Climate Stress: How Droughts Fuel Conflict and Human Insecurity

Climate change is no longer a remote prediction of the problems of tomorrow; it is altering human lives and political landscapes today. While weather patterns change and sea levels rise, some of the most significant effects of climate change are occurring where human survival is most dependent upon stable ecosystems and predictable seasons. Droughts that were once occurring every few decades are now coming more frequently and for longer periods of time, saturating soils, withering crops and emptying water sources. In turn, such environmental stressors are a factor in migration and displacement, and in some cases, even violent conflict. Understanding the transformation of a drought room into a war room is not so simple, but years of research and on-the-ground events suggest some very important pathways for climate extremes and human insecurity. Climate-induced environmental change, in particular drought and water scarcity are a major driver of forced migration and displacement. According to a recent report by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), over the past ten years, climate-related disasters have displaced 250 million people worldwide on average 70,000 displacements a day caused by floods, droughts, heatwaves, and slow-onset disasters such as desertification and increasing sea levels. Around three quarters of displaced people are now living in countries that are highly exposed to climate hazards – and often live in fragile political and economic settings. In many instances, conflict and climate hazards are interrelated and overlapping pressures that undermine livelihood and fuel insecurity. Droughts are one of the impactful slow-onset climate events due to the fact that they sneakily undermine the fundamental underpinnings of food and water security. In areas where agriculture is the livelihood of villages, rainfall irregularity and extended periods of dry weather limit crop production and survival of livestock. Horrendously, this was the case in the Horn of Africa, where the worst drought in more than forty years that occurred in Somalia (from 2021-2023) impacted around 7.8 million people, leaving millions of people susceptible to acute food insecurity and displaced more than a million people internally by 2022. In some regions, almost a fifth of the population was for dealing with serious shortages of water and pasturage, forcing families to leave their dwellings in search of food. Drought-induced displacement is not limited by geography and location to East Africa. Across sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East and South Asia, reduced agricultural productivity is caused by rainfall variability and the rise in temperature. In Malawi, for example, drought conditions during the last few years forced 400,000 people to internally relocate in 2023, as farmers and pastoralists increasingly move around in search of arable land and reliable water sources. Such movements typically put pressure on the host communities and vital services and lead to competition for limited resources. Modes of action of climate stressors such as drought contributing to conflict are multifaceted. One popular theory is that it is climate change which escalates pre-existing grievances and thereby makes violent conflict more likely. Extreme environmental events may undermine traditional livelihoods that rely on water and land, lower income opportunities and create food insecurity – all of which can cause discontent. A multi-method study that examined climate-related disasters and the onset of armed conflict showed that in countries experiencing certain conditions such as ethnic exclusion, low human development and large population, the risk for the onset of conflict increased significantly after climate disasters. Such risks are not automatic but highly context-dependent with structural factors determining whether environmental shocks are escalated to violence. Read More: The Sinking Statehouse: Climate Finance and the Geo-economics of Survival in Banjul At the center of the climate-conflict connection is the scarcity of resources. As drought increases the scarcity of freshwater supplies, competition over rivers, aquifers and irrigation rights increases. Historical episodes prove this pattern to be the case. In Darfur, Sudan, the late 20th century long drought and desertification reduced the available pasture and grazing land resulting in increased competition between the sedentary communities dependent on agriculture and the nomadic herders. While the subsequent horrific conflict in Darfur (2003-2005) had many causes, one contributory factor played a significant role in increasing tensions: environmental stress over water and land distribution. Similarly, in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region, people from the Fulani ethnic group have been forced southwards by desertification and drought in northern states into territories occupied by crop farmers, obstructing traditional grazing routes. This change has been blamed for an increase in communal violence between farmers and herders, leading to hundreds of deaths and millions being displaced. These recurring clashes for access to water and grazing land have been shown to be one of the underlying causes of change in climate and land use patterns, according to research. Conflict alone is not the result of climate change but the result in an environment of resources where latent tensions are triggered. The relationship between drought, displacement and conflict also happens through food systems. Droughts mean lower harvests, which lead to food price spikes and a lack of food security. In Yemen, a combination of drought, economic decline and political instability were contributing factors to chronic hunger which was compounded by pre-existing political grievances and contribute to