Violent climate or climate of violence? Concepts and relations with focus on Kenya and Sudan

Abstract

Addressing deficits of current research on the link between climate change and violent conflict, this article aims to contribute to a more systematic understanding of the violence concept in the context of environmental change. We present a theoretical framework and potential pathways between climate change and violence and an agent-based approach to assess the interplay between capabilities and motivations for violence and the conditions for conflicting or cooperative interactions. Acting as a ‘threat multiplier’, climate change could exceed adaptive capacities and undermine the livelihoods of communities. In the most affected regions, the erosion of social order and state failure as well as already ongoing violent conflicts could be aggravated, leading to a spiral of violence that further dissolves societal structures. Against this background we analyse case studies in Kenya and Sudan, focusing on factors driving or preventing a spiral of violence. While interpastoral conflicts in north-western Kenya result in limited numbers of casualties, the Darfur conflict has been shaped by the civil war in Sudan, involving the government, rebel forces and militias, causing significant loss of lives and destruction. The impact of climate change is less direct in Sudan than in Kenya. To avoid a spiral of violence, in both cases it is essential to reduce socio-economical marginalisation, develop resource-sharing mechanisms and restrain access to arms as part of long-term strategies for a sustainable and peaceful intervention to contain the adverse impacts of climate change.

Keywords:

• climate change
• violent conflict
• Sudan
• Kenya

Acknowledgements

This research was partially founded by the German Environmental Foundation (DBU) and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Integrated Climate System Analysis and Prediction – CliSAP’ (EXC177), University of Hamburg, funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG). We thank Jürgen Zimmerer and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Notes on contributors

Jürgen Scheffran is professor at the Institute of Geography of Hamburg University in Germany and head of the Research Group Climate Change and Security in the KlimaCampus Excellence Initiative. Previously he held positions at University of Marburg, Technical University of Darmstadt, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and University of Illinois. His field of research is on climate change, conflict and environmental migration; energy security; complex systems and human-environment interaction.

Tobias Ide is a PhD candidate at the Research Group Climate Change and Security and the Institute of Geography, University of Hamburg. His research focuses on methodological and theoretical challenges in the research on climate change and conflict.

Janpeter Schilling is a Programme Officer in Climate Change and Security at International Alert in London and an Associated Researcher in the Research Group Climate Change and Security at Hamburg University. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Environmental Security at Colgate University in New York and a Research Associate at Hamburg University where he received his PhD in Geography. His field of specialisation is the linkages between climate change, vulnerability, adaptation and conflict.

Notes

1 For a definition see the glossary of the IPCC. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/annex1sglossary-a-d.html): 'Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the average weather, or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period for averaging these variables is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. The relevant quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind.' 'Climate change refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (for example, by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.'

2 WBGU (German Advisory Council on Global Change), World in Transition – Climate Change as a Security Risk (London: Earthscan, 2008).

3 Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link and Janpeter Schilling, ed., Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict: Challenges for Societal Stability (Berlin: Springer, 2012); Hans Günter Brauch, ‘Securitizing Global Environmental Change’, in Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts, ed. Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Czeslaw Mesjasz, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou and Heinz Krummenacher (Berlin; Heidelberg; New York: Springer, 2009), 65–102; Jürgen Scheffran and Antonella Battaglini, ‘Climate and Conflicts: The Security Risks of Global Warming’, Regional Environmental Change 11 (2011): 27–39.

4 Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Jasmin Kominek, P. Michael Link and Janpeter Schilling, ‘Climate Change and Violent Conflict’, Science 336 (2012): 869–71; Nils Petter Gleditsch, ‘Special Issue on Climate Change and Conflict’, Journal of Peace Research 49 (2012): 3–257.

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35 Reuveny, ‘Climate Change-Induced Migration and Violent Conflict’.

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57 Schilling, Opiyo and Scheffran, ‘Raiding Pastoral Livelihoods’.

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64 Janpeter Schilling, Francis Opiyo and Jürgen Scheffran, ‘Raiding Pastoral Livelihoods: Motives and Effects of Violent Conflict in North-Western Kenya’, Pastoralism 2 (2012): 1–16.

65 http://www.tullowoil.com/index.asp?pageid=432 (2 November 2012).

66 Sara Pantuliano, ‘Oil, Land and Conflict: The Decline of Misseriyya Pastoralism in Sudan’, Review of African Political Economy 37 (2010): 7–23.

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68 Carol McSweeney, Mark New and Gil Lizcano, ‘UNDP Climate Change Country Profiles – Kenya’. http://country-profiles.geog.ox.ac.uk/.

69 Ibid.

70 Schilling, On Rains, Raids and Relations.

71 Ibid.

72 United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs UNOCHA, ‘Security in Mobility’. http://ochaonline.un.org/kenya/Advocacy/SecurityinMobility/tabid/6735/language/en-US/Default.aspx.

73 Schilling, Opiyo and Scheffran, ‘Raiding Pastoral Livelihoods'.

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82 UNEP, Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment; Brown, ‘Assessing Eco-Scarcity’.

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85 Dahlberg, Sudan Environmental Policy Brief.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid.

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