Armed vigilantes and local hunters patrol the streets of Maiduguri, Nigeria on September 4, 2014.
Credit: AP Photo / Jossy Ola
According to a new review of 55 separate studies, there is a meaningful connection between climate change and human violence.
The working paper, put out by researchers with the National Bureau of Economic Research, is what’s called a meta-analysis: a study of studies, in effect. After going through numerous analyses of the relationship between climate change and violence in various settings, the researchers settled on 55 of the most rigorous pieces of work. They then evaluated the picture painted by those studies, and worked to amalgamate their findings into a single statistical result.
They looked at conflicts between individuals — “domestic violence, road rage, assault, murder, and rape” — as well as conflicts between larger human groups — “riots, ethnic violence, land invasions, gang violence, civil war and other forms of political instability, such […]
