Violence is a global phenomenon, requiring consideration across various spatial and temporal scales. It operates within frameworks ranging from the global and planetary scale to individual and personal dimensions, encompassing regional levels such as Europe and the Middle East, as well as national and local ones. It emerges from both immediate, current events, and processes that unfold over the long term.

There are a wide range of approaches to understanding violence. To start, I would like to emphasise a crucial point: violence often erupts as a result of a failure in political or institutional handling of the underlying issues it reveals. This holds true for numerous forms of violence. For instance, in many cases of domestic or familial abuse, when no one intervenes to prevent a man from harming his wife or children. It also applies when an institution silences  acts of violence committed within its walls, until the the truth is eventually exposed, as seen with the worldwide cases of child abuse within the Catholic Church. It is similarly true in politics, when there is no mediation to encourage adversaries to negotiate, discuss and reach agreements in order to find compromises. This is particularly evident during transitions from war to peace when there is a lack of mediators. I will not dwell further on the concept of violence itself, although it is important to keep this in mind, as it is at the core of my reflections on climate change, prompted by a recent question from Dr. Adel Bakawan:  does climate change generate violence, and if so, how?

Often, the answer to this question is too simplistic, as it makes two questionable assumptions. The first is that climate change creates such unbearable living conditions that it directly causes mass emigration. This influx is perceived as an invasion by the host societies, who consequently refuse these migrants’ arrival. Violence can then result either from the migrants themselves or from the populations who feel invaded, or as a result of interactions between the two that can degenerate when they meet. In journalist Stephen Smith's  book, La Ruée vers l'Europe (Grasset, 2018), he suggests that there are various push factors influencing Africans to migrate to Europe, one of which is climate change. However, migrations due to climate change do not necessarily follow considerable distances. In general, according to serious demographic studies, these movements occur mainly on relatively small scales. Moreover, when they are directly caused by extreme climatic events such as cataclysmic rainfall or rising sea levels in flood-prone areas, their scope is often even more limited.

A second simple idea, which is also highly contestable, is that global warming directly causes wars. Here too, the idea of a direct, cause-and-effect process with no intermediary cannot be sustained. Hugues Tertrais, one of France’s leading geopolitical specialists, suggested in his book Les Guerres du climat. Contre-enquête sur un mythe moderne (CNRS éditions, 2016) that none of the wars of the last 50 years can be explained by global warming, at least not directly. He explains: "The thesis that climate change causes war  is hardly serious. It is primarily political and human factors that are the key to finding the causes of wars". However, this does not hinder us from persisting in asking if climate change generates violence, and if so, how? For example, COP 28, in December 2023, was the first United Nations conference to organise a thematic day dedicated to peace, thus establishing  a connection between war and climate change. This statement is reasonable, provided we avoid assuming that there is a direct correlation between the two.

So should we answer Dr. Bakawan’s question in the negative, and say that global warming has no impact on violence? Certainly not. However, it is important to note that there is no direct relationship between migration and war. To understand the nuances, we need to analyse real and concrete facts.

According to the report in La Vie magazine (21 December 2021),  a research team chose to gather a vast array of mega-data on crimes committed in the province of Karnataka in south-west India, over a period of six years. It found that a 1% increase in average temperatures corresponds to a proportional rise in the level of violence. This demonstrates that the climate crisis is eroding the very foundations of our ability to live together. The recent experience of the city of Acapulco in Mexico with Hurricane Otis on October 25, 2023 could also be taken as an example. It devastated the city, leaving almost  eighty people dead or missing and led to lootings and deadly settlements of scores, particularly between members of drug cartels. The disaster significantly exacerbated crime and delinquency during that period. 

However, there are also cases where the impact is direct, or nearly so. One of the most astonishing, and well-documented examples concerns violence against women. This issue is systematically addressed in numerous studies, and at various national and international meetings. During the Cities for Human Rights Forum in South Korea, it was demonstrated that climate change creates a context of heightened vulnerability for women. In times of drought, cyclones and floods, for instance, women are often tasked, more so than men, with fetching clean drinking water or other vital resources from afar, exposing them to rape and sexual violence. This phenomenon can also take on a collective, organised form. According to the Red Cross, human trafficking for sexual exploitation, not just individual sexual violence, increased in Laos and the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. Experts also note that instances of domestic and sexual violence are more frequent during extreme weather events accompanied by the temporary absence of the rule law. Natural disasters exacerbated by climate change, as we have seen in Malawi and Bangladesh during cyclones, can lead to an increase in forced marriages for very young girls, as there is often an economic strategy behind it, allowing families to reduce their expenses in situations where essential resources are scarce. 

Beyond violence experienced by women, the question can be posed on a spatial scale, regarding large cities, when they suddenly have to accommodate waves of migrants in the context of a climate disaster, and on the other hand in rural areas, when drought reduces access to water and generates or exacerbates serious land tensions.

