Why might climate change not cause conflict? an agent-based computational response

Hassani Mahmooei, Behrooz and Parris, Brett (2012): Why might climate change not cause conflict? an agent-based computational response.

Abstract

In this paper, we first briefly review the recent literature on climate change, resource scarcity and conflict. This is then followed by introducing an agent based computational model based on the theory of production and conflict which is capable of simulating the dynamics of micro-level resource conflicts. The model considers differences in resource attributes, differentiates between conflict subjects, takes into account bounded rationality, non-linearity and feedback loops, and is enriched by a set of scenarios ranging between mild to severe resource shocks. Our results show that agents tend not to get engage in conflict during mild resource scarcity scenarios as they adapt to the changes and since the decreases in returns to resource predation and increases in their protective practices act as negative feedback loops, discouraging resource predators from allocating further effort to predation. The model results also show that scarcity is more likely to encourage product predation rather than resource predation among the agents.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Climate Change, Resource Scarcity, Conflict, Security, Agent-based Model, Social Simulation
• Subjects: C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C6 - Mathematical Methods ; Programming Models ; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling > C61 - Optimization Techniques ; Programming Models ; Dynamic Analysis; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C6 - Mathematical Methods ; Programming Models ; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling > C63 - Computational Techniques ; Simulation Modeling; D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D74 - Conflict ; Conflict Resolution ; Alliances ; Revolutions; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q3 - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation > Q34 - Natural Resources and Domestic and International Conflicts; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q54 - Climate ; Natural Disasters and Their Management ; Global Warming

References

Adano, Wario R, Ton Dietz, Karen Witsenburg, and Fred Zaal. “Climate Change, Violent Conflict and Local Institutions in Kenya’s Drylands.” Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 65-80.

Allouche, Jeremy. “The Sustainability and Resilience of Global Water and Food Systems: Political Analysis of the Interplay between Security, Resource Scarcity, Political Systems and Global Trade.” Food Policy 36, Supplement 1, no. 0 (2011): S3-S8.

Axelrod, Robert M. The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-Based Models of Competition and Collaboration, Princeton Studies in Complexity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Axtell, Robert. “Why Agents? On the Varied Motivations for Agent Computing in the Social Sciences.” Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, The Brookings, 2000.

Beardsley, Kyle, and Brian McQuinn. “Rebel Groups as Predatory Organizations: The Political Effects of the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.” Journal of Conflict Resolution (2009).

Benjaminsen, Tor A, Koffi Alinon, Halvard Buhaug, and Jill Tove Buseth. “Does Climate Change Drive Land-Use Conflicts in the Sahel?” Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 97-111.

Bhavnani, Ravi, and Dan Miodownik. “Ethnic Polarization, Ethnic Salience, and Civil War.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 1 (2009): 30-49.

Blikstein, Paulo, Dor Abrahamson, and Uri Wilensky. “Netlogo: Where We Are, Where We’re Going.” Paper presented at the Interaction Design & Children, Boulder, Colorado 2005.

Bonabeau, Eric. “Agent-Based Modeling: Methods and Techniques for Simulating Human Systems.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99, no. Suppl 3 (2002): 7280-87.

Booch, Grady, James Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson. The Unified Modeling Language User Guide. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley, 2005.

Brauch, Hans Günter. “Securitizing Global Environmental Change Facing Global Environmental Change.” edited by Hans Günter Brauch, Úrsula Oswald Spring, John Grin, Czeslaw Mesjasz, Patricia Kameri-Mbote, Navnita Chadha Behera, Béchir Chourou and Heinz Krummenacher, 65-102: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.

Brauch, Hans Günter, and Jürgen Scheffran. “Introduction: Climate Change, Human Security, and Violent Conflict in the Anthropocene Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict.” edited by Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link and Janpeter Schilling, 3-40: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.

Brenner, Thomas. “Chapter 18 Agent Learning Representation: Advice on Modelling Economic Learning.” In Handbook of Computational Economics, edited by L. Tesfatsion and K. L. Judd, 895-947: Elsevier, 2006.

