'Echo der Zeit' Contribution on Climate and Conflict with Thomas Bernauer
The Director of our Institute, Thomas Bernauer was featured in a Swiss National Radio contribution on climate and conflict. The radio report in the renowned 'Echo der Zeit' program deals with the scientifically contested relationship between climate and conflict as well as migration.
Research by Thomas Bernauer and his colleagues is showing the opposite result of the one some alarming and scientifically contested contributions in the field present (also see the earlier news items on the Spiegel Online article criticizing an article in 'Science', and the ETH's 'Zukunftsblog' entry). For instance his water conflict research shows that hardly any of the water conflicts around the world is carried out in a violent way, and that, oppositely, the majority of the problems in water basins are solved cooperatively.
Thomas Bernauer is very sceptic about climate change leading to conflict and subsequently to migration, and he criticizes that the studies proposing this are not up to the scientific standards, and are biased towards cases for which this relationship could be confirmed, for example. He stresses that one should approach climatic changes mostly as economic and humanitarian issues, instead of looking at them as security policy issues.
Both the whole external page radio report and the external page corresponding article (both in German) can be accessed on the Swiss Radio and Television homepage.