Climate Change, Conflict, and the Risk of Economic Collapse in Africa

Is human-caused climate change likely to trigger enduring economic decline in modern societies? We study whether changes in violent conflict and economic growth caused by warming could interact to degrade economic opportunities and trap African countries in poverty. We provide evidence of an emerging high-conflict and low-growth "poverty trap" equilibrium in Africa and describe theoretically how such an equilibrium could result from warming. We then combine historical data on temperature, growth, and conflict with projections from a large ensemble of global climate models to evaluate the risk that warming and subsequent conflict could push African economies into a regime of sustained negative economic growth. We find that the risk of such "economic collapse" is material in a moderate-to-high emissions scenario. We estimate that in Africa, a current "high" emissions trajectory (RCP 7.0) may increase the incidence of conflict 5.1 percentage points (95% CI 0.2-13.0) and increase the share of countries with net negative GDP growth this century by 12.2 percentage points (95% CI 2.0-27.5). We calculate that roughly 82% of this additional conflict risk and 14% of projected GDP losses are due to the interacting effects between these two outcomes, underscoring the importance of accounting for their indirect effects and feedbacks. Our findings suggest an unprecedented scale of emissions mitigation, economic policy innovation or institutional investment that would be required to contain the risk of catastrophic human impacts from climate change in many African countries.