It has long been accepted that tales of a dystopian future have only a limited impact when attempting to encourage the sacrifices necessary to avoid further global warming. For that reason, most effort has been concentrated on convincing people that, courtesy of a changing climate, they already live in a dystopian present. Every severe weather event is reported upon with the added message that this was caused by climate change and that you can expect even worse in the future. This strategy is so well-established and has been so successful that very few people now even attempt to challenge the narrative.

No doubt emboldened by this success, climate activists have added a new storyline to the mix. If a heightened risk of future human conflict can be attributed to climate change, does it not follow that existing conflicts are at least partially the consequence of the changes we have experienced thus far? And if we can lay the blame of a recent war on climate change, surely that can only add to the credibility of those who warn of even worse conflict to come.

Climate and conflict

There has certainly been no shortage of serious thinking into the national and international security risks that may accompany a warming planet. Take, for example, the US Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis, in which it is stated:

To keep the nation secure, we must tackle the existential threat of climate change. The unprecedented scale of wildfires, floods, droughts, typhoons, and other extreme weather events of recent months and years have damaged our installations and bases, constrained force readiness and operations, and contributed to instability around the world.

It is the last point regarding increased global instability that has particularly focused minds. For example, an increased risk of droughts and floods is deemed to lead to increased competition for scarce natural resources resulting in “heightened social and political tensions, an increase in migration, conflict and/or competitors using instability to expand influence.” These may be plausible future scenarios, but it remains the case that future scenarios are simply a matter of conjecture and speculation. The important question is whether or not this is already happening. If someone were able to point to an existing, significant conflict that has its origins in climate change, we would indeed be justified in treating the matter with a great deal more urgency. Which, of course, is why the Syrian war crops up so often whenever this topic is discussed.

A showcase war

As far as Australia’s think tank, Breakthrough — National Centre for Climate Restoration, is concerned there is no doubt that climate change provided the catalyst for this conflict. In a document titled, ‘Disaster Alley: Climate Change Conflict and Risk’, Ian Dunlop and David Spratt write:

From 2006-2010, 60% of Syria had its worst long-term drought and crop failures since civilisation began. 800,000 people in rural areas had lost their livelihood by 2009. More than two million people were driven into extreme poverty, and 1.5 million people migrated to cities. The cities grew very rapidly, as did food and housing prices. The Syrian regime was unable to safeguard the people and protect their way of life, resulting in social breakdown, state failure, the rise of Islamic State and foreign military intervention. Global and regional climatic changes were major underlying causes and continued to exacerbate this already explosive situation.

That’s a pretty good yarn that I can imagine would impress any casual reader – except for one critical detail. The severity of the drought is being described here in terms of its human impact, and yet a drought is a climatic event, the scale of which must be defined in purely climatic terms, i.e. how temperature increases and precipitation affected soil moisture levels. If we stick to such measures, was the 2006-2010 drought the worst since civilisation began? Because if the drought wasn’t nearly as unprecedented as portrayed, that would mean that climate change may have played no role whatsoever. Could it be instead that the outcome was due almost entirely to vulnerabilities brought on by political and infrastructural failures?

To answer those questions we shouldn’t be taking our advice from a couple of pundits who have no in-depth knowledge of Middle Eastern history or politics. We should instead be consulting a domain expert, such as Marwa Daoudy, Associate Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service (SFS) and the Seif Ghobash Chair in Arab Studies at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), previously a lecturer at Oxford University in the department of Politics and International Relations, a fellow of Oxford’s Middle East Center at St Antony’s College and a visiting scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Unlike many of the West’s armchair experts peddling their climate change narrative, Daoudy ensured that she gained her insights from first-hand authorities:

I analysed official records as well as debates between domestic experts engaged in 2005–2010 within the Syrian Association for Economic Sciences – the powerful voices of insiders often disregarded by foreign analysts in discussions about Syria. I also carried out interviews with local experts, refugees, activists and dissidents under conditions of anonymity.

Having gained a deep understanding of the issues, she then wrote up her analysis in an article whose title says it all: ‘The Syrian Revolution: A Story of Politics, not Climate Change’.

