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Climatic disruptions, natural resources, and conflict: the challenges to governance

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Abstract

Natural resources are identified as a significant variable explaining intrastate conflict since the end of the Cold War. There are sound reasons for this to be the case, as social scientists struggle to make sense of conflicts in the post-Cold War era. As climatic disruptions and climate change are predicted to create extreme conditions and adversely affect natural resources accessibility, we wonder whether the capacity of nations to govern their natural resources rent-driven economies is of explanatory value. Hence, we hypothesize that what we have termed the governance capacity curse (GCC) may play an equal or greater role in our understanding of natural resources-driven internal wars than the so-called natural resources curse (NRC).

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Notes

  1. For global assessment, see the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2014) published in 1990 (AR1), 1995 (AR2), 2001 (AR3), 2007 (AR4), and 2014 (AR5). For a national assessment, see also the reports of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) (2014) published in 2000 (NCA1), 2007 (NCA2), 2009 (NCA3), 2014 (NCA4). Although different in scope, they share the analysis of impact by sector and concur: health, water, agriculture, and energy sectors are the most affected, both globally and in the USA. And while NCA’s focus is USA, NCA’s global analysis is extensive due to national strategic reasons, as the authors argue.

  2. See, The New York Times, Climate Change Deemed Growing Security Threat by Military Researches, May 14, 2014. Page A18.

  3. As measured by the work of Kaufmann et al. (2009), governance indicators in 209 countries included: 1. voice and accountability, 2. political instability and violence, 3. government effectiveness, 4. regulatory quality, 5. rule of law, 6. control of corruption. See also, The World Bank, 2008, http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,Print: Y ∼ isCURL:Y ∼ contentMDK:20696276 ∼ pagePK:64214825 ∼ piPK:64214943 ∼ the SitePK:469382,00.html.

  4. We keep aside civil society, as there is evidence of its differentiation from the other two public spheres.

  5. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.TOTL.RT.ZS

  6. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.TOTL.RT.ZS

  7. Recall that perceived corruption data is such that higher values mean less perceived corruption for the country.

  8. Geoffrey Parker: “Lessons from the Little Ice Age,” New York Times Sunday Review. March 22, 2014. Op-Ed.

  9. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html?emc=eta1&_r=0.

  10. Scientific measures had estimated a balancing number of about 350 ppm, (particles per million) a target already missed. See, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html?emc=eta1&_r=0.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Criminology & Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, WI, USA

    Margarita V. Alario & Leda Nath

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Steve Carlton-Ford

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  1. Margarita V. Alario
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  2. Leda Nath
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  3. Steve Carlton-Ford
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Correspondence to Margarita V. Alario.

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Alario, M.V., Nath, L. & Carlton-Ford, S. Climatic disruptions, natural resources, and conflict: the challenges to governance. J Environ Stud Sci 6, 251–259 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-015-0252-x

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