The Paradox of Drought: Driver of Peace and Conflict

Current academic literature remains divided on the relationship between climate change and conflicts. This research will apply theories of state failure and state exploitation to test if droughts have an impact on the number of conflicts. A balanced dataset on Africa, the continent most susceptible to environmental degradation, is compiled by means of geospatial analysis. This dataset spans from 1997 to 2018. The results obtained via econometric analysis showed different findings based on the model applied. The fixed effects model was found to be most appropriate one for testing the relationship between drought and conflict; it found no significant effect. Neither the severity of drought, nor the range of climatic events, were found to be valid predictors of conflict. However, by excluding country-specificity under the pooled OLS model, a significant positive relationship could be found.