Schleussner Carl-Friedrich, Donges Jonathan F, Donner Reik V, Schellnhuber Hans Joachim
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 14473 Potsdam, Germany; Climate Analytics, 10969 Berlin, Germany; Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems, Humboldt University, 10099 Berlin, Germany;
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 14473 Potsdam, Germany; Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, 114 19 Stockholm, Sweden;
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Aug 16;113(33):9216-21. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1601611113. Epub 2016 Jul 25.
Social and political tensions keep on fueling armed conflicts around the world. Although each conflict is the result of an individual context-specific mixture of interconnected factors, ethnicity appears to play a prominent and almost ubiquitous role in many of them. This overall state of affairs is likely to be exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change and in particular climate-related natural disasters. Ethnic divides might serve as predetermined conflict lines in case of rapidly emerging societal tensions arising from disruptive events like natural disasters. Here, we hypothesize that climate-related disaster occurrence enhances armed-conflict outbreak risk in ethnically fractionalized countries. Using event coincidence analysis, we test this hypothesis based on data on armed-conflict outbreaks and climate-related natural disasters for the period 1980-2010. Globally, we find a coincidence rate of 9% regarding armed-conflict outbreak and disaster occurrence such as heat waves or droughts. Our analysis also reveals that, during the period in question, about 23% of conflict outbreaks in ethnically highly fractionalized countries robustly coincide with climatic calamities. Although we do not report evidence that climate-related disasters act as direct triggers of armed conflicts, the disruptive nature of these events seems to play out in ethnically fractionalized societies in a particularly tragic way. This observation has important implications for future security policies as several of the world's most conflict-prone regions, including North and Central Africa as well as Central Asia, are both exceptionally vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change and characterized by deep ethnic divides.
社会和政治紧张局势不断加剧世界各地的武装冲突。尽管每场冲突都是由相互关联的因素构成的特定背景下的个体组合所导致的，但种族因素在其中许多冲突中似乎都扮演着突出且几乎普遍存在的角色。人为气候变化，尤其是与气候相关的自然灾害，可能会加剧这种总体状况。在因自然灾害等破坏性事件迅速引发社会紧张局势的情况下，种族分歧可能成为预先确定的冲突线。在此，我们假设与气候相关的灾害发生会增加种族分裂国家爆发武装冲突的风险。利用事件巧合分析，我们基于1980 - 2010年期间武装冲突爆发和与气候相关的自然灾害的数据来检验这一假设。在全球范围内，我们发现武装冲突爆发与诸如热浪或干旱等灾害发生的巧合率为9%。我们的分析还表明，在所述时期内，种族高度分裂国家中约23%的冲突爆发与气候灾难密切相关。尽管我们没有报告证据表明与气候相关的灾害是武装冲突的直接触发因素，但这些事件的破坏性在种族分裂的社会中似乎以一种特别悲惨的方式显现出来。这一观察结果对未来的安全政策具有重要意义，因为世界上一些冲突最频发的地区，包括北非、中非以及中亚，既特别容易受到人为气候变化的影响，又存在深刻的种族分歧。