The political perspective

To set the scene, Daoudy acknowledges the role that the Syrian conflict has in the minds of many analysts:

Academic and policy debates have conflated the drivers of climate change and conflict, warning policymakers about the violent effects of drought, famine and migration. As Syria’s 2011 Arab Spring uprisings devolved into conflict following brutal repression by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the country became a showcase for ‘climate-induced’ displacement and unrest.

But she then asks the question that should have been on everyone’s mind:

To some, climate change caused a major drought in Syria from 2006–2010; the drought caused agricultural failure in the country’s breadbasket region in the northeast; and agricultural failure caused poverty, migration and discontent – ultimately culminating in the uprisings. Yet droughts have plagued the country for decades. Why 2011 and not before?

Indeed, as she goes on to explain, the 2006-2010 drought was far from unique:

A longitudinal analysis shows that the environmental effects of the 1998–2001 drought (Drought I) were more severe than the 2006–2010 drought (Drought II). During Drought I, temperatures increased by a yearly average of 5.07%, impacting soil moisture levels. Drought II only averaged a 3.93% temperature increase from pre-drought years. A similar discrepancy is reflected when comparing the variability and mean of precipitation levels between the two droughts. The second drought’s larger impact on food and water insecurity must therefore be traced as a function of political and economic factors.

Contrary to the popular storyline, her research paints a picture of structural inequalities and governmental incompetence:

First, my research shows the combined effects of climate change, drought and massive migration by rural communities in northeast Syria did not produce the protests. Unemployed farmers – the biggest casualties of the drought – were not the instigators of the 2011 uprisings. Second, the seeds of discontent were planted by unsustainable government practices and structural inequalities, which aggravated poverty and food insecurity.

The picture is quite complex, and so a full understanding requires that Dauody’s article be consulted. However, in brief, the problems were caused by a botched political transition between Ba’athist socialism and a new social market economy:

The uneven transition from Ba’athist socialism to the ‘Social Market Economy’ shaped the vulnerability of the Syrian northeast. The Ba’athist infrastructure legacy combined with bureaucratic corruption led to failing irrigation plans, widespread illegal well digging, groundwater overconsumption and soil deterioration. In the words of Yassin Haj-Saleh, in discussion with the author, ‘Syrians have become dependent on “Vitamin W” [for wasta, bribe]. It is required for everything’.

Still, those who are convinced that the Syrian war was largely due to climate change will argue that these political upheavals merely rendered the populace more vulnerable to the underlying problem of global warming. The problem with this idea, however, is that it fails to explain why Syria has endured so many previous, equally severe droughts without the ensuing civil unrest. As one local expert put it:

I defy anyone to claim that the displaced populations triggered unrest. We Syrians have always lived in arid areas, and climate variability has been historically high. The problem was not about climate change but about the mistakes made by the government. There was no transparency in food-security policies, ideological paralysis, heightened corruption, and the relevant ministries did not recognise their mistakes. No one dared to say anything out of fear. The main triggers of the Revolution were corruption, lack of justice, and the mistakes made in the government’s development plans’.

Unfortunately, these testimonies do not assist the favoured narrative and so fail to influence the thinking of Western think tanks.

A failed example

There is a profound illogicality to the argument that climate change caused the Syrian war, and it starts with a failure to appreciate that a drought is a climatic phenomenon that has to be measured in climatic terms. One cannot argue that a greater human impact is evidence of a greater role played by climate unless one has been able to properly isolated all causal factors. In the case of the Syrian war, a drought’s greater impact has been taken as a measure of increased scale, but this conclusion is far from certain when one looks at the climate data. And even if there are long-term climatic trends, a much stronger correlation clearly points the finger towards trends in political instability and infrastructural degradation.

Although there remain legitimate reasons to speculate regarding future, climate-related conflicts and mass migrations, the Syrian war cannot be used as means of raising the conjecture to the level of established fact. A great deal has been made of bodies washed upon UK shores being the casualties of climate change, but these are ideas that are fanciful at best and, at worst, a cynical and hysterical response designed to instil fear into the hearts and minds of those who are deemed to be apathetic in the face of a supposedly existential threat. We need better analyses than these, and we need better journalism.