How Does Climate Change Impact Armed Conflict and Societal Collapse?

Climate change has unfortunately been considered an existential threat throughout the majority of my lifetime. I have heard the threats of doom that climate change is expected to cause, as I am sure the majority of my generation has. However, growing up in the Roots and Shoots program, I could never understand how the warming of the planet would herald the end of life as we know it. Roots and Shoots is a program that was founded in 1991 by primatologist Jane Goodall. The program works to unite students in the fight for environmental conservation and humanitarianism. It was in my after school Roots and Shoots classes that I was first taught about the increasing temperatures of the Earth, and what this trend could mean for the future of humanity. Climate change does not only impact weather patterns or increase global temperatures–alarming evidence shows that it can impact rates of armed conflict and societal collapse as well. 

Climate change has never been the sole cause of conflict–to say that it is would be undermining the very real violence and government abuse that triggers civil war and societal collapse–but it has impacted societal tensions in both historical and moderns civilizations. Climate change is known as a "threat multiplier," meaning that it amplifies the issues that a society faces. Essentially, climate change can increase the possibility of conflict by affecting the distribution of natural resources and the health of a population, but only if these factors are already at risk in a certain region. The increased tension that environmental changes create can hasten societal collapse or heighten the risk of armed conflict.  

El Castillo, Maya Temple of Kukulcan. (Source) 

Imagine it is 250 to 900 CE: The Ancient Maya civilization thrives in its Classic Period. The systems of astronomy, the calendar, and hieroglyphic writing are being created as the Maya prosper in their "golden age." So what could have happened in order to cause the widespread societal collapse of an empire of more than 40 cities, each with populations between 5,000 and 50,000 people? The answer is, in part, climate change and the Maya's inability to adapt to the altered weather patterns they experienced. The true cause if the collapse of the Maya civilization is unknown–the conclusions that archaeologists and scientists have come to are only hypotheses based on scientific data at this point, as no written records of the cause of the collapse have been recovered. And the word "collapse" may be too strong: Not all Maya cities fell, and the descendants of surviving Mayans still populate Mesoamerica today. 

However, data gathered from an investigation into the layers of minerals dissolved into the Yucatán's Lake Chichancanab have provided researchers with evidence to support that the fall of the Mayans was caused not only by shifting trade routes and warfare, but also environmental degradation and periods of extended drought. Lake Chichancanab contains gypsum, a soft sulfate mineral that typically would have dissolved into the lake's water. However, as the lake shrunk due to drought, gypsum in its water became saturated, causing the mineral to collect in solid form along the lake's bed. Gypsum is a hydrous mineral, which means that it contains two water molecules within its crystalline structure. When the gypsum was then deposited in solid form onto the lake bed, several hydrogen and oxygen atoms were taken with it. Oxygen has several different isotopes, of which the lightest is Oxygen-16. Because of this, Oxygen-16 evaporates more quickly than its heavier counterparts, Oxygen-17 and Oxygen-18. This process is the same for Hydrogen's isotopes. 

During severe droughts, Lake Chichancanab would have been subject to increased rates of evaporation, causing it to become enriched with higher levels of heavier isotopes. And judging from the samples of sediment cores taken from the lake, researchers were able to analyze approximately when periods of drought occurred. As shown in the image below, a dense layering of cream colored gypsum crystals indicates a period of increased evaporation caused by drought. Because of this, researchers determined that from 750 to 1050 CE, droughts had plagued the region that the Maya inhabited. During the most severe droughts, isotope ratio analyses in the layers of gypsum suggest that rainfall in the area was only 50% of that its pre-drought level had been. 

Gypsum levels in the strata of Lake Chichancanab. (Source)

The drought periods amplified the effects of environmental issues that the agriculture-based Mayan society had already created: The Maya cut down vast expanses of forestland, and diverted naturally flowing water sources into reservoirs, consuming too much of the water that became a precious resource during the droughts. And without access to water, farmers and inhabitants of rural settlements were forced to move into the city, only to be met with increased societal tension, famine, and disease. The combination of the human-driven deforestation of Maya territory, as well as the sharply increasing population rates is theorized to have contributed to the tensions within the Maya empire that led to the abandonment of so many cities, culminating in its mysterious "collapse." Climate change by itself may not have brought about the collapse of the Maya. But the effects it had on Maya society certainly could have. It is interesting to note that because of the data we have that emphasizes the relationship between drought severity and human driven deforestation during the Maya empire, climate change has been caused by humans for centuries. Some aspects of climate change are natural: for example, Mesoamerica has been known to suffer from droughts during the dry seasons of the year. However, the increasing severity of the droughts that the Maya faced was unprecedented, and indicates that Maya activity and environmental degradation actually led to the environmental disaster that decimated such a large proportion of their empire. Climate change played a similar role in the downfall of the Khmer and Akkadian empires as well. To investigate the ways in which climate change exacerbates conflicts within a society, we will have to look at a more recent example. 

