Volume 4 Issue 2

By Jack Doran, Durham University

Citation

Doran, J. (2024) The climate-conflict nexus: An examination of causality in the threat multiplier discourse of climate and conflict. Routes, 4(2): 114-121.

Abstract

The threat multiplier discourse presents climate change as exacerbating pre-existing conflicts and generating new ones. This discourse is pervasive in both practical and formal geopolitical institutions, including the UN, governments, NGOs and think tanks. This essay examines the threat multiplier’s assumption that climate change is a deterministic driver of conflict and argues that this is a partial and limited representation. Instead, conflict is a relational phenomenon dependent on the interaction of multiple contextual factors in space, as opposed to the climate reductionist causality of the threat multiplier. To combat this, the essay presents assemblage thinking through the example of the Syrian Civil war, as a potential analytic to elucidate the causality of the climate-conflict nexus more clearly.

1. Introduction

This essay argues that the threat multiplier is limited in its presentation of the causality of climate-conflict nexus (the linkages between climate and conflict), by presenting climate change as the deterministic driver of conflict. Threat multiplier discourse states that climate change will exacerbate pre-existing conflicts and generate new ones (German Advisory Council, 2007), presenting climate as an external driving force of future conflict. This presentation obscures the reality of conflict being formed due to the complex interaction of a multiplicity of contextual factors in space (Selby, 2014). Due to the need to consider the relational complexity of conflict causality, this essay proposes assemblage thinking as a potential method of analysis. An assemblage approach focuses on the interactions of spatially specific factors (Dittmer, 2014), allowing the complexity, multiplicity and contextuality of the climate-conflict nexus to be more clearly demonstrated. This essay uses assemblage as a ‘descriptor’ (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011, p.125) to highlight the interactions between factors in the climate-conflict nexus. The following essay draws upon the example of the Syrian Civil war (Selby et al., 2017) to highlight the limitations of the causality presented in the threat multiplier discourse and the strength of an assemblage approach in explaining the climate-conflict nexus.

2. Threat-Multiplier discourse

The threat multiplier discourse is a geopolitical discourse that presents a selective and partial representation of the climate-conflict nexus. As emphasised by critical geopolitics, discourses are partial due to their subjective nature whereby specific institutions and people seek to selectively describe and give meaning to reality (Dalby and Ó Tuathail, 1998). This selectivity leads to the promotion of certain ideas about reality, and the obscuring or exclusion of other alternatives. The basis of the threat multiplier discourse is that climate change will drive future conflicts, as climate change inevitably destabilises social systems and produces conflict (German Advisory Council, 2007).

The threat multiplier discourse is selective in presenting the climate-conflict nexus in terms of what is the threat and what is threatened (McDonald, 2013). Due to this discourse originating in western defence policy planning, the state is positioned as the subject being threatened (Selby and Hoffmann, 2014). Thus, the discourse narrowly defines security as national security focussing on maintaining ‘territorial sovereignty’ (Dalby,2020, p.70), presenting the state as the object of protection. Furthermore, threats are identified in relation to the state, such as a state being destabilised and conflict spilling over from that state into other states (Mason, 2014). This has discursively constructed states such as Niger and Sudan as ‘hotspot’ states that pose a threat due to the intersection of climate risks and other factors that increase their vulnerability (German Advisory Council, 2007, p.3). However, there are alternative conceptions of the climate-conflict nexus that do solely focus on the state. This is such as the human security discourse of the climate-conflict nexus that focusses on the protection of individuals from conflict (Dalby, 2013). This means that the threat multiplier discourse is selective and partial as it prioritises the state and obscures the non-state aspects of the climate-conflict nexus.

The threat multiplier discourse is also selective in the causality that it presents, which considers conflict to be determined by climate. By presenting climate as something that will inevitably drive conflict, the complexity of the climate-conflict nexus is reduced to a simplified climatic explanation (Hulme, 2011). Equally, climate is made external as non-climatic contextual factors such as poor governance or migration are presented as mechanisms through which climate change acts rather than having their own influences (Daoudy, 2021). This results in the threat multiplier discourse being climate reductionist by simplifying conflict to climate causality. This obscures the reality of conflict being contingent on the relational interactions of a multitude of factors, including but not reduced to climatic factors (Dalby, 2020). Climate reductionism is clearly visible in positivist climate conflict research (PCCR) that provides a scientific basis for the threat multiplier. These ‘large n studies’ compare temporal variations in climate and conflict variables in order to infer causality through correlation (Selby, 2014, p.829). PCCR studies have led to predictive statements such as the claim by Burke et al (2009) that a 1º Celsius rise in temperature results in a 4.5% increase in civil war in Africa. As indicated by both the methodology of PCCR studies and the claims made as a result of them, climate has been extracted from the interactions of contextual factors, viewing climate as an external driver of conflict.

However, such climate reductionism ignores the potential mitigating, moderating or accentuating role of spatially specific contextual factors by extracting climate from ‘the matrix of interdependencies that shape human life’ (Hulme, 2011, p.247). This means that non-climatic factors can intervene resulting in the 1º rise of Burke et al (2009) causing a greater or lesser risk of civil war than determined solely by climate. Thus, the threat multiplier discourse obscures the reality of conflict formation by presenting climate as the only driver of future conflict.

