Dec 26, 2017 08:04 PM
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...on/549026/
EXCERPT: Can unexpected weather make a war or a failed state more likely? It’s a question that could define the 21st century. A new study, published Thursday in Science, finds a link between temperature variation and forced migration.
When unusually hot or cold weather strikes the growing region of an agricultural country, more people living in that country seek asylum protection in the European Union. Those people are then, in turn, more likely to be accepted as permanent residents by the EU. Because asylum applicants must be fleeing conflict or persecution—and because their acceptance seems to validate the severity of their claims—the study’s authors say they’ve found an underlying connection between weather, agriculture, and failed governance.
“It’s pretty much like a medical trial of a new drug. There are many impacts that affect health, just like there are many impacts that affect asylum applications. But we’ve set up the trial and those are not correlated, so I have faith that we’ve established a relationship between weather and conflict,” said Wolfram Schlenker, an environmental economist at Columbia University. Schlenker and Anouch Missirian, another environmental economist at Columbia, conducted the study.
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...on/549026/
EXCERPT: Can unexpected weather make a war or a failed state more likely? It’s a question that could define the 21st century. A new study, published Thursday in Science, finds a link between temperature variation and forced migration.
When unusually hot or cold weather strikes the growing region of an agricultural country, more people living in that country seek asylum protection in the European Union. Those people are then, in turn, more likely to be accepted as permanent residents by the EU. Because asylum applicants must be fleeing conflict or persecution—and because their acceptance seems to validate the severity of their claims—the study’s authors say they’ve found an underlying connection between weather, agriculture, and failed governance.
“It’s pretty much like a medical trial of a new drug. There are many impacts that affect health, just like there are many impacts that affect asylum applications. But we’ve set up the trial and those are not correlated, so I have faith that we’ve established a relationship between weather and conflict,” said Wolfram Schlenker, an environmental economist at Columbia University. Schlenker and Anouch Missirian, another environmental economist at Columbia, conducted the study.
MORE: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch...on/549026/
