IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/cauapw/wp202004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Climate change, or climate shocks: What really triggers civil conflicts?

Author

Listed:
  • Khalifa, Sherin
  • Petri, Svetlana
  • Henning, Christian H. C. A.

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the impact of extraordinary climate shocks on the incidence of civil conflict using cross-country panel data from Africa and the Middle East (1981 to 2015). We find that: (i) The estimated impact of climate shocks (mainly temperature effect) on economic growth rate and domestic food production ranges from 3 to 5% compared to the estimated impact of temperature growth 47%. (ii) We identified a direct impact of climate shocks on the incidence of civil conflict, where this impact is similar in magnitude to the negative impact of rainfall growth on conflict (3-4%). (iii) We confirmed the negative link between conflict and both economic indicators, conflict begets next conflict, the positive impact of good governance and polity IV estimates, and the freshwater availability on reducing the risk of conflict. Concluding that the main effect of climate comes from the temperature growth effects and it is not extreme shocks that drive economic declines, which indicates that the climate rather operates in a non-linear process.

Suggested Citation

  • Khalifa, Sherin & Petri, Svetlana & Henning, Christian H. C. A., 2020. "Climate change, or climate shocks: What really triggers civil conflicts?," Working Papers of Agricultural Policy WP2020-04, University of Kiel, Department of Agricultural Economics, Chair of Agricultural Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:cauapw:wp202004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/235897/1/1758317175.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kostadis J. Papaioannou & Michiel de Haas, 2015. "Climate shocks, cash crops and resilience: Evidence from colonial tropical Africa," Working Papers 0076, Utrecht University, Centre for Global Economic History.
    2. Marshall Burke & Solomon M. Hsiang & Edward Miguel, 2015. "Climate and Conflict," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 577-617, August.
    3. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2012. "Temperature Shocks and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 66-95, July.
    4. Antonio Ciccone, 2011. "Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict: A Comment," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 215-227, October.
    5. Salvador Barrios & Luisito Bertinelli & Eric Strobl, 2010. "Trends in Rainfall and Economic Growth in Africa: A Neglected Cause of the African Growth Tragedy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 92(2), pages 350-366, May.
    6. Edward Miguel & Shanker Satyanath & Ernest Sergenti, 2004. "Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict: An Instrumental Variables Approach," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(4), pages 725-753, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    2. Jean-François Maystadt & Margherita Calderone & Liangzhi You, 2015. "Local warming and violent conflict in North and South Sudan," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 649-671.
    3. Jonathan Goyette & Maroua Smaoui, 2019. "Civil armed conflicts: the impact of the interaction between climate change and agricultural potential," RIEEM Discussion Paper Series 1903, Research Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Waseda University.
    4. Khalifa, Sherin & Henning, Christian H. C. A., 2020. "Climate change and civil conflict in SSA and MENA: The same phenomena, but different mechanisms?," Working Papers of Agricultural Policy WP2020-03, University of Kiel, Department of Agricultural Economics, Chair of Agricultural Policy.
    5. Fenske, James & Kala, Namrata, 2012. "Climate, ecosystem resilience and the slave trade," MPRA Paper 38398, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. David Castells-Quintana & Maria del Pilar Lopez-Uribe & Tom McDermott, 2015. "Climate change and the geographical and institutional drivers of economic development," GRI Working Papers 198, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    7. repec:lic:licosd:33513 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Lopez-Uribe, Maria del Pilar & Castells-Quintana, David & McDermott, Thomas K. J., 2017. "Geography, institutions and development: a review ofthe long-run impacts of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 65147, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Jonathan Goyette & Maroua Smaoui, 2019. "Civil armed conflicts: the impact of the interaction between climate change and agricultural potential," Cahiers de recherche 19-02, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    10. Khalifa, Sherin & Petri, Svetlana & Henning, Christian H. C. A., 2020. "If climate change can trigger civil conflict, can good policy trigger peace? Empirical evidence from cross-country panel data," Working Papers of Agricultural Policy WP2020-01, University of Kiel, Department of Agricultural Economics, Chair of Agricultural Policy.
    11. Achim Ahrens, 2015. "Civil conflicts in Africa: Climate, economic shocks, nighttime lights and spill-over effects," SEEC Discussion Papers 1501, Spatial Economics and Econometrics Centre, Heriot Watt University.
    12. Liang, Weidong & Sim, Nicholas, 2019. "Did rainfall shocks cause civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa? The implications of data revisions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    13. Goyette, Jonathan & Smaoui, Maroua, 2022. "Low agricultural potential exacerbates the effect of temperature on civil conflicts," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    14. Kibriya, Shahriar & Xu, Zhicheng P. & Zhang, Yu, 2015. "Economic shocks, governance and violence: A subnational level analysis of Africa," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205321, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    15. Shiran Victoria Shen, 2021. "Integrating Political Science into Climate Modeling: An Example of Internalizing the Costs of Climate-Induced Violence in the Optimal Management of the Climate," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-24, September.
    16. Markus Brückner & Antonio Ciccone, 2011. "Rain and the Democratic Window of Opportunity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 923-947, May.
    17. Unal Seven & Semih Tumen, 2020. "Agricultural Credits And Agricultural Productivity: Cross-Country Evidence," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 65(supp01), pages 161-183, December.
    18. Ceren Baysan & Marshall Burke & Felipe González & Solomon Hsiang & Edward Miguel, 2018. "Economic and Non-Economic Factors in Violence: Evidence from Organized Crime, Suicides and Climate in Mexico," NBER Working Papers 24897, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Castells-Quintana, David & Lopez-Uribe, Maria del Pilar & McDermott, Thomas K.J., 2022. "Population displacement and urban conflict: Global evidence from more than 3300 flood events," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    20. Anna Josephson & Jeffrey D. Michler & Talip Kilic & Siobhan Murray, 2024. "The Mismeasure of Weather: Using Remotely Sensed Earth Observation Data in Economic Context," Papers 2409.07506, arXiv.org.
    21. Sébastien Mary & Kelsey Shaw & Sergio Gomez y Paloma, 2019. "Does the sectoral composition of growth affect child stunting reductions?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 37(2), pages 225-244, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate shocks; civil conflict; economic development;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:cauapw:wp202004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iakiede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.