Climate Change Impact on Gender

Political Geography 26 (2007) 639e655 www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

Climate change, human security and violent conflict
Jon Barnett a,*, W. Neil Adger b
School of Social and Environmental Enquiry, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia b Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and CSERGE, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK a Abstract Climate change is increasingly been called a ‘security’ problem, and there has been speculation that climate change may increase the risk of violent conflict. This paper integrates three disparate but wellfounded bodies of research e on the vulnerability of local places and social groups to climate change, on livelihoods and violent conflict, and the role of the state in development and peacemaking, to offer new insights into the relationships between climate change, human security, and violent conflict. It explains that climate change increasingly undermines human security in the present day, and will increasingly do so in the future, by reducing access to, and the quality of, natural resources that are important to sustain livelihoods. Climate change is also likely to undermine the capacity of states to provide the opportunities and services that help people to sustain their livelihoods. We argue that in certain circumstances these direct and indirect impacts of climate change on human security may in turn increase the risk of violent conflict. The paper then outlines the broad contours of a research programme to guide empirical investigations into the risks climate change poses to human security and peace. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Climate change; Human security; Violent conflict; state functions

Introduction There is now a significant body of research that demonstrates that climate change is and will increasingly have dramatic impacts on ecological and social systems (summarised in IPCC, 2001, 2007). The risks are such that the aim of the

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