Climate change and armed conflicts in Africa: temporal persistence, non-linear climate impact and geographical spillovers

The paper focuses on the nexus between climate change and armed conflicts with an empirical analysis based on a panel of 2653 georeferenced cells for the African continent between 1990 and 2016. Our econometric approach addresses unobservable heterogeneity in predicting the probability of violent ev...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Cappelli, Federica, Conigliani, Caterina, Consoli, Davide, Costantini, Valeria, Paglialunga, Elena
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2023
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/337902
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/337902
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Africa
Armed conficts
Climate change
Geographical spillovers
Spatial econometrics
Description
Summary:The paper focuses on the nexus between climate change and armed conflicts with an empirical analysis based on a panel of 2653 georeferenced cells for the African continent between 1990 and 2016. Our econometric approach addresses unobservable heterogeneity in predicting the probability of violent events and the persistency of conflicting behaviour over time. The proposed strategy also accounts for both changes in climatic conditions and spatial dynamics. The two main findings carry policy-relevant implications. First, changes in climatic conditions influence the probability of conflicts over large spatial ranges, thus suggesting that the design of adaptation policies to reduce climate vulnerability should account for multiple spatial interrelations. Second, the persistency of violence calls for planning adaptation strategies for climate resilience jointly designed with measures in support of peacekeeping.