The multifaceted relationship between extreme weather events,
displacement and conflict: New insights from Somalia
Abstract
Extreme weather and migratory events have been topics of great interest
for decades. More recently, a debate has emerged whether the human
impact of climate change can lead to armed conflict, and how conflict
and extreme climate events interact in inducing large-scale
displacement. This paper explores the relationship between conflict and
displacement in the context of droughts and floods across Somalia, a
country in the East Africa region, in which the population has
historically been using migration as coping strategy for the effects of
recurring climatic extremes and socio-economic uncertainties. Since
2015, Somalia has been affected by a humanitarian crisis, paired with
on-going conflict, which subsequently reduced resilience of its
population. Applying panel econometric methods to monthly within-country
migration observations from 18 regions together with spatio-temporal
conflict and weather data, this paper quantifies the impacts of conflict
and extreme weather events on within-country displacement over the
period of 2016 to 2018. It combines and analyses conflict-, drought- and
flood-related displacement data from the UNHCR-led Protection & Return
Monitoring Network (PRMN), disaggregated conflict data from the Armed
Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) with gridded climate
estimate data. Empirical evidence suggests significant interaction
effects between conflict and extreme weather events on migration, where
pre-existing conflict conditions act as accelerators of climate-induced
displacement.