Conditions and Mechanisms Linking Climate Change to Violent Conflict
Seminar/Forum
Empirical evidence of the effect of climate change on violent conflict is growing but continues to be mixed and thus generally unsatisfactory from an analytical point of view. While there is agreement of the need to explore the ways in which environmental consequences of climate change influence conflict patterns, efforts to deal with the context and complexity of the linkage remain mostly ad hoc, focusing either on structural conditions for violent conflict or the dynamic analysis of the mechanisms at work in the processes leading to outbreaks of violence. Both approaches have merits and limitations, for ex post explanations as well as future projections of the consequences of climate change for violent conflict and the possibility to shape the linkage through policy interventions. Combinations of structural conditions and process mechanisms are promising but need to be tailored to specific research questions.
The presentation will present suggestions for combinations of conditions and mechanisms on various levels of abstraction focusing on the disaster- migration – armed conflict nexus and the options for policy interventions influencing the linkages.
Presenter
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Professor Michael Brzoska , Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of HamburgProfessor Michael Brzoska
Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg
Michael Brzoska is senior fellow at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Germany, after directing the institute for 10 years. He holds degrees in both economics and political sciences. His research has primarily focused on economic aspects of peace, conflict, armaments and disarmament, with prior positions at the Bonn International Center for Conversion and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. For more than a decade now he has attempted to link this research with work on the consequences of climatechange, including as a Principal Investigator at the Center of Excellence for Integrated Climate Change Research at the University of Hamburg.