Climatic Conditions and Internal Armed Conflict: An Empirical Study

While climatic conditions are believed to have some influence on triggering conflicts, the existing empirical results on the nature and statistical significance of their explanatory role are not conclusive. We construct a dataset for a sample of 139 countries which records the occurrence of an armed conflict, the annual average temperature and precipitation levels as well as the relevant socio-economic, demographic and geographic measures over the 1961-2011 period. Using this dataset and controlling for the effect of relevant non-climate variables, our regression analyses support the significant explanatory role of climatic factors. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that climate warming is instrumental in raising the probability of onset of internal armed conflicts and suggest that, along with regulating population size and promoting political stability, controlling climate change is one of the most effective factors for inducing peace by way of curtailing the onset of armed conflicts.