Climatic Stress, Internal Migration, and Syrian Civil War Onset
Name
syriadrought_jcr_ashobradovich.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
390.13 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
96ae75aa315c1036813cc245f1a3de8b
Author(s)
Ash, Konstantin
Obradovich, Nick
Date Issued
July 25, 2019
Journal
Journal of Conflict Resolution
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Citation
Ash, K., & Obradovich, N. (2019). Climatic Stress, Internal Migration, and Syrian Civil War Onset. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 64(1), 3-31.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Syria recently suffered a once in 500-year meteorological drought followed by one of the worst conflicts of the twenty-first century. We exploit subnational variation in drought impact to examine associations between climatic stress and Syria’s political unrest. Climatic stress may produce instability through both immediate hardship and, indirectly, internal migration. Consistent with the internal migration hypothesis, we find less severely drought-stricken Syrian regions more likely to experience protest. We employ nighttime lights as a proxy for population density to examine the association between climatic stress and internal displacement. We find climatic stress decreased nighttime light intensity during the drought period. Increases in nighttime lights from 2005 to 2010 are associated with added risk of protest in Sunni Arab areas, suggesting an influx of migrants bolstered local grievances. Our findings support the internal migration hypothesis and suggest extreme climate events may impact civil unrest via geographically and temporally indirect paths.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002719864140