In Africa particularly, but not exclusively, large cities may see major influxes of migrants fleeing areas ravaged by climatic disasters. In these cities, such surges generate both tensions and strain local institutions. Existing infrastructure is often not designed to welcome them, which can lead to epidemics and overwhelm healthcare systems.  Violent events and aggression may also arise. In 2018, the consulting firm, Verisk Maplecroft, in collaboration with the United Nations, released a Climate Change Vulnerability Index, which indicates that more than two-thirds of African cities are vulnerable due to the effects of global warming, such as Bangui, Monrovia, Kinshasa, Lagos, Dar es Salaam, Luanda, etc. It classifies 79 capital cities under the category of “extreme risk”, conveying a massive increase in the urban population in Africa. Since the beginning of the 21st century, migration has increased by over 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone. 

In these contexts, violence takes on various forms whether it is conventional crime, riots, inter-ethnic violence or violence targeting women. When severe weather disturbances occur, such as  heavy rainfall or sudden storms, cities hosting large numbers of migrants are often deficient in the organisation of their infrastructure. Similarly, climate change, when it affects wheat and cereal markets caused by drought, leads to massive price increases in some  years; one cannot understand the anti-Mubarak riots in Egypt without considering this dimension.

The case of the countryside and rural areas also deserves to be analysed. The climate crisis may exacerbate recurrent conflicts between farmers and herders due to resource scarcity such as fodder and water points. The rise  in communal violence may therefore be caused by, or at least be related to, access to grazing land, forests, fresh water and natural resource management practices. Climate change does not create instability, but it does intensify it. For instance, at COP28, the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, said that many of his compatriots had been displaced by fighting over water.

The experience of Syria also invites us to reflect on the complexity of the processes at hand. From 2007 to 2012, the country experienced a severe drought, leading to a decrease  in arable land and devastation in livestock. According to the UNDP, 75% of farms reportedly went bankrupt between 2006 and 2011. Consequently, many people found themselves in a situation of insecurity, and many of them migrated as a result, primarily to the west of the country, between 2009 and early 2011. However, upon arrival, they found inadequate infrastructure, because it was undersized, and few local or national institutions to welcome them properly. For this reason, many believed that they could entrust their fate to mosques and Islamic charitable organisations. This has created space for Salafist movements and radical Islam. Some observers have also noted a link between climate change and the rise of radical Islam in other regions, such as Cameroon and the whole of the Lake Chad Basin, where the recent increase in extremist organisations' fighters coincides with worsening of extreme weather conditions. In relative terms, droughts and floods in Iraq may have played into the hands of the Islamic State, alongside with other political and economic factors.

Given these considerations, a clear line of reasoning emerges. Rising sea levels, extreme weather-related disasters, droughts and desertification, floods and landslides can jeopardise the carrying capacity of a city, or even a country, leading to instability, insecurity and poverty. These events disrupt agriculture, worsening inequalities and thereby contributing to the creation of conditions conducive to violence. Climate change creates multiple vulnerabilities and aggravates existing tensions. Locally, it creates or reinforces various forms of dispossession and inequality, and even if it does not lead to migration, it weakens the capacity of local institutions to manage their communities to take action and address the needs of the population.

Moreover, climate change exacerbates violence in situations where it already exists, such as war, as highlighted by the Red Cross for many years. Additionally, it can weaken fragile states when they are severely affected. According to a Red Cross report, of the 20 countries considered most vulnerable to climate change, 12 are mired in armed conflict. This indicates that there comes a time when armed violence and climate change become inextricably linked - "Climate disruption is a crisis amplifier and multiplier", as United Nations Secretary General António Guterres put it. 

Max Weber famously argued that the State holds a monopoly on legitimate physical violence. To put it another way, the state is the only entity theoretically allowed to use force. However, if the state fails to uphold this monopoly, other actors - criminal organisations, political factions or religious extremists - will not hesitate to use violence themselves. 

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I can now return to my starting point. Violence is often the opposite of institutionalised conflict. It represents a rupture, an inability or refusal to engage in dialogue, to recognize the humanity of those it targets, to see them as Subjects capable of understanding the subjectivity of others. Climate change does not necessarily lead directly to violence, whether in the form of war, riots or organised or unorganised crime, but it does create favourable conditions by destroying or weakening the mediations between human beings and the institutions that organise collective life, whether at local, national or even regional levels. This is why, if we want to avoid, or minimise, the violence driven by climate change, we need local, national and international institutions to be strengthened, and for debate and institutionalised conflict to find their place, with players who have a certain capacity for negotiation, but also real legitimacy.

To conclude, we must not forget that war and violence contribute to global warming - as we can see from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine -. The relationship between these two factors - violence and climate change - operates in both directions. This can only encourage us to seek peace, prioritising the settlement and therefore the negotiated handling of disputes.

The CFRI does not take collective positions. Its publications only represent the views of their individual authors.

To cite this article : Michel Wieviorka, "Violence and climate change", Centre Français de recherche sur l'Irak (CFRI), 16/03/2024, [https://cfri-irak.com/en/article/violence-and-climate-change-2024-05-16]