Publication: The Climate Change and Conflict Nexus in West Africa: A New Approach for Operationally Relevant Vulnerability Assessments
Files in English
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Other Files
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Date
2023-03-21
ISSN
Published
2023-03-21
Author(s)
World Bank
Abstract
This report advances usable knowledge
on how climate change and conflict interact in the region.
Its findings contribute to a growing body of research
examining the links between climate change and conflict
outcomes. Its objective is twofold: first, to strengthen the
evidence base on the relationship between climate change and
socio-institutional fragility, violence, and conflict in
West Africa; and second, to develop operationally relevant
vulnerability data to enable clustering of locations with
similar sources of vulnerability (in terms of exposure,
sensitivity, and adaptive capacity) to climate and conflict
risks. In doing so, the report breaks substantial new
ground. It explicitly represents the spatial distribution of
climate-related conflict vulnerability and its association
with a range of biophysical, social, and economic factors.
It identifies the associations between different climate
drivers and conflict outcomes and develops a predictive
model based on machine learning to assess the extent to
which climate-related variables can predict conflict
outcomes. It also uses a set of in-depth case studies to
examine the potential mechanisms that may mediate the
climate change and conflict relationship. Finally, the
report highlights why and how specific locations are
vulnerable to climate and conflict risks, rather than
mapping levels of climate change and conflict vulnerability
across space as most existing vulnerability indices
typically do. In each of these ways, the report provides
useful information to design, evaluate, and assess the
operational effectiveness of projects that address climate
and conflict-related vulnerability.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2023. The Climate Change and Conflict Nexus in West Africa: A New Approach for Operationally Relevant Vulnerability Assessments. © Washington DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39564 License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.”