Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/74921 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
LICOS Discussion Paper No. 326
Publisher: 
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, LICOS Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, Leuven
Abstract: 
Climate change leads to more frequent and more intense droughts in Somalia. In a global context, weather shocks have been found to perpetuate poverty and fuel civil conflict. By relating regional and temporal variations in violent conflict outbreaks with drought incidence and severity, we show that this causality is valid also for Somalia at the local level. We find that livestock price shocks drive drought-induced conflicts through reducing the opportunity costs of conflict participation. Our estimation results indicate that a temperature rise of around 3.2 degrees Celsius?corresponding to the median Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario for eastern Africa by the end of the century?would lower cattle prices by about 4 percent and, in turn, increase the incidence of violent conflict by about 58 percent. Hence climate change will further aggravate Somalia's security challenges and calls for decisive action to strengthen both drought and conflict resilience, especially in pastoralist and agropastoralist livelihoods.
Subjects: 
drought
conflict
civil war
livestock
prices
Somalia
Horn of Africa
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
960.3 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.