Brunnschweiler, Christa N. “Cursing the Blessings? Natural Resource Abundance, Institutions, and Economic Growth.” World Development 36, no. 3 (2008): 399-419.

Brunnschweiler, Christa N., and Erwin H. Bulte. “The Resource Curse Revisited and Revised: A Tale of Paradoxes and Red Herrings.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 55, no. 3 (2008): 248-64.

Buhaug, Halvard. “Climate Not to Blame for African Civil Wars.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 38 (2010): 16477-82.

———. “Reply to Burke Et Al.: Bias and Climate War Research.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 51 (2010): E186-E87.

Buhaug, Halvard, and Ole Magnus Theisen. “On Environmental Change and Armed Conflict Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict.” edited by Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link and Janpeter Schilling, 43-55: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.

Burke, Marshall B., Edward Miguel, Shanker Satyanath, John A. Dykema, and David B. Lobell. “Climate Robustly Linked to African Civil War.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 51 (2010): E185-E85.

———. “Reply to Sutton Et Al.: Relationship between Temperature and Conflict Is Robust.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 25 (2010): E103-E03.

———. “Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 49 (2009): 20670-74.

Butler, Christopher K, and Scott Gates. “African Range Wars: Climate, Conflict, and Property Rights.” Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 23-34.

Chenoweth, Jonathan, and Eran Feitelson. “Neo-Malthusians and Cornucopians Put to the Test: Global 2000 and the Resourceful Earth Revisited.” Futures 37, no. 1 (2005): 51-72.

Collier, Paul, and Anke Hoeffler. “On Economic Causes of Civil War.” Oxford Economic Papers 50, no. 4 (1998): 563-73.

Dinar, Shlomi. Beyond Resource Wars : Scarcity, Environmental Degradation, and International Cooperation, Global Environmental Accord : Strategies for Sustainability and Institutional Innovation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011.

———. “Scarcity and Cooperation Along International Rivers.” Global Environmental Politics 9, no. 1 (2009): 109-35.

Epstein, Joshua M. “Chapter 34 Remarks on the Foundations of Agent-Based Generative Social Science.” In Handbook of Computational Economics, edited by L. Tesfatsion and K. L. Judd, 1585-604: Elsevier, 2006.

———. “Modeling Civil Violence: An Agent-Based Computational Approach.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99, no. Suppl 3 (2002): 7243-50.

Garfinkel, Michelle R., and Stergios Skaperdas. “Economics of Conflict: An Overview.” In Handbook of Defense Economics: Defense in a Globalized World, edited by Todd Sandler and Keith Hartley: Elsevier, 2007.

Gizelis, Theodora-Ismene, and Amanda E. Wooden. “Water Resources, Institutions, &Amp; Intrastate Conflict.” Political Geography 29, no. 8 (2010): 444-53.

Gleditsch, Nils. “Environmental Conflict: Neomalthusians Vs. Cornucopians.” In Security and the Environment in the Mediterranean: Conceptualising Security and Environmental Conflicts: Berlin: Springer, 2003.

Gleditsch, Nils Petter. “Whither the Weather? Climate Change and Conflict.” Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 3-9.

Goldenberg, Suzanne. “Un Security Council to Consider Climate Change Peacekeeping.” The Guardian, Wednesday 20 July 2011 09.06 BST 2011.

Gonzalez, Francisco M. “Effective Property Rights, Conflict and Growth.” Journal of Economic Theory 137, no. 1 (2007): 127-39.

Grimm, V. “A Standard Protocol for Describing Individual-Based and Agent-Based Models.” Ecological Modelling 198, no. 1-2 (2006): 115.

Grimm, Volker, Uta Berger, Donald L. DeAngelis, J. Gary Polhill, Jarl Giske, and Steven F. Railsback. “The Odd Protocol: A Review and First Update.” Ecological Modelling 221, no. 23 (2010): 2760-68.

Grossman, Herschel I. “The Creation of Effective Property Rights.” The American Economic Review 91, no. 2 (2001): 347-52.

———. “Producers and Predators.” Pacific Economic Review 3, no. 3 (1998): 169-87.

Grossman, Herschel I., and Minseong Kim. “Predators, Moral Decay, and Moral Revivals.” European Journal of Political Economy 16, no. 2 (2000): 173-87.

