Make it a wasteland and call it peace : pathways to climate-aggravated conflicts in post-1990 Africa

This thesis revisits the climate-conflict nexus by examining whether climate change, in conjunction with other structural factors, shapes conflict dynamics during episodes of intrastate violence over scarce resources in post-1990 Africa. Drawing on the rapidly growing literature on the impact of climate change in international relations, I assess whether the adverse effects of climate change exacerbate intrastate conflicts over scarce natural resources. I follow a multi-method approach. I identify cross-country patterns in which climate change interacts with other enabling conditions to produce the outcome of violent outbreaks. I then conduct process tracing to identify the causal mechanism in the typical (Somalia) and deviant (Ethiopia) cases. The results are consistent with previous empirical findings but also underscore how, given the increasing severity of climate change in the least developed regions of the world, efforts to prevent violence must be anchored in a consistent process of institutional capacity building and ethnic inclusion.