Drought and Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa

Mathieu Couttenier and Raphael Soubeyran

Working Papers from LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier

Abstract: We show that civil war is strongly related to drought in sub-Saharan Africa. We consider the e ect of variations in the Palmer Drought Severity Index (Palmer 1965) - a cumulative index that combines precipitation, temperature and the local characteristics of the soil - on the risk of civil war. While the recent, contentious debate on the link between climate and civil war has mainly focused on precipitation and temperature, without obtaining converging results, the Palmer index describes social exposure to water stress in a more ecient way. We show that it is a key factor of civil war in sub-Saharan Africa and that this result is robust to various speci cations and passes a series of sensitivity tests. Also, our results indicate that agriculture, ethnic diversity and institutional quality are important factors to link climate and civil war.

Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2010-10, Revised 2012-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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http://www.lameta.univ-montp1.fr/Documents/DR2010-13.pdf Revised version, 2012 (application/pdf)
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Related works:
Journal Article: Drought and Civil War In Sub‐Saharan Africa (2014)
Journal Article: Drought and civil war in sub-Saharan Africa (2013)
Working Paper: Drought and Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa (2011)
Working Paper: Drought and Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa (2011)
Working Paper: Drought and Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa (2011)
Working Paper: Drought and Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa (2011)
Working Paper: Drought and Civil War in Sub-Saharan Africa (2010)
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