Grossman, Herschel I., and Juan Mendoza. “Scarcity and Appropriative Competition.” European Journal of Political Economy 19, no. 4 (2003): 747-58.

Hartmann, Betsy. “Rethinking Climate Refugees and Climate Conflict: Rhetoric, Reality and the Politics of Policy Discourse.” Journal of International Development 22, no. 2 (2010): 233-46.

Hausken, Kjell. “Production and Conflict Models Versus Rent-Seeking Models.” Public Choice 123, no. 1/2 (2005): 59-93.

Heath, Brian, Raymond Hill, and Frank Ciarallo. “A Survey of Agent-Based Modeling Practices (January 1998 to July 2008).” Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 12, no. 4 (2009): 9.

Heckbert, Scott, Tim Baynes, and Andrew Reeson. “Agent-Based Modeling in Ecological Economics.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1185, no. 1 (2010): 39-53.

Hendrix, Cullen S, and Idean Salehyan. “Climate Change, Rainfall, and Social Conflict in Africa.” Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 35-50.

Hendrix, Cullen S., and Sarah M. Glaser. “Trends and Triggers: Climate, Climate Change and Civil Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Political Geography 26, no. 6 (2007): 695-715.

Hirshleifer, Jack. “The Analytics of Continuing Conflict.” Synthese 76, no. 2 (1988): 201-33.

Holland, John H. “Complex Adaptive Systems.” Daedalus 121, no. 1 (1992): 17-30.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. “Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases.” International Security 19, no. 1 (1994): 5-40.

———. “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict.” International Security 16, no. 2 (1991): 76-116.

Kaplan, R.D. “The Coming Anarchy—How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, Tribalism and Disease Are Rapidly Destroying the Social Fabric of Our Planet.” The Atlantic Monthly 1994, 44–76.

Lahiri, Sajal. “Blood Diamonds: International Policy Options for Conflict Resolution.” Indian Growth and Development Review 3, no. 1 (2010): 5-20.

Li, Xia, and Xiaoping Liu. “Embedding Sustainable Development Strategies in Agent‐Based Models for Use as a Planning Tool.” International Journal of Geographical Information Science 22, no. 1 (2008): 21-45.

Lynch, Colum. “U.N. Secretary General Calls Global Warming a Priority.” Washington Post, Friday, March 2, 2007 2007.

Macal, C. M., and M. J. North. “Tutorial on Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation.” Journal of Simulation 4, no. 3 (2010): 151-62.

Magnus Theisen, Ole. “Blood and Soil? Resource Scarcity and Internal Armed Conflict Revisited.” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 6 (2008): 801-18.

Maxwell, John W., and Rafael Reuveny. “Resource Scarcity and Conflict in Developing Countries.” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 3 (2000): 301-22.

Mehlum, Halvor, Karl Moene, and Ragnar Torvik. “Institutions and the Resource Curse.” The Economic Journal 116, no. 508 (2006): 1-20.

Murphy, Kevin M., Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny. “The Allocation of Talent: Implications for Growth.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, no. 2 (1991): 503-30.

———. “Why Is Rent-Seeking So Costly to Growth?” The American Economic Review 83, no. 2 (1993): 409-14.

Muthoo, Abhinay. “A Model of the Origins of Basic Property Rights.” Games and Economic Behavior 49, no. 2 (2004): 288-312.

Nardulli, Peter F., and Kalev H. Leetaru. “Climate Change, Societal Stability, and the Sid Project Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict.” edited by Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link and Janpeter Schilling, 57-76: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.

Nordås, Ragnhild, and Nils Petter Gleditsch. “Climate Change and Conflict.” Political Geography 26, no. 6 (2007): 627-38.

Obama II, Barack Hussein. “Climate Change Speech at the Un General Assembly.” New York Times, September 22 2009.

Oels, Angela. “From ‘Securitization’ of Climate Change to ’Climatization‘ of the Security Field: Comparing Three Theoretical Perspectives Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict.” edited by Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link and Janpeter Schilling, 185-205: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.

