The social dimensions of climate change

Abstract

Many high-profi le individuals, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and policy reports have put forward alarmist claims about the enormous impacts that environmental change in general, and climate change in par- ticular, will have on humanity. For example, a report from Christian Aid (2007) claims that an estimated 1 billion migrants between now and 2050 might “de-stabilise whole regions where increasingly desperate populations compete for dwindling food and water” (p. 2); and Homer-Dixon (2007) argues that “climate change will help produce [...] insurgencies, genocide, guerrilla attacks, gang warfare, and global terrorism.” More dramatic still, a Pentagon report sketches scenarios of epic proportions, including the risk of reverting to a Hobbesian state of nature whereby humanity would be engaged in “constant battles for diminishing resources” (Schwartz and Randall 2003, p. 16). The Stern Review (Stern 2006) and the fourth assessment report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Cli- mate Change (Parry et al. 2007) are much more cautious in their refer- ences to confl ict, but warn against potentially dire societal consequences of climate change. In stark contrast to such assessments, the empirical foundation for a general relationship between resource scarcity and armed confl ict is indica- tive, at best; and numerous questions are unanswered regarding the pro- posed causal association between climate change and confl ict. Although we cannot rule out the possibility that there is no general link between the two, major limitations in data and research designs make such a conclu- sion premature. In addition, the many processes associated with global 76 • SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE warming, which truly have started to appear only over the past 15 years, have occurred during a time when we have witnessed a dramatic reduction in the frequency and severity of armed confl ict. In this chapter, we fi rst dis- cuss trends in global climate change as well as in armed confl ict. Then we look at arguments put forward as links between resource scarcity or climate change and armed confl ict. Factors such as political and economic instabil- ity, inequality, poverty, social fragmentation, migration, and inappropriate responses are discussed. Third, we review and criticize the empirical litera- ture. We conclude that our current knowledge is too limited for specifi c policy recommendations, and that considerable improvement is needed in both theory and testing to strengthen our knowledge of the fi eld.