Climate, Food, and Conflict

Cary Fowler has a provocative piece up in HuffPo: "Avoiding a Global Food Fight".  He draws on three studies linking past changes in climate and weather to increased incidents of conflict, in Africa and in Europe. Notably, these studies are not new, nor were they without controversy when they were released - the study linking climate to conflict in Africa was fairly effectively rebutted in a PNAS article saying "Climate not to blame for African Civil Wars".

Geoff Dablelko's New Security Beat blog had a great break-down of how the media and advocacy organizations react to these arguments among the scientific community in a post titled "Climate Security Linkages Lost in Translation".

The effect is that the media bounces from one side to the other, reporting the controversy more than they report the science.  Advocacy organizations, like Fowler's Global Crop Diversity Trust, seize on the results of the studies that fit their preferred policy options, while ignoring those that could refute them. I don't want to pick on Fowler alone - all advocacy organizations are like this, and arguably politicians are probably worse - they seem to make their decisions, and then go looking for support after.

The truth is that the link between climate change and security is complex, but clear. Fowler was correct to link the the CNA's report on climate change and security from 2007.  But, he should also have looked beyond that to all the research on climate change and security since then.  I would direct him to my old blog, climatesecurity.blogspot.com for more detail on the links between national security and climate change.