Food security: how drought and rising prices led to conflict in Syria

EPA/Russian Defence Ministry Press Service

In 2015 the Welsh singer and activist Charlotte Church was widely ridiculed in the right-wing press and on social media for saying on BBC Question Time that climate change had played an important part in causing the conflict in Syria.

From 2006 until 2011, [Syria] experienced one of the worst droughts in its history, which of course meant that there were water shortages and crops weren’t growing, so there was mass migration from rural areas of Syria into the urban centres, which put on more strain, and made resources scarce etc, which apparently contributed to the conflict there today.

Goaded on by the tabloids, Church reaped a whirlwind of public ridicule:

But what she said was correct – and there will be an increasing convergence of climate, food, economic and political crises in the coming years and decades. We need to better understand the interconnectivity of environmental, economic, geopolitical, societal and technological systems if we are to manage these crises and avoid their worst impacts.

In particular, tipping points exist in both physical and socio-economic systems, including governmental or financial systems. These systems interact in complex ways. Small shocks may have little impact but, a particular shock or set of shocks could tip the system into a new state. This new state could represent a collapse in agriculture or even the fall of a government.

In 2011, Syria became the latest country to experience disruption in a wave of political unrest crossing North Africa and the Middle East. Religious differences, a failure of the ruling regime to tackle unemployment and social injustice and the state of human rights all contributed to a backdrop of social unrest. However, these pressures had existed for years, if not decades.

So was there a trigger for the conflict in the region which worked in tandem with the ongoing social unrest?

Syria, and the surrounding region, has experienced significant depletion in water availability since 2003. In particular an intense drought between 2007 and 2010, alongside poor water management, saw agricultural production collapse and a mass migration from rural areas to city centres. Farmers, who had been relatively wealthy in their rural surroundings now found themselves as the urban poor reliant on food imports. Between 2007 and 2009 Syria increased its annual imports of wheat and meslin (rice flour) by about 1.5m tonnes. That equated to a more than ten-fold increase in importing one of the most basic foods.

Cereal imports by weight and value to Syria from 2006 to 2010. Source: UN Comtrade Database.

Complex system

There is a tendency these days to believe that global trade will protect the world from food production shocks. A small production shock in one region can be mitigated by increasing, temporarily, imports of food or by sourcing food from another region. However, certain shocks, or a set of shocks, could create an amplifying feedback that cascades into a globally significant event.

The food system today is increasingly complex and an impact in land, water, labour or infrastructure could create fragility. A large enough perturbation can lead to a price response in the global market that sends a signal to other producers to increase their output to make up for any shortfall. While increased prices can be beneficial to farmers and food producers, if the price increase is large enough it can have a significant impact on communities that are net food importers.

Additionally, food production is concentrated both in a relatively small handful of commodity crops such as wheat, rice and maize as well as from a relatively small number of regions, for example the US, China and Russia. This concentration means any disruption in those regions will have a large impact on global food supply. Reliance on global markets for sourcing food can therefore be a source of systemic risk.

Rising prices

In 2008 the global price of food increased dramatically. This increase was the result of a complex set of issues including historically low global food stocks, drought in Australia following production lows in several other areas over the previous few years, and speculation and an increase in biofuel production in North America.

Cereals Price Index (indexed at 100 in 2006).
FAO Food Price Index, Author provided

This spike in global food price in 2008 was a factor in the initial unrest across North Africