"Policymakers and scholars alike would like to know what kinds of environmental changes have what kinds of influences on what kinds of conflict or cooperation," said Thomas Bernauer from the Institute for Environmental Decisions in Zurich. "Our review of existing research demonstrates, however, that there is no consensus in the scientific literature on what the answers to these questions should be."
Bernauer points out that how climate change affects a population is often dependent on the ability of that country to deal with change. Those countries with stable political and economic systems have a greater capacity to help people adapt to change and therefore avoid conflict.
"We did find evidence that there is an increased risk of climate change leading to conflict in the poorer, politically unstable countries," said Bernauer. "But even in these cases, there are a lot of factors that lead to conflict and it is difficult to isolate climate change from all the other factors."
Bernauer and his colleagues say that data gaps, particularly with respect to information on conflicts, environmental problems and environmentally induced migration, are a problem. These data gaps are a key reason why scientific research cannot, at present, identify whether particular types of environmental changes are systematically associated with particular types of conflict or cooperation.
The researchers published their study in Environmental Research Letters (ERL).