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[P-38] Extreme weather, displacement, and conflict: New insights from Somalia

*Christian Webersik^1,2,3, Lisa Thalheimer⁴, Felix Pretis⁵, Simon Abele⁶, Friederike E. L. Otto⁴ (1. University of Agder, Norway, 2. Centre for Integrated Emergency Management (CIEM), Norway, 3. Disaster Research Unit, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, 4. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, UK, 5. Department of Economics, University of Victoria, Canada, 6. School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, UK)

Keywords:Climate change, Drought, Conflict, Migration, Somalia

Throughout history, populations in environmentally challenging regions such as Somalia have developed means for adapting to the harsh physical and climatic conditions, including population mobility. Anthropogenic climate change is predicted to alter these dynamics, potentially trapping people. With the East African drought in 2011, Somalia has suffered from prolonged drought and armed conflict conditions, and an on-going humanitarian crisis. Political conflict has hindered humanitarian access to mitigate the effects of recent droughts. Even though climate change may increase the drought risk in Somalia, insecurity and armed conflict are likely to remain leading causes of food shortages and irregular migration incidences. In the context of climate change, the questions arise: When do climatic change-impacts and resource problems lead to conflicts and how does this create incentives for migration? The starting point of this poster is the recent debate as to whether and to what extent climatic variability of rainfall and temperature interconnect with conflict and fragility. Overall, we present a case for migration as an intermediary and bidirectional causal variable. We use monthly regional data on displacement, conflict and climate to explore intermediary factors of the 2016 - 2018 climate conflicts in Somalia. We argue that close attention needs to be paid to regional manifestations of conflict and (mal)adaptive forms of population movements to understand the effects of climate change on conflict and society in Somalia.