Climate Change and the Risk of Mass Violence: Africa in the 21st Century

Climate change is often related to various adverse effects, among those endangering food security and raising the risk of conflict. But empirical evidence is rather inconclusive so far, particularly about its relationship to (mass) violence. In this letter, we provide a brief review of studies explaining connections between climate change and mass violence and discuss strategies how to properly address the issue in the future, focussing on sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) and climate effects on agricultural production. We conclude that we need better explanations of indirect effects, especially those moderated by the socio-economic systems, and a better understanding of endogeneity issues, especially of shifts in transmission. Hence, a particularly promising direction of research especially for SSA is addressing a combination of agricultural and institutional vulnerabilities.