The missing link: How does climate affect human conflict and cooperation through water?
Description: During recent years, our understanding of how climate affects society has advanced greatly. In particular, a vigorous scientific debate on the role of climate in conflict has taken place. Despite advances in finding appropriate ways to study this link, research has so far overlooked a key pathway for societal effects of climate: water on land. Surface waters directly influence human society in many ways that could affect both conflict and cooperation, including resource availability, energy production, and infrastructure risk. This project will combine advanced econometric methods with a water model to separate human modifications of water flows from the remaining background climate signal in water variations. In this way, we will be able to understand how naturalized climate-dependent water flows govern societal responses. We intend to first investigate this pathway for the world’s c. 300 transboundary river basins, and then in finer detail study the effects over a suite of other political and physical entities. In the end, this project will pioneer a new research approach to estimate the societal effects of climate through water, eventually enabling a better-informed foundation for policy decisions on adaptation to climate change.
Funder: Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas
Amount: SEK 2,999,000
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Project grant
Start date: 2018-01-01
End date: 2020-12-31
Investigator: Zahra Kalantari (lead)
Institution: Stockholm University
Funded outputs count: 27
Funder award ID: 2017-00608
OpenAlex ID: G577352602