Water scarcity and rioting: disaggregated evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa
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 th...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article (Journal) |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
November 2017
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| In: |
Journal of environmental economics and management
Year: 2017, Volume: 86, Pages: 193-209 |
| ISSN: | 1096-0449 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jeem.2017.06.002 |
| Online Access: | Verlag, Volltext: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2017.06.002 Verlag, Volltext: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069617303650 
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| Author Notes: | Christian Almer, Jérémy Laurent-Lucchetti, Manuel Oechslin |
| Summary: | 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%. We further observe that the effect of unusually dry weather conditions is substantially larger in cells with a lower availability of water resources (such as rivers and lakes), a finding that supports the significance of the competition-for-water mechanism. |
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| Item Description: | Gesehen am 11.10.2018 Available online 16 June 2017 |
| Physical Description: | Online Resource |
| ISSN: | 1096-0449 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jeem.2017.06.002 |