SYRIA, CIVIL WAR & CLIMATE CHANGE

Intro: Severe drought may have contributed to the uprising. Research conducted by scientists at Columbia University in New York say that the influx of people into cities that has caused rising poverty and unrest was a major contributory factor that led to the civil war which started in 2011.

Drought caused by climate change may have pushed Syria towards the devastating civil war currently ripping the country apart, according to researchers.

A new study has found that many parts of the country were hit by a record dry period between 2006 and 2010 which may have propelled the uprising against the Syrian regime in 2011.

The drought, which scientists say was likely made worse by climate change, destroyed much of the agriculture in the north of the country, driving farmers into cities.

The conflict has since escalated into a complex war involving extremist Islamic groups including ISIS and forces from other nations including the US.

An estimated 200,000 people have now been killed and an estimated nine million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of the war.

Dr Richard Seager, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, said: ‘We’re not saying the drought caused the war.

‘We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict.

‘A drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.’

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the 2006-2010 drought was the worst and longest on record compared to those in the 1950s, 1980s and 1990s.

Particularly hard hit was the Fertile Crescent that spans Syria, Turkey and Iraq.

Since 1900 the area has undergone warming of between 1 degree C and 1.2 degrees C and rainfall in the wet season has fallen by 10 per cent.

The researchers said the trend matched that predicted by models of climate change caused by human carbon dioxide emissions.

They said that the wind patterns bringing rain from the Mediterranean weakened while higher temperatures caused greater evaporation of moisture from the soils during the summer.

This caused agricultural production to plunge by a third in Syria.

Combined with a growing population –from four million in the 1950s to 22 million now – this led to increasing levels of poverty and pressure within the country’s urban areas.

The researchers said that Bashar al-Assad’s regime also encouraged water intensive crops like cotton for export while illegal drilling of irrigation wells rapidly depleted groundwater.

In the worst hit north east areas of the country, livestock herds were practically obliterated, cereal prices doubled and nutrition-related diseases among children increased dramatically. This led to 1.5 million people moving from the countryside to the cities.

Writing in the journal, the authors said: ‘Rapid demographic change encourages instability.

‘Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.’

It is the first study of its kind to look at how climate change has played a role in a current war.

Professor Solomon Hsaing, a public policy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said similar climatic changes had triggered the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the region 4,200 years ago following a drought lasting several years.

However, Marshall Burke, an environmental scientist at Stanford University, said: ‘There were many things going on in the region and world at that time, such as high global food prices and the beginning of the Arab Spring, that could have also increased the likelihood of civil conflict.’