THE idea that global warming will increase the incidence of civil conflict in Africa is wrong, according to a new study. What鈥檚 more, the researchers who previously made the claim now concede that civil conflict has been on the wane in Africa since 2002, as prosperity has increased. If the trend continues, a more peaceful future may be in store.
A link between climate change and conflict was discovered last year, when a team led by of the University of California at Berkeley and of Stanford University, also in California, found a correlation between the incidence of civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa between 1981 and 2002 and spikes in temperature in the countries concerned (New Scientist, 28 November 2009, p 14). They concluded that if temperatures kept rising, the number of conflicts would increase by more than 50 per cent by 2030.
Now of the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway is taking Burke and Lobell to task over the methods and data they used. In particular, Buhaug argues that the researchers鈥 definition of conflict is misleading: they say a civil war has occurred if more than 1000 people died in intra-national conflict in a year. 鈥淭his is an arbitrary threshold,鈥 Buhaug argues. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 better to focus on the onset of violence.鈥
Advertisement
When Buhaug looked at the initial outbreak of hostilities for conflicts in which more than 25 people perished in a year, he could find no significant association with high temperatures (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ). He also points out that the incidence and severity of civil war in African countries has fallen since 2002.
鈥淭he incidence and severity of civil wars in African countries has actually dropped in recent years鈥
The reasons for this are unclear, but between 2003 and 2008, overall GDP in Africa grew at a rate six times as high as in the preceding two decades, while many countries saw greater political stability. This suggests that sub-Saharan Africa may benefit more from economic and political development rather than policies to mitigate climate change.
鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to disentangle this,鈥 says Burke. He and Lobell have reworked their calculations with climate data extending to 2008 and found that the relationship with temperature disappears. 鈥淲e hope there has been a fundamental shift and that our earlier results are wrong.鈥
