Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict

Severe droughts, damaging floods and mass migration: Climate change is becoming a focal point for security and conflict research and a challenge for the world’s governance structures. But how severe are the security risks and conflict potentials of climate change? Could global warming trigger a sequence of events leading to economic decline, social unrest and political instability? What are the causal relationships between resource scarcity and violent conflict? This book brings together international experts to explore these questions using in-depth case studies from around the world. Furthermore, the authors discuss strategies, institutions and cooperative approaches to stabilize the climate-society interaction.

Jurgen Scheffran is professor and head of the research group Climate Change and Security at the Institute for Geography and the KlimaCampus Excellence Initiative of Hamburg University. He held positions at Marburg University, Technical University of Darmstadt, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Michael Brzoska is professor at the University of Hamburg and director of the Institute of Peace Research and Security Policy. He erlier had positions at the Bonn International Center for Conversion and the Stockholm Peace Research Institute working on issues related to conflict, security and disarmament. Hans Gunter Brauch is adjunct professor (PD) in international relations at the Free University of Berlin; chairman, Peace Research and European Security Studies (AFES-PRESS; senior fellow at UNU-EHS in Bonn and the lead editor of the Hexagon Book Series. He was guest professor at Frankfurt, Erfurt, Leipzig and Greifswald University. Peter Michael Link is a postdoctoral scientist at the research group Climate change and Security at the Institute for Geography and the KlimaCampus Excellence Initiative of Hamburg University. He has worked on the economic impacts of climate change with an emphasis on marine resources and aspects of land use change. Janpeter Schilling is a research associate and PhD student in the research group Climate Change and Security at the Institute for Geography and in the KlimaCampus Excellence Initiative of Hamburg University. In the course of his studies he focused on different aspects related to climate change.