It is often purported that unusually dry weather conditions provoke small-scale social conflict—riots—by intensifying the competition for water. The present paper explores this hypothesis, using data from Sub-Saharan Africa. We rely on monthly data at the cell level (0.5×0.5 degrees), an approach that is tailored to the short-lived and local nature of the phenomenon. Using a drought index to proxy for weather shocks, we find that a one-standard-deviation fall in the index (signaling drier conditions) raises the likelihood of riots in a given cell and month by 8.3%.
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Links:
[1] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/feature-article/water-scarcity-and-rioting-disaggregated-evidence-sub-saharan-africa
[2] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/christian-almer
[3] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/j%C3%A9r%C3%A9my-laurent-lucchetti
[4] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/manuel-oechslin
[5] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/journal/journal-environmental-economics-and-management
[6] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/water-demand
[7] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/water-distribution
[8] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/conflicts
[9] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/africa
[10] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/droughts
[11] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/rainfall-pattern
