Applied Biological Sciences
  • Biochemistry
  • Biophysics and Computational Biology
  • Cell Biology
  • Developmental Biology
  • Ecology
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Evolution
  • Genetics
  • Immunology and Inflammation
  • Medical Sciences
  • Microbiology
  • Neuroscience
  • Pharmacology
  • Physiology
  • Plant Biology
  • Population Biology
  • Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
  • Sustainability Science
  • Systems Biology
Research Article

Civil conflict sensitivity to growing-season drought

Nina von Uexkull, Mihai Croicu, Hanne Fjelde, and Halvard Buhaug
PNAS November 1, 2016 113 (44) 12391-12396; first published October 17, 2016; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1607542113
Nina von Uexkull
aDepartment of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden;
bPeace Research Institute Oslo, NO-0134 Oslo, Norway;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: nina.von_uexkull@pcr.uu.se
Mihai Croicu
aDepartment of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Hanne Fjelde
aDepartment of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, SE-75120 Uppsala, Sweden;
bPeace Research Institute Oslo, NO-0134 Oslo, Norway;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Halvard Buhaug
bPeace Research Institute Oslo, NO-0134 Oslo, Norway;
cDepartment of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  1. Edited by B. L. Turner, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, and approved August 31, 2016 (received for review May 11, 2016)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

Understanding the conflict potential of drought is critical for dealing effectively with the societal implications of climate change. Using new georeferenced ethnicity and conflict data for Asia and Africa since 1989, we present an actor-oriented analysis of growing-season drought and conflict involvement among ethnic groups. Results from naive models common in previous research suggest that drought generally has little impact. However, context-sensitive models accounting for the groups’ level of vulnerability reveal that drought can contribute to sustaining conflict, especially for agriculturally dependent groups and politically excluded groups in very poor countries. These results suggest a reciprocal nature–society interaction in which violent conflict and environmental shock constitute a vicious circle, each phenomenon increasing the group’s vulnerability to the other.

Abstract

To date, the research community has failed to reach a consensus on the nature and significance of the relationship between climate variability and armed conflict. We argue that progress has been hampered by insufficient attention paid to the context in which droughts and other climatic extremes may increase the risk of violent mobilization. Addressing this shortcoming, this study presents an actor-oriented analysis of the drought–conflict relationship, focusing specifically on politically relevant ethnic groups and their sensitivity to growing-season drought under various political and socioeconomic contexts. To this end, we draw on new conflict event data that cover Asia and Africa, 1989–2014, updated spatial ethnic settlement data, and remote sensing data on agricultural land use. Our procedure allows quantifying, for each ethnic group, drought conditions during the growing season of the locally dominant crop. A comprehensive set of multilevel mixed effects models that account for the groups’ livelihood, economic, and political vulnerabilities reveals that a drought under most conditions has little effect on the short-term risk that a group challenges the state by military means. However, for agriculturally dependent groups as well as politically excluded groups in very poor countries, a local drought is found to increase the likelihood of sustained violence. We interpret this as evidence of the reciprocal relationship between drought and conflict, whereby each phenomenon makes a group more vulnerable to the other.

  • armed conflict
  • climate variability
  • drought
  • ethnicity
  • georeferenced event data

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: nina.von_uexkull{at}pcr.uu.se.
  • Author contributions: N.v.U., M.C., H.F., and H.B. designed research; N.v.U. analyzed data; N.v.U., H.F., and H.B. wrote the paper; and M.C. created the dataset.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • Data deposition: The replication data reported in this paper are available from Peace Research Institute Oslo’s data repository, https://www.prio.org/Data/Replication-Data, as well as the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, www.pcr.uu.se/data.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1607542113/-/DCSupplemental.

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

View Full Text
PreviousNext
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Civil conflict sensitivity to growing-season drought
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Conflict sensitivity to growing-season drought
Nina von Uexkull, Mihai Croicu, Hanne Fjelde, Halvard Buhaug
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nov 2016, 113 (44) 12391-12396; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1607542113

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Conflict sensitivity to growing-season drought
Nina von Uexkull, Mihai Croicu, Hanne Fjelde, Halvard Buhaug
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nov 2016, 113 (44) 12391-12396; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1607542113
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 113 (44)
Table of Contents

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Article Classifications

  • Social Sciences
  • Political Sciences
  • Sustainability Science

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Analytical Approach
    • Results
    • Discussion
    • Materials and Methods
    • SI Text
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Surgeons hands during surgery
Inner Workings: Advances in infectious disease treatment promise to expand the pool of donor organs
Despite myriad challenges, clinicians see room for progress.
Image credit: Shutterstock/David Tadevosian.
Setting sun over a sun-baked dirt landscape
Core Concept: Popular integrated assessment climate policy models have key caveats
Better explicating the strengths and shortcomings of these models will help refine projections and improve transparency in the years ahead.
Image credit: Witsawat.S.
Double helix
Journal Club: Noncoding DNA shown to underlie function, cause limb malformations
Using CRISPR, researchers showed that a region some used to label “junk DNA” has a major role in a rare genetic disorder.
Image credit: Nathan Devery.
Steamboat Geyser eruption.
Eruption of Steamboat Geyser
Mara Reed and Michael Manga explore why Yellowstone's Steamboat Geyser resumed erupting in 2018.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Multi-color molecular model
Enzymatic breakdown of PET plastic
A study demonstrates how two enzymes—MHETase and PETase—work synergistically to depolymerize the plastic pollutant PET.
Image credit: Aaron McGeehan (artist).

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490