When, in late 2013, ISIS recruiters first targeted the Tharthar area of central Iraq, they arrived with a grimly effective plan in hand. They went for some of the most drought-battered villagers, conscious of how hard they would find it to resist the cash. They made some of the most forceful pitches to those whose small fields looked extra pitiful after consecutive years of weak rains and fiercer heat. Aware of the depth of distrust of government after so many years of conflict, recruiters even got adept at casting these conditions as a product of state action. That drought? One villager remembered an ISIS member telling him that it was because of government scientists' manipulation of the weather, just another immiserating middle finger from authorities out to get them.
ISIS varied its tactics elsewhere in Iraq and Syria. Sometimes, they preyed on the most shabbily dressed men at livestock markets. On other occasions, they doled out gifts of food and cash just as harvests failed. However, in focusing on farming communities, they were brutally consistent. The more water-deprived the village, the more they visited it. The poorer the farmers, the more relentless their pressure.
As I ultimately concluded after years of groundwork, ideas might have jump-started the group, but it was climate-related disorder that padded its ranks and helped turn it into the thousand-strong force it soon fielded.
I’ve spent more than a decade reporting on the links between climate and conflict. And working out of umpteen countries and conflict zones, I've come to see that there are increasingly few forms of violence that don't have some sort of climate angle.
Take piracy in coastal Bangladesh. These pirate crews are making a killing from kidnapping fishermen who are sailing in ever-greater numbers into their lairs. Many of these fishermen are ex-farmers who’ve lost their lands to rising seas and then felt they had no choice but to seek an alternative living out on the water, the dangers be damned.
Then, there are the clashes between farmers and herders across Africa's Sahel. Unsurprisingly, nothing good is coming from having more people with rival needs competing for shrinking resources across a poorly governed landscape that is less and less capable of providing them consistently.
Even within Western countries, certain forms of violence appear to be rising in line with temperature. According to research that colleagues and I are conducting in Greece, the hotter the summer temperatures, the greater the risk of women being attacked. The examples are just coming thicker and faster.
Now, no one is claiming that this violence or any other is down to climate change alone. The relationship between the two is as inexact and as dependent on context as the impacts of climate change in general. And it’s almost always intermingling with other drivers of instability, such as inequality or corruption.
But we have a few, often generalizable rules. For one, climate change throws fuel on already smoldering fires. If you have pre-existing conflict, deep divisions across society and unresponsive institutions, then these stresses are extra liable to spark violence.
For another, climate change eats away at the supports that we as individuals, communities and nation-states turn to in times of crisis. For example, having lost many of their leading citizens to migration, many communities now lack the wise old heads needed to keep the peace when tougher times come.
Most importantly, climate change can just be a bridge too far, the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back for many communities that are already up to their eyeballs with trials of a different nature. It's depressing, isn't it? This is a planet that needs no more violence, and here’s the potential for an awful lot more of it.
But there is room for optimism. Every bit of stifled warming means fewer people exposed to dangerous, possibly violent, triggering conditions. Every dollar dedicated to well-conceived and effectively implemented adaptation means more people with the tools to keep that peace when those tougher times come.
Ultimately, if you're not motivated by melting ice caps, I'm sure you'll be motivated by not being shot. As faint a hopeful note as it might initially sound, the grand reality is that most of this remains in our hands.
Thank you.
