Climate Change and Cross-State Islamist Terrorism in Nigeria

Abstract

AbstractThis paper considers if increases in temperature and decreases in rain associated with climate change are a potential driver of Islamist terrorism across states in Nigeria. With state-level Islamist terrorism event, temperature, rainfall and sociodemographic data for Nigeria, we estimate latent variable and count data specifications of the relationship between the number of Islamist terrorism events and climactic variation in temperature and rainfall motivated by how the psychological costs of conflict can be decreased by increases in outdoor ambient temperature and decreases in rainfall. Our parameter estimates reveal that increases in temperature and decreases in rainfall increase the likelihood of Islamist terrorism in Nigeria. This suggests that global warming and reduced rainfall induced by climate change are potential drivers of terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa, and policy interventions designed to abate anthropogenic climate change can reduce violent conflict that is harmful for economic growth and development.