Do spatial interactions fuel the climate-conflict vicious cycle? The case of the African continent
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Do spatial interactions fuel the climate-conflict vicious cycle? The case of the African continent Federica Cappelli1 • Caterina Conigliani1 • Valeria Costantini1,2 • Keti Lelo1 • Anil Markandya3 • Elena Paglialunga4 • Giorgia Sforna5 Received: 8 January 2020 / Accepted: 28 October 2020 / Published online: 17 November 2020 The Author(s) 2020
Abstract We propose an analysis of the multiple linkages between violent conflicts, weatherrelated variables and socio-economic conditions based on an original geo-referenced database covering the entire African continent with a grid resolution of 1 9 1 for the period 1990–2016. We implement a dynamic spatial panel Durbin model that allows us: (1) confirming well-known mechanisms in violent conflicts analysis; (2) assessing the relevance of persistency of violence over time; (3) adding new insights related to the role of spatial relations associated to contagion. In particular, the spatial specification allows us quantifying the contagious effect across space, that persists in a radius of more than 300 km. Weather-related variables seem to play a prominent role in shaping contagion with different strength depending on the temporal horizon adopted. The main implications we derive are twofold: (1) adaptation policies designed for reducing vulnerability of local communities to climate change must be integrated with direct actions for peacekeeping in order to break the persistency of violence over time that is responsible for failures of the adaptation actions themselves; (2) synergies from simultaneous actions developed for different local communities must drive geographical coordination of integrated policies in order to capture the positive elements of cooperation associated to geographical spillovers while breaking violence contagion across neighbours. Keywords Climate change Violent conflicts Africa Geographical spillovers Dynamic panel spatial Durbin model
JEL Classification D74 O13 O55 Q54
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s43071020-00007-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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1 Introduction Armed conflicts wreak disorder on economies and have devastating effects on development. According to Gates et al. (2012), about a quarter of the population of the developing world lives in conflict and post-conflict countries. During last decades, African countries have especially experienced many conflicts and civil wars. In addition, the continent also suffers from the challenges of poverty, limited education and health systems, food insecurity and, last but not least, the negative impacts of severe changes in climate conditions. Although climate change is a global threat, developing countries (DCs) and especially the African ones suffer the most due to their greater vulnerability to climatic factors
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