Water scarcity and rioting: Disaggregated evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa |
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Institution: | 1. Division of Social Science, New York University, Abu Dhabi;2. GSEM, University of Geneva Switzerland;3. Department of Applied Economics, HEC Montréal, CIRANO and CRÉ, Canada;4. Department of International Business, HEC Montréal, and CIRANO, Canada;1. Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway;2. Peace Research Institute Oslo, Hausmanns Gate 3, 0186 Oslo, Norway |
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Abstract: | It is often purported that unusually dry weather conditions provoke small-scale social conflict—riots—by intensifying the competition for water. The present paper explores this hypothesis, using data from Sub-Saharan Africa. We rely on monthly data at the cell level (0.5×0.5 degrees), an approach that is tailored to the short-lived and local nature of the phenomenon. Using a drought index to proxy for weather shocks, we find that a one-standard-deviation fall in the index (signaling drier conditions) raises the likelihood of riots in a given cell and month by 8.3%. We further observe that the effect of unusually dry weather conditions is substantially larger in cells with a lower availability of water resources (such as rivers and lakes), a finding that supports the significance of the competition-for-water mechanism. |
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Keywords: | Small-scale conflict Riots Water shocks Disaggregated data |
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