Climate-Induced Resource Scarcity Exacerbates Structural Violence in Global South
Original framing: “Some Climate Shocks Can Increase the Likelihood of War” — Inside Climate News
Women farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, who produce 60–80% of food, are systematically excluded from climate adaptation funding despite bearing the brunt of drought impacts. Dalit communities in India face caste-based violence when migrating for water, yet their knowledge of drought-resistant crops (e.g., *millets*) is ignored by industrial agriculture. Small island states like Tuvalu and Kiribati, facing existential threats, are sidelined in UN climate negotiations despite offering adaptation models rooted in oceanic stewardship.
The study’s focus on drought thresholds as a 'natural' conflict trigger obscures how colonial land dispossession, IMF austerity, and agribusiness monocultures create the conditions for violence—patterns visible in the Dust Bowl, Sahel droughts, and today’s land grabs in Mozambique and Indonesia.
Indigenous systems (e.g., Māori *kaitiakitanga*, Andean water networks) and feminist reparations offer proven alternatives to securitized climate adaptation, yet are sidelined by Western 'climate security' narratives that serve defense contractors and extractive industries. The real 'thresholds' are not in temperature data but in the balance of power: between communities and capital, between reparative justice and debt peonage, between ecological balance and collapse. Solutions must center land reform, feminist finance, and degrowth trade—mechanisms that address root causes rather than symptoms. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the absurdity lies not in climate shocks themselves, but in pretending they are apolitical.