Local sources of vulnerability to climate change and armed conflicts in East Africa

While socioeconomic and institutional factors are crucial in explaining the onset and evolution of conflicts, recent research suggests that climate change is a further indirect driver acting as a “threat multiplier”. This paper focuses on the concept of vulnerability to both climate change and conflicts to explain why some locations are more likely to engage in armed conflicts than others in the presence of a similar level of exposure to climatic changes. In particular, by means of a Spatial Autoregressive Model, we identify a set of local-specific vulnerability factors that increase conflict risk in East Africa. We employ a georeferenced database with a resolution of 25 × 25 km, covering the period 1997–2016. Results from our analysis provide some interesting insights: first, climate change does not increase conflict risk per se, but only in the presence of pre-existing vulnerabilities. Second, resource access and socioeconomic factors play a key role in driving the climate-conflict nexus especially in urban areas. In particular, vulnerability is increased whenever power is not distributed in such a way as to ensure an equitable distribution of resources. Overall, our findings suggest that, by addressing vulnerability factors that prevent adaptive capacity and an equitable distribution of resources, societies may benefit in terms of both diminished conflict risk and alleviation of climate change impacts.