Let it rain? : assessing the effects of rainfall variability on violent conflict

This thesis has explored the potential effects of rainfall variability on violent conflict in Sub Saharan Africa. As climate change is beginning to manifest itself throughout the world, Sub Saharan Africa is particularly vulnerable to this due to pre – existing environmental and socio economic challenges. Climate change is noticed through increasing temperatures, but also through more extreme weather and changing precipitation patterns. Rain fed agriculture is of high importance to livelihood, food production and the economy, hence changes in rainfall patterns could have severe consequences, both environmental ones and social ones. Theoretically it is assumed that when interplaying with other factors, environmental changes can, in ultimate instance spur conflict. Empirically, however, this link has yet to be unambiguously supported by literature. Arguing that more focus is needed on the damaging effects of excessive rainfall, several regression analyses are preformed to shed light on this issue. The data applied stems from various sources, and offers a more complex measure of the various sides of rainfall variability than do most previous studies. While interesting trends regarding the theoretical arguments are found in the analyses, all in all the empirical evidence is consistent with those of several similar studies; no robust support for the hypotheses is found