Can Social Safety Nets Prevent Climate-Related Conflict? Evidence from Ethiopia

• In Event: The Environment and Conflict

Abstract

In order to craft programmatic policies that prevent climate change from driving increased violence, mechanisms that link climate variability to violence must be better understood. One of the most commonly proposed mechanisms in the climate-conflict literature is that of “opportunity cost.” This is the notion that when adverse climatic conditions drive down incomes and cause livelihoods to be lost, the opportunity cost of joining in violent, rebellious activity is reduced and the quantity of that activity rises accordingly. I explore the efficacy of a policy – Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) – at reducing the link between climate and conflict in a country where livelihoods are heavily dependent on rainfall and temperature but climatic shocks (e.g. droughts) are common. The PSNP provides cash transfers to needy households and public works jobs to the underemployed. These outlays should block the opportunity cost mechanism by keeping the opportunity cost for violence high even during adverse climatic shocks. I exploit natural experiments generated by a) the incremental roll-out of the PSNP over time and space across the country, and b) the precise household targeting protocols utilized in the policy’s implementation. Results (TBD) will provide new insights into whether “opportunity cost” is a major mechanism driving climate-conflict links in Ethiopia. More broadly, they will shed new light on whether programmatic policies can break such links and prevent increases in conflict under a changing climate.

Author

• Garrett Michael Albistegui Adler, Stanford University