Climate change and conflict: Making sense of disparate findings

This introduction to the special issues starts with a general overview of the literature. The relationship between climate, climate change, and conflict has been empirically tested in a wide variety of studies, but the literature has yet to converge on a commonly accepted set of results. This is mainly due to poor conceptualization of research designs and empirical measurements. Data are often collected at different temporal, geographic, and social scales. In addition, “climate” and “conflict” are rather elusive concepts and scholars have utilized different measures of each. The choice of measures and empirical tests is not a trivial one, but reflects different theoretical frameworks for understanding environmental influences on conflict. Therefore, results from different analyses are often not commensurable with one another and readers should be wary of broad, sweeping characterizations of the literature. The individual contributions to the special issue are also discussed. Articles herein focus on different geographic regions, temporal periods, and levels of conflict, adding additional layers of complexity to our understanding of the climate/conflict nexus.