O’Loughlin, John, Frank D. W. Witmer, Andrew M. Linke, Arlene Laing, Andrew Gettelman, and Jimy Dudhia. “Climate Variability and Conflict Risk in East Africa, 1990–2009.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 45 (2012): 18344-49.

Railsback, Steven F., Steven L. Lytinen, and Stephen K. Jackson. “Agent-Based Simulation Platforms: Review and Development Recommendations.” SIMULATION 82, no. 9 (2006): 609-23.

Raleigh, Clionadh, and Henrik Urdal. “Climate Change, Environmental Degradation and Armed Conflict.” Political Geography 26, no. 6 (2007): 674-94.

Ramalingam, Ben, Harry Jones, Toussaint Reba, and John Young. “Exploring the Science of Complexity.” Overseas Development Institute, 2008

Reuveny, Rafael, John W. Maxwell, and Jefferson Davis. “On Conflict over Natural Resources.” Ecological Economics 70, no. 4 (2011): 698-712.

Ross, Michael L. “The Political Economy of the Resource Curse.” World Politics 51, no. 02 (1999): 297-322.

Rousseau, David, and A. Maurits van der Veen. “The Emergence of a Shared Identity.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 5 (2005): 686-712.

Sachs, Jeffrey D., and Andrew M. Warner. “Natural Resource Abundance and Economic Growth.” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series No. 5398 (1995).

Salehyan, Idean. “From Climate Change to Conflict? No Consensus Yet.” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 3 (2008): 315-26.

Scheffran, Jürgen, Michael Brzoska, Hans Gür Brauch, P. Michael Link, and Janpeter Schilling. “Conclusions and Outlook: Research Results and Research Needs Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict.” edited by Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link and Janpeter Schilling, 797-818: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.

Schelling, Thomas C. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. 1st ed, Fels Lectures on Public Policy Analysis. New York: Norton, 1978.

Slettebak, Rune T. “Don’t Blame the Weather! Climate-Related Natural Disasters and Civil Conflict.” Journal of Peace Research 49, no. 1 (2012): 163-76.

Squazzoni, F. “The Impact of Agent-Based Models in the Social Sciences after 15 Years of Incursions.” Sociological methodology 2, no. 2 (2009): 1.

Sutton, Alexandra E., Justin Dohn, Kara Loyd, Andrew Tredennick, Gabriela Bucini, Alexandro Solórzano, Lara Prihodko, and Niall P. Hanan. “Does Warming Increase the Risk of Civil War in Africa?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 25 (2010): E102-E02.

Tesfatsion, Leigh. “Agent-Based Computational Economics: Modeling Economies as Complex Adaptive Systems.” Information Sciences 149, no. 4 (2003): 262-68.

Tesfatsion, Leigh, and Kenneth L. Judd, eds. Handbook of Computational Economics, Volume 2: Agent-Based Computational Economics: North Holland, Amsterdam, Boston and London, 2006.

Theisen, Ole Magnus “Blood and Soil? Resource Scarcity and Internal Armed Conflict Revisited.” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 6 (2008): 801-18.

Theisen, Ole Magnus, Helge Holtermann, and Halvard Buhaug. “Climate Wars? Assessing the Claim That Drought Breeds Conflict.” International Security 36, no. 3 (2011): 79-106.

Thomas, Bernauer, Böhmelt Tobias, and Koubi Vally. “Environmental Changes and Violent Conflict.” Environmental Research Letters 7, no. 1 (2012): 015601.

Trombetta, Maria J. “Climate Change and the Environmental Conflict Discourse Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict.” edited by Jürgen Scheffran, Michael Brzoska, Hans Günter Brauch, Peter Michael Link and Janpeter Schilling, 151-64: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012.

Urdal, Henrik. “Population, Resources, and Political Violence: A Subnational Study of India, 1956–2002 “ Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 4 (2008): 590-617.

Wilensky, U. “Netlogo.” Northwestern University. Evanston, IL.: Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, 1999.

Witsenburg, Karen M., and Wario R. Adano. “Of Rain and Raids: Violent Livestock Raiding in Northern Kenya.” Civil Wars 11, no. 4 (2009): 514-38.