wider conflict dynamics. Although the Yemeni conflict has many causes, climate-related decline in agricultural yields lent itself to putting pressure on households already suffering from conflict-linked blockades and market disruptions. Such compound stressors set up feedback loops in which environmental hazards increase vulnerability and instability. To understand forced displacement, it is necessary to pay attention to the overlap of climate change and violent conflict. The 2024 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) noted that at the end of 2023 the world population living in internal displacement was 75.9 million, out of which 68.3 million were displaced by conflict and violence, and 7.7 million were displaced by disasters including droughts and floods. While displacement caused by disasters has numerically fewer people than displacement due to conflict, many of the people displaced by disasters are experiencing both conflict and climate stressors at the same time, which is becoming more common with climate extremes becoming more frequent and extreme. Scholarship on climate and migration emphasizes the mobilization caused by environmental events in the form of climate-related mobility as a strategy of adaptation. In many rural settings, moving is a short-term risk management tool – sending off younger family members to work in an urban center or moving seasonally to grazing lands. Over time, however, repeated exposure to such things as droughts and crop failures can turn temporary migration into permanent displacement. Climate change as predicted by the World Bank’s “Groundswell” report warns that by 2050 as many as 216 million people could be forced to move within their own countries as a result of climate change if mitigation and adaptation attempts are not successfully implemented. Internal migration that was attributed to slow onset climate impacts such as drought, water scarcity and extreme heat highlights the compounding effect of climate stress on existing social pressures. Read More: How Divergent Foreign Policies Limit Collective Climate Action in South Asia Forced displacement is not a uniform phenomenon in either a cultural or geographic sense. In areas of political exclusion, poor governance and economic inequality, climate stressors raise grievances and make conflict over resources more likely. Research in Uganda, for example, identifies a two pathway process, whereby slow onset climate impacts such as drought threaten livelihoods and cause households to migrate and when new people arrive in resource constrained host communities disputes over land and water can be triggered. In this context, internal migration emerges as a result of climate change and potential cause of localized conflict. In drought-affected areas of Somalia, displacement has been cited in conflicts over access to firewood, pasture and even water points. Displaced women and children who are forced to travel long distances in search of firewood because of depleted local resources are vulnerable, including to gender-based violence. Tensions with pastoralist and farming host communities have resulted in violent encounters and show how climate stressors have the potential to reach the core of social relations and erupt into violence even in the absence of formal armed groups. The intersection of climate change, displacement, and armed conflict is a phenomenon that is not only happening in rural and pastoral areas, but also on national and regional boundaries. Mass displacement as a result of drought-induced hunger and water scarcity causes instability in population dynamics in neighboring regions, strains public services and increases competition for limited resources. In Afghanistan, climate change – including rising temperatures and erratic rainfall combined with conflict – has contributed to the current food insecurity levels and caused internal migration. These movements in turn put further strain on fragile local economies and social networks in host areas and create fertile ground for more unrest and competition. The conflict and climate nexus has also been apparent in the Sahel region of Africa, where recurring droughts, unpredictable rainfall and desertification increase competition over arable land and water. Research in this region indicates some striking patterns of what seems to be a strong link between environmental stressors and increased violence and displacement. In the Sahel, a combination of long-term climate stress and demographic pressures and poor governance contribute to competition between farmers and pastoralists as a contributor to cyclical displacement and recurrent insecurity. Yet, the climate-conflict connection does not seem deterministic and it is not homogeneous in relation to all the cases. Many scholars are at pains to highlight that climate change is a risk multiplier rather than a cause of conflict. The legendary meta-analysis by Hsiang, Burke, and Miguel concluded that climatic factors can have a significant impact on conflict outcomes in that there is a measurable enhancement in certain forms of violence in warmer or wetter climatic conditions, but the effects differ across regions and contexts. Without political grievances, inequality or social fracturing, environmental stress does not necessarily lead to conflict. Other research warns against drawing simple cause and effect conclusions. Halvard Buhaug and his colleagues have argued that although environmental change may be linked to the risk of conflict, enduring structural and political factors – including governance quality, political exclusion and social inequality – are key factors in explaining whether climate shocks become violent. This view focuses more on conditional pathways as opposed to a straight conflict pipeline of climate. Read More: Polycentric Governance and the Future of Climate Finance for Bangladesh Moreover, analyses