Drought, Resilience, and Support for Violence: Household Survey Evidence from DR Congo

• DOI: 10.1177/0022002720923400
• Author: Julius Jackson,Nina von Uexkull,Marco d’Errico
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Drought, Resilience,

and Support for

Violence: Household

Survey Evidence from

DR Congo

Nina von Uexkull

1,2

, Marco d’Errico

3

,

and Julius Jackson

4

Abstract

The effects of climate variability and change on security are debated. While this topic

has received considerable attention in both policy circles and academia, the

microlevel pathways and conditions under which climatic shocks increase conflict

risks are poorly understood. We suggest that household resilience provides one key

to understanding these relationships. Using novel household survey data from two

conflict-affected regions in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, we study

variation in the support for violence related to reported exposure to drought and

resilience metrics. Using comprehensive multifaceted objective and subjective

indicators of resilience, we find that less resilient respondents who report having

experienced drought and associated losses are more likely to be supportive of the

use of political violence. In contrast, our findings suggest that there is no general

association between reporting drought exposure and support for violence.

1

Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Sweden

2

Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway

3

Resilience Index and Measurement Analysis Team, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy

4

Conflict and Peace Analysis Unit, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),

Rome, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Nina von Uexkull, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Box 514, SE-75120

Uppsala, Sweden.

Email: nina.von_uexkull@pcr.uu.se

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2020, Vol. 64(10) 1994-2021

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0022002720923400

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Keywords

natural disasters, resource extraction, resilience, climate change, civil wars, internal

armed conflict, DR Congo

Concerns about the security implications of climate change are growing, and United

Nations Security Council members and the European Union have called for action to

address the climate–security nexus (Fetzek and van Schaik 2018). However, the

burgeoning academic literature on climate and internal armed conflict suggests that

linkages are more indirect and complex (Mach et al. 2019; Busby 2018). Recent

empirical work made important advances in identifying under what circumstances

security implications are more likely to be expected. Overall, existing research

points to climate-related increases in conflict risks in specific vulnerable contexts

characterized by ongoing conflicts, political marginalization, and economic reliance

on agriculture (Koubi 2019).

Yet, there are still important gaps in understanding causal mechanisms and

microlevel variation (cf. Mach et al. 2019). Armed conflict is a rare phenomenon.

Although there are regions where many structural risk factors concur, taking up arms

should not be the default, and not even a frequent, response to a climate-related

hazard. Even in the most violent wars, active participation in fighting tends to be

confined to a rather limited share of the local population (Cunningham, Gleditsch,

and Salehyan 2013). Structural indicators pointing to high-risk areas or countries are

therefore insufficient to guide interventions that require a more fine-grained under-

standing of variations in communities and individuals at risk.

Addressing this lacuna, we suggest that accounting for household resilience as a

multidimensional characteristic will allow us to better u nderstand the drivers of

participation in violence in a high-risk context following climate-induced shocks.

In order to assess the merit of this argument, we use survey data of a representative

sample of 1,724 households in Rutshuru and Masisi Territories in the North Kivu

province of Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and study individual-level

variation in support for the use of political violence. Our findings indicate that less

resilient respondents, based on objective and subjective indicators of resilience, are

more likely to be supportive of political violence when they report having been

exposed to drought, while there is no consistent general direct link between reported

drought shocks and attitudes to violence. By focusing on North Kivu, where both

food insecurity and violence are widespread, we provide uniqu e insights on the

variation of the individual propensity to use political violence in a situation of

protracted violent conflict. Reviews of recent research suggest that convenience and

accessibility have shaped the geographic focus of research on climate–conflict rela-

tionships (Hendrix 2017). Knowledge from this kind of protracted crisis is thus not

only important from a policy perspective but also fills important empirical knowl-

edge gaps in the scientific literature.

Uexkull et al. 1995