Students from TU Darmstadt visited the Federal Foreign Office to present their research findings on the link between climate change and conflict. This visit was organized as part of a collaboration between Prof. Dr. Tobias Ide's Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies and the Federal Foreign Office. The students used a Federal Government database containing information on climate change, local vulnerability and the risk of armed conflict to develop their own case studies.
They found, for example, that greater distances to water sources in Nigeria increase the risk of armed conflict; that common climate and conflict indices do not adequately reflect gender-related inequalities; and that droughts increase the risk of protests, even in relatively stable states such as Bolivia. The implications of these findings for decision-makers at the Federal Foreign Office were then discussed.
This teaching-research project formed part of the joint International Studies/Peace and Conflict Research degree programme offered by TU Darmstadt, the Leibniz Institute for Peace and Conflict Research (PRIF) and Goethe University Frankfurt.