Climate change and armed conflicts in Africa: temporal persistence, non-linear climate impact and geographical spillovers

The paper focuses on the nexus between climate change and armed conflicts with an empirical analysis based on a panel of 2653 georeferenced cells for the African continent between 1990 and 2016. Our econometric approach addresses unobservable heterogeneity in predicting the probability of violent events and the persistency of conflicting behaviour over time. The proposed strategy also accounts for both changes in climatic conditions and spatial dynamics. The two main findings carry policy-relevant implications. First, changes in climatic conditions influence the probability of conflicts over large spatial ranges, thus suggesting that the design of adaptation policies to reduce climate vulnerability should account for multiple spatial interrelations. Second, the persistency of violence calls for planning adaptation strategies for climate resilience jointly designed with measures in support of peacekeeping.VC acknowledges financial support from the Italian Ministry of University and Research, Scientific Research Program of National Relevance (PRIN) 2017, project “Innovation for global challenges in a connected world: the role of local resources and socio-economic conditions”. DC acknowledges financial support from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2020-119096RB-I00/MCIN/ AEI /https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033)