3. Climate conflict complexity: the role of assemblages

In contrast, assemblage thinking re-integrates climate into the contextual interactions that produce conflict. Leading to a complex view of causality, that is not reliant on a single fact but the interactions between them (Dittmer, 2014). The working definition of assemblages used in this essay is ‘wholes whose properties emerge from interactions between parts’ (DeLanda,2006, p.10, quoted in Telford, 2020, p.3), though it is acknowledged that there are multiple different definitions. Further, assemblage is used as a ‘descriptor’ to highlight the interactions of the a multitude of heterogenous factors in the climate-conflict nexus (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011, p.125). An assemblage approach has been used to provide more complex understandings of causality in other contexts, such as by McGuirk and Dowling (2009) who use it to indicate that changes in urban environments are based upon multiple interactions rather than neo-liberal policy as a single explanation. The key concept of relations of exteriority focusses on the formation of phenomenon being based upon the interactions between different factors, rather than the properties of a single factor (e.g. 1º Celsius temperature increase) (Dittmer, 2014). Equally, assemblages have ‘no single organising principle’ (Müller, 2015,p.28) meaning that there is no single factor that dictates the assemblage to act in a certain way. This means that an assemblage approach can present a the complex multiple causalities of the climate-conflict nexus.

This essay considers the assemblage approach to be valuable as it attends ‘to the messiness and complexity‘ (Anderson et al., 2012,p.14) of the climate-conflict nexus without having to reply on simplifications. Further, an accurate and complex view of the nexus is important as the climate-conflict nexus is a policy concern (Ince, 2024). This means that the way in which the nexus is conceptualised informs the policies developed and taken. Thus, greater complexity is needed in order for policy to accurately account for the realities of the nexus in a variety of contexts.

4. An assemblage approach to understand the Syrian Civil war (2011)

Using an assemblage approach focuses the analysis of the Syrian conflict on the interactions that formed the conflict (Anderson and McFarlane, 2011). This contrasts with the threat multiplier discourse, that explains the Syrian civil war through a linear pathway of an anthropogenically forced drought (20007-09) producing rural collapse and largescale internal migration from rural to urban areas, contributing to the unrest that precipitated the civil war in 2011 (Gleick, 2014; Kelley et al., 2015).

One of the key interactions was between the drought and the Syrian agricultural system. A drought in 2007-09 with precipitation 35% below the 1961-80 average, interacted with the Syrian agricultural sector producing crop failure that resulted in migration (Selby et al., 2017). The effects of the drought was amplified by the intervening factors of poverty, ground water depletion and poor infrastructure that increased the vulnerability of the Syrian agricultural system (Eklund et al., 2022). In turn, this vulnerability was also driven by the wider ’troubled liberalisation’ of whole Syrian economy, that removed fuel and fertilizer subsidies and increased the cost of fuel by 342% (Selby et al., 2017, p.238).  Informed by the concept of relations of exteriority, the effects of the drought were not the result of the physical properties of the drought (precipitation changes) but due to the interaction between the drought, the agricultural areas, and the wider Syrian economy. Further showing the strength of the assemblage approach, Jordan and Lebanon faced a drought of similar meteorological intensity but no civil war was produced (Hendrix, 2017). Highlighting, the criticality of interactions between spatially specific factors and the meteorological change explains the droughts effects rather than just the climatic change.

Likewise, the social and economic problems that caused the conflict were not just the result of drought but also deeper political and social problems in Syria. Selby et al (2017) highlight that though the drought increased poverty in Syria (especially in the drought affected Northeast) there were already two million people in extreme poverty in 2003-04 before the drought. Likewise, structural inequalities and government practices aggravated food insecurity and poverty (Daoudy,2022). However, the droughts impact on the socio-economic situation cannot be dismissed (Hendrix, 2017), with the drought making the already dire situation of food insecurity more acute (Selby et al., 2017).This highlights the strength of assemblage thinking further, as an explanation of the Syrian Civil war does not rely on a single factor, such as politics or climate, but on the interactions between the factors and the outcome that are produced as a result.

5. Further Research directions

An insertion of assemblage theory into research on the climate-conflict nexus prompts new topics of questioning. One key area could be the role of the local contexts in amplifying or reducing the effects of climate change. This builds upon the focus on interactions that mean that local factors and environments are as important as climate change in driving conflict. Potential topic areas could be the investigation of the interaction between climate change and certain contexts such as post-conflict environments as exemplified by the investigation of Vivekananda et al (2014) in Nepal that examined agricultural and political resilience in relation to climate change and conflict. Equally vulnerable regions such as the Sahel could be useful studies.

Equally, research could investigate the discursive formation of the threat multiplier discourse itself. This could build on Telford’s (2020) study on the formation of a climate-terrorist assemblage by examining the variety of heterogenous actors that produce it and reproduce it. A discursive approach to the threat multiplier may look at the politics of the term and the practices that produce and sustain the discourse. This could equally investigate PCCR studies, both in terms of their influence on the threat multiplier discourse but also on the influence that the discourse has on PCCR studies.

6. Conclusion

In conclusion, the threat multiplier discourse is limited in presenting climate as the sole causal agent of conflict. This is a result of the simplification of the nexus to an external climatic driver that ignores the role of other factors in conflict formation. This obscures the reality of conflict being contingent on the interaction of multiple factors. As, a result of this limitation an assemblage approach is proposed as a potential analytic. Through the focus on interactions, more complex explanations of the climate-conflict nexus are produced. This is exemplified by the Syrian Civil War where the impact of the drought is not explained by precipitation changes but the interaction between those changes and the vulnerable Syrian agricultural system and economy. Equally, the socio-economic pressures producing unrest were the result of the interaction of the drought, existing poverty in Syria and the actions of the government. These more complex causal explanations were more consistent with the reality of the conflict than the explanations of the threat multiplier discourse. Overall, the threat multiplier discourse is limited in explaining the climate-conflict nexus by reducing conflict to climate and that an assemblage approach has been shown to have theoretical and empirical validity in providing more complex explanations.

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