Combined Spatial Analysis of Climate Change and Ethnic Conflict in Africa

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  • February 26, 2019
Creator
  • Irby, Paul
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science
Abstract
  • Climate change is anticipated by many to impact nearly every aspect of society in some way in the coming century. A potential to jeopardize security, especially in underdeveloped countries, is a claim commonly accepted by intelligence and security organizations but hotly debated in a growing body of scholarly literature. This study builds upon spatial methodology used in previous studies, and attempts to bridge outcomes to environmental and social context in a sample of 10 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa. The relationship between temperature change, precipitation variation from normal, ethnopolitical marginalization, and the existence of conflict was analyzed using disaggregated spatial and statistical methods, under the hypothesis that climate variation will correlate positively with conflict especially when it occurs in areas with marginalized people. The study finds some support for this hypothesis, indicating positive relationships with varying predictive strength among temperature and marginalization, but statistically insignificant results for precipitation. Logistic regression gave coefficients of 0.11 for temperature change (°C), and 0.31 for marginalization when conducted on the entire sample. The study finds that the impact of all independent variables varies dramatically based on geography, and more useful results are returned by dividing the area into geographically and climatically similar groupings. These results moderately support claims that climate change will increase conflicts due to temperature but not for precipitation, but stress the importance of localized analysis and the peril of oversimplification.
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Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Note
  • Funding: None
Advisor
  • Crescenzi, Mark J. C.
Degree
  • Bachelor of Arts
Academic concentration
  • Political Science
Honors level
  • Honors
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2017
Language
  • English
Date uploaded
  • April 27, 2017

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