As India experiences its worst drought in 140 years, Indian farmers have taken to the streets. At a protest in Madhya Pradesh this summer, police opened fire on farmers demanding debt relief and better crop prices, killing five. In Tamil Nadu, angry growers have held similar protests and lit candles in remembrance of those killed.
At one rally in New Delhi, farmers carried human skulls, which they said belonged to farmers who have committed suicide following devastating crop losses over the past six months.
According to a recent study by Tamma Carleton of the University of California, Berkeley, suicides among Indian farmers have increased with the temperature, such that an increase of 1?C above the average temperature on a given day is associated with approximately 70 additional suicides, on average.
Illustration: Lance Liu
Beyond exposing failed farming policies, this year’s drought-fueled turmoil also underscores the threat that climate change poses not just to India, but to all countries. As global temperatures rise and droughts become more common, political agitation, social unrest and even violence will likely follow.
In 2008, when severe weather cut into the world’s grain supply and drove up food prices, countries ranging from Morocco to Indonesia experienced social and political upheavals. More recently, food insecurity has been used as a weapon in the wars in Yemen and Syria.
According to the Center for Climate and Security, failure to address such “climate-driven risks” could lead to increased fighting over water, food, energy and land, particularly in already unstable regions. The center identifies 12 “epicenters” where climate change might ignite or exacerbate conflicts that could engulf large populations and spill across national borders.
It is no coincidence that conflicts proliferate alongside rising temperatures. A 2013 study estimated that interpersonal violence rises by 4 percent, and intergroup conflicts by 14 percent, “for each one standard deviation change in climate toward warmer temperatures or more extreme rainfall.”
Psychological studies have shown that when people are subjected to uncomfortably hot temperatures, they show increased levels of aggression. And new research is finding that what is true for the individual also holds true for populations.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, researchers have found a strong correlation between three decades of rising temperatures and outbreaks of civil war. If warming trends continue, civil wars and other conflicts will become more common in Africa, the South China Sea, the Arctic, Central America and elsewhere.
Avoiding such outcomes will require renewed support for multilateral treaties such as the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which has been weakened by the withdrawal of the US. It will also require increased engagement by countries, cities and industries on three key areas: resource management, disaster mitigation and migration.
In largely agricultural societies, farm productivity affects the entire economy. As we have seen in the Horn of Africa and India this year, changes in temperature and rainfall can reduce crop yields and thus rural incomes. Under such conditions, and in the absence of other economic opportunities, communities may resort to violence as they compete for food and scarce resources.
International aid organizations, working with governments, should go beyond addressing the immediate causes of poverty to also develop long-term strategies for helping agricultural communities survive bad harvests. Such strategies should focus on arable-land management and water conservation, among other areas.
Additionally, new strategies are needed to coordinate disaster relief efforts. As the climate changes, weather-related calamities such as floods, hurricanes, landslides and typhoons will increase in frequency, intensity and duration, undermining individual livelihoods and the broader economy.
Governments must work together to mitigate these risks and to respond forcefully to disasters when they happen. Otherwise, the fallout will disproportionately hurt poor and vulnerable communities, perpetuating the cycle of poverty and violence.
Finally, we need better policies for managing human migration, much of it related to severe weather and droughts. In 2015, the number of international migrants reached a record high of 244 million. As the climate shifts, entire regions could become uninhabitable, and many more people will be uprooted.
Parts of the Middle East, for example, could become too hot for humans by the end of this century, and heavily populated cities such as New Delhi could experience temperatures more than 35?C up to 200 days of the year.
The International Organization for Migration fears that as more people flee the heat, the concentration of humanity into smaller spaces will have an unprecedented impact on local “coping capacity.”
Scientists agree that climate change poses a grave danger to the planet. However, for some reason, politicians and government officials have not connected the dots between a changing climate and human conflicts.
Among the many threats associated with climate change, deteriorating global security might be the most frightening of all.
It is bad enough to see farmers carrying skulls through the streets of India. However, if we do not get serious about climate-driven security risks, we could see far worse.
Gulrez Shah Azhar is an Aspen New Voices fellow, an assistant policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and a doctoral candidate at Pardee RAND Graduate School.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under