The countries that matter for their impact are resilient and institutional responses prevent escalation

However, current research does not yet indicate a clear link between climate change, food insecurity and conflict, except perhaps where rapidly deteriorating water availability cuts across existing tensions and weak institutions. But a series of interlinked problems – changing global patterns of consumption of energy and scarce resources, increasing demands for food imports (which draw on land, water, and energy inputs) can create pressure on fragile situations.

Food security – and food prices – are a highly political issue, being a very immediate and visible source of popular welfare or popular uncertainty. But their link to conflict (and the wider links between climate change and conflict) is indirect rather than direct.

What makes some countries more resilient than others?

Many countries face food price or natural resource shocks without falling into conflict. Essentially, the two important factors in determining their resilience are:

First, whether food insecurity is combined with other stresses – issues such as unemployment, but most fundamentally issues such as political exclusion or human rights abuses. We sometimes read nowadays that the 2006-2009 drought was a factor in the Syrian conflict, by driving rural-urban migration that caused societal stresses. It may of course have been one factor amongst many but it would be too simplistic to suggest that it was the primary driver of the Syrian conflict.

Second, whether countries have strong enough institutions to fulfill a social compact with their citizens, providing help quickly to citizens affected by food insecurity, with or without international assistance. During the 2007-2008 food crisis, developing countries with low institutional strength experienced more food price protests than those with higher institutional strengths, and more than half these protests turned violent. This for example, is the difference in the events in Haiti versus those in Mexico or the Philippines where far greater institutional strength existed to deal with the food price shocks and protests did not spur deteriorating national security or widespread violence.