Climate change and conflict: more than a fashionable association with health

When the refugee crisis hits headlines in Europe and national borders become flashpoints, the public's first thought probably isn't climate change. The immediate challenges that refugees pose and their urgent needs dominate the agenda. Upstream issues like the social and political determinants of health, for example, the conflict in Syria, might enter the conversation, but the next step to climate change seems a step too far. However, as this month's clinical review explains, if you accept that conflict is one of the causes of the refugee crisis, you also accept that climate change is partly responsible. ¹

Devin Bowles and colleagues examine the evidence on climate change, conflict and health and find that medical understanding of the threat is inadequate despite the potential scale of the health implications. The worlds of medicine and public health are reluctant to view conflict as a health problem, when the evidence is clear. The public, meanwhile, is more likely to be persuaded to address climate change if it is addressed as a health issue. Improving understanding of the association between climate change and conflict may further support efforts to cope with climate change.

Is climate change one of the precipitating factors for the Arab Spring, destablising economies in the Middle East, including Syria? A drought devastated Syria's economy and climate modelling suggests that climate change partly contributed to its severity. Syria was already home to refugees from the conflict in Iraq, and the drought drove 1.5 million Syrians to move to cities and their outskirts. A fertile breeding ground for internal conflict was created. The authors provide other examples from around the world, and, if you are persuaded by the socio-political effects of climate, it is no surprise that some of the world's hottest countries are the poorest, most likely to sustain conflicts and maintain the worst health indicators. Indeed, any strategy for health or national security is incomplete if it ignores the impact of climate change.

Not everyone accepts the existence or impact of climate change. It might even be an example of ‘fashion-based’ research and journalism. Collecting evidence according to the fashion of the day is a dangerous enterprise as John Hampton reminds us in his sobering experience, from the 1980s, of investigating the use of antiarrhythmic drugs after heart attack and finding them harmful. ² One of today’s other fashions is the troubling data on weekend mortality, although the implications of these data are unclear. Rahul Potluri attempts to make sense of the latest research. ³