Will Climate Change Increase the Risk of Deadly Violence in the Muslim World?

Abstract

Climate change will do more damage to the Muslim world than almost any other place on earth as it threatens to increase the risk of environmentally-induced conflicts in an area of the world that is already afflicted with abject poverty, rapid population growth, food security, shallow water tables, terrorism and state failure. While some wealthier oil-rich Muslim states might be able to afford protection against rising temperatures, resource poor countries will suffer greatly. Given these realities, we can assume at the very least that in a zone stretching from Morocco to Indonesia the probability of conflict will be greater in areas that are a) more impacted by climate change and b) less prepared to cope with the changes. The question is how global warming is likely to influence the risk of deadly violence in a region that is already afflicted with a greater share of the world’s conflicts? While there are a number of drivers of conflict in the Muslim world that can be expected to persist into the future, climate change will only aggravate those drivers and may make things unmanageable in some places.