By analyzing more than 500 conflicts that have occurred since 1950, American researchers have discovered that, if climatic anomalies do not directly trigger wars, they can aggravate the economic, political or social difficulties already existing in certain regions of the world.
Major climatic oscillations, such as El Niño or the Indian Ocean dipole, could play a much more important role than estimated in armed conflicts. This is what reveals a study carried out by researchers at Rice University (United States), published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For several years, this team of eight scientists put together an unprecedented set of data, listing more than 500 beginnings of civil conflicts and wars occurring between 1950 and 2023, to understand whether certain climatic phenomena increased the risks of conflagration and violence. “We wanted to understand whether the risk of armed conflict is linked to these climatic variations and whether the risk of local conflict is proportional to the influence of these variations on the local climate,” explains Tyler Bagwell, one of the authors. With this approach, he and his colleagues mainly wanted to identify the regions of the world where meteorological upheavals make societies more fragile and more exposed to political or social tensions.
“Aggravating” factors
Their research focused on two climatic phenomena. The first is El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO), whose impacts are felt well beyond the South Pacific, and the second is the Indian Ocean Dipole (DOI or IOD), less publicized but very influential around East Africa and South-East Asia. “Extremes of ENSO and IOD are each associated with distinct, often opposing, local climate impacts,” notes Tyler Bagwell. As some regions become drier, others receive more rain. “By exploiting these differential impacts, we then established statistical correlations. between the place and date of armed conflicts, the El Niño or La Niña phase of ENSO and the dry or wet impacts suffered by the societies concerned,” continues the scientist. The study shows in particular that violence increases in the regions hit by drought during the passage of El Niño. “The global risk of armed conflict is higher during El Niño than during La Niña,” the scientists note. Conversely, in regions where the “enfant terrible of the climate” brings rain, the authors found “no credible link” with an increase in conflicts. the idea that lack of water, agricultural losses and pressure on food resources can become aggravating factors in countries already economically or politically vulnerable.
A “threat multiplier”
Unlike ENSO, where only one phase (El Niño) appears associated with increased risk, the two phases of the Indian Ocean dipole both appear associated with the emergence of conflicts, particularly in the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia. “It’s a very different scheme. The Indian Ocean dipole operates on shorter time scales and can evolve rapidly, creating brutal climatic variations likely to destabilize already vulnerable regions,” summarizes Professor Sylvia Dee, who considers it to be a “threat multiplier”. Even if the authors point out that the climate does not directly cause wars, they believe that certain climatic models do indeed modify the probabilities of them occurring. Since El Niño or the Indian Ocean Dipole can be predicted several months in advance, the researchers hope that their study will be used to improve warning systems and humanitarian preparedness in the corners of the world concerned.