of specific cases such as the pre-war drought period in Syria suggest that climate alone was not enough to trigger civil war, but instead drought interacted with bad governance, demographic trends and economic distress to compound the grievances which contributed to political unrest. Understanding why drought sometimes causes displacement and conflict, and in other contexts adaptive migration or economic restructuring, requires an appreciation of the social, economic, and political buffers mediating climate effects. Wealthier countries and communities with strong institutions, social safety nets and a diversified economy are more resilient to the climate extremes. When drought strikes such regions, farmers may be offered subsidies, water infrastructure may smooth shortages and safety nets can head off mass displacement. On the other hand, in fragile contexts characterized by poor governance, lack of public services and high poverty, drought adds to the vulnerability that already exists and accelerates the pressures for displacement. The growing frequency of extreme weather in the face of climate change means that the scale of displacement and threat to conflict is likely to increase. Global reports point out the increasing frequency and intensity of climatic factors across many regions of the world, including negative impacts on food systems, water security and human livelihoods. As climate change develops, events that were once considered rare, i.e. years of long drought or heavy heat waves have become the norm, and the possibility of increased climate-induced displacement and even increased conflict risks in vulnerable areas is becoming more prevalent. It is important to recognize these pathways from the point of view of policy responses. Effective adaptation requires that resilience is built among communities most exposed to climate impacts in an integrated way. Investments in water management, drought resilient crops, early warning systems and equitable governance can help to mitigate the immediate pressures driving displacement. In addition, conflict prevention mechanisms to enhance social cohesion and equitable sharing of resources can decrease the risks of climate-linked stressors leading to conflict. International frameworks have come to realize in particular the nexus between climate, displacement and conflict. The IPCC in the last assessment it did, calls attention to the interaction of climate change with socioeconomic factors and geopolitical factors to mold risks to human security, including potential drivers of migration and conflict. Although it stops short of uttering the words causation, the report emphasizes that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that exacerbates existing vulnerabilities and that can play a role in determining the severity and frequency of the outcomes of human insecurity. UNHCR’s work further tells us about how people displaced by conflict are often living in regions highly exposed to climate hazards, further demonstrating the need to have integrated humanitarian and climate adaptation responses. (UNHCR) The concept of displacement itself is changing. While in the past the definition of refugees was centered on violence and persecution, in recent times climate related displacement is growing and is challenging the legal and policy frameworks. Unlike conflict refugees, people displaced by climatic factors mainly usually lack formal international protection status, which makes finding durable solutions to their problems challenging. Some researchers have advocated for extending the legal recognition to climate induced displacement saying that existing categories are not adequate to respond to the magnitude of human mobility due to environmental change. Read More: Global Displacement Reaches 122 million, Says UN Refugee Agency Despite these challenges, migration can also be included in adaptive responses to climate stress. When mobility is planned for and supported it can help increase resilience and ease pressure on overstretched regions. Policies to create safe, orderly and legal migration routes can help populations respond to climate threats, before situations get too bad to achieve humanitarian crises. Such migration, properly managed, can be a way of alleviating competition for resources, of sending home remittances and spreading economic risk. As climate change speeds up, the world community is facing the interconnected challenges of how to reduce environmental degradation and how to prevent the human insecurity and human displacement that it creates. Efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are still needed but adaptation and resilience are also critical. Climate finance must be directed towards vulnerable states and communities, and not just to build infrastructure, but to strengthen social systems to be able to absorb climatic shocks instead of reconfiguring as arenas of conflict. In conclusion, the relationship between drought, displacement and armed conflict is not linear, is not universal, but is real and increasingly consequential. Drought destroys livelihoods, food and water security, and drives migration of people amid search for survival. When these types of pressures interact with deep political divides, inequitable resource distribution, and poor governance, it creates the right conditions for high risk of conflict. Reducing this risk requires a perspective on climate change that goes beyond its nature as an environmental challenge, and recognizes it instead as a question of security for humanity that cuts across the boundaries of development, governance and international humanitarian response. Only an all-round strategy of mitigation, adaptation and social cohesion can help prevent the tragic scenario of a parched landscape being a battleground, or a refugee camp. *The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Diplomatic Insight.