Climate change has been linked to a variety of problems across the globe, but new research suggests it may even play a role in the development of human conflicts.
Researchers believe the drought that occurred in Syria between 2006 and 2010 was linked to man-made climate change, and helped fuel the 2011 Syrian uprising, the Earth Institute at Columbia University reported. The conflict has now evolved into a multinational war that has taken at least 200,000 lives. The drought (which was the worst in recorded history for the region) forced dispossessed farmers off their land and into cities, where the uprisings began.
"We're not saying the drought caused the war," said Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who coauthored the study. "We're saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region."
The recent findings combined climate, social and economic data, in what may be the first close look at the link between changes in climate and social unrest. The drought primarily affected the Fertile Crescent, which has seen warming of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the year 1900 as well as a significant reduction in wet-season precipitation. The changes are in line with models of human-influenced global warming, and are not believed to be attributed to natural variability.
Syria was believed to be particularly vulnerable to the recent droughts because of extreme population growth that jumped from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. The al-Assad family also encouraged farmers to grow export crops that required large amounts of water, such as cotton. Once the drought hit the country's gross domestic product, dropped by a third. This caused cereal prices to shoot up and nutrition-related diseases among children to skyrocket. During this time at least 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to urban regions.
"There were many things going on in the region and world at that time, such as high global food prices and the beginning of the Arab Spring, that could have also increased the likelihood of civil conflict. [But the study is] consistent with a large body of statistical evidence linking changes in climate to conflict," said Marshall Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University who studies climate and agriculture.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
