Rain, Want, and War: Exploring the Conditions Under Which Desertification and Drought-Induced Scarcity Lead to Violent Conflict in the Sahel
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Scholars have postulated that in sub-Saharan Africa, rapid population growth and increasingly frequent drought events induced by climate change may conspire in driving scarcity-based conflicts. Whether or not this actually occurs, and how, are particularly salient questions to answer in order to better predict and prevent such wars, as deleterious shifts in the global climate threaten to complicate and create a variety of social, political, and economic problems. This paper employs the comparative case study method in examining three Sahelian states that have suffered similar levels of drought over the past 60 years, yet varying degrees of conflict, in order to better understand under what conditions scarcity results in violence in the region. The cases, selected for their similarity in a variety of macro-level factors, are analyzed individually using elements of process tracing, and the findings are synthesized in the concluding chapter. Ultimately, this study finds that scarcity can be a strong factor contributing to the outbreak and perpetuation of conflict in these states, but has never led to organized and widespread fighting where few elements of conflict had previously existed. It is particularly when the political consequences of drought compound preexisting grievances in an environment of strong ethnic affiliation, with few religious and geographic cross-cutting cleavages, that there is the potential for drought-induced scarcity to drive war. The paper concludes by calling for a departure away from studying the climate-conflict nexus through the lens of large-n statistical studies seeking generalizable theories, which disregard local nuances that are critical to understanding a country’s individual circumstances and trajectory.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 2018 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Blaisdell, Jackson Thomas |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Blacker, Coit D. |
Subjects
| Subject | Center for International Security and Cooperation |
|---|---|
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Blaisdell, Jackson Thomas. (2018). Rain, Want, and War: Exploring the Conditions Under Which Desertification and Drought-Induced Scarcity Lead to Violent Conflict in the Sahel. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/ss064wx4163
Collection
Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, Theses
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- Contact
- jblaisde@stanford.edu
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