Findings suggest climate change helped fuel conflict

onnaedo

March 3, 2015 4:14 PM

According to the paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is believed that climate change worsened the drought served as a catalyst to the current raging turmoil in the country.

New findings suggest that the current raging crisis in Syria may have been triggered by climate change. This is according to the Huffington Post.

According to the paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it is believed that the drought; which began in late 2006 and was the worst on record having dragged on for three years,worsened existing water security and agricultural woes.

The drought then prompted up to 1.5 million rural Syrians to migrate closer to urban areas. This migration helped spur demographic changes that fed instability in and around cities.

In addition, the drought contributed to rising food prices and more nutrition-related diseases in children, which worsened the turmoil.

While droughts can be triggered by natural causes, the researchers conclude that the Syrian drought was made much worse by climate change.

The Syrian conflict began in March 2011, with protests against the regime of President Bashar Assad. The Assad government responded with a violent crackdown on protesters, and four years later, various armed factions ranging from moderate United States-backed rebels to the extremist Islamic State group are fighting for control of the splintering country.

Over 200,000 people have died in the conflict while the United Nations estimates that about 7.6 million people have been internally displaced.

Speaking on the findings, Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and another co-author of the paper said:

"We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict."

onnaedo

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