Dry ground in Sonora, Mexico. (Source)

Climate change did not only affect ancient civilizations such as the Maya. Rates of armed conflict and civil war have increased since WWII. In 2003, rebel groups in the Darfur region of Sudan revolted against the Al-Bashir regime, which favored Arabs in the area over other ethnic groups. The resulting conflict is known as the Darfur Conflict, or the Land Cruiser War. In the decades leading up to the war, the Sahara Desert had advanced toward the south by nearly a mile a year. Coupled with the annual decrease in rain in the region, this process is referred to as desertification. A drought in the region also forced pastoralists, a group consisting mainly of Arabs, onto the land of agriculturalists, mainly Black Africans. As a result of both drought and desertification, pastoralists and agriculturalists were forced to compete for natural resources, including food and water. The cause of the conflict, however, was multifaceted: along with the environmental impacts of desertification, the ethnic cleansing of Black Africans in Darfur by government backed groups such as the Janjaweed, and other political and ethnic rivalries accelerated the rate of violence in the region. 

Desertification and the death of livestock in Darfur. (Source)

Widespread farming, cattle grazing, and deforestation in Darfur have all contributed to the rise of desertification. The environmental degradation in the region can be largely attributed to humans, meaning that the impact on the environment is anthropogenic. A 2011 study published by the United States Geological Service found that rainfall in western and southern Sudan had decreased by 10-20% since the mid 1970s. And this drop in rainfall was even more pronounced in the region of Darfur, having decreased by 30%. In Sudan, a country whose economy is dominated by agriculture, resource scarcity due to desertification displaced a large number of the inhabitants of Darfur. As a result, the displacement of refugees in the area of Northern Africa and the Middle East can be linked to anthropogenic climate degradation. The refugee crisis further escalated the political conflict that had already plagued the region, as a result of apartheid and human rights violations. The Darfur Conflict became violent in 2003, after the Sudanese government shut down the protests of Black African rebel groups, who had challenged the Al-Bashir regime's disregard for its non-Arab population amidst a season of severe drought. 

Graph detailing the connection between displacement and drought severity. (Source)

However, the relationship between climate change and conflict is not one sided. Armed conflict and war can also increase environmental degradation in war zones. For example, the deforestation of large expanses of woods often occurs in order to harvest resources during wars. In fact, the typically marshy region of Basra in Iraq can trace its struggles with water scarcity to the deforestation that occurred during the Iran-Iraq War. Furthermore, the destruction of structures such as industrial facilities or oil installations can release large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Carbon emissions also increase during times of war and armed conflict as a result of the machinery that is utilized. 

One of the ports to the city of Basra, Iraq. (Source)

It is highly important to recognize that, when discussing climate change as a threat multiplier, armed conflict and societal collapse are never caused solely by environmental changes. Similarly to the way that natural selection is not an engineer that can produce desirable adaptations in a population, climate change does not initiate conflict. However, it does exacerbate already existing tensions leading to conflict. Conflict is nuanced, and attributing its causes simply to climate change can ignore the fact that government abuse or deficient public resource regulation are typically the more major causes. 

Although climate change acts only as a threat multiplier, it is extremely important that we are able to recognize the negative effects it has on societal tension, and the correlation between environmental degradation and armed conflict. As the effects of climate change continue to worsen in future decades, it can only be assumed that rates of conflict will increase as well. Climate change has impacted rates of armed conflict and societal collapse in the past. But it does not have to continue to do that to the same degree that is has previously. As much as I enjoy researching topics of environmentalism and climate change, there is definitely an overwhelming sense of helplessness when faced with the enormity of the climate issue. Organizations such as Roots and Shoots advocate for increased education about climate change and environmentalism in schools. Students now are the future of the environmentalism movement. So being able to educate them about the disastrous effects of climate change in past conflicts could prove to be very helpful in the future fight for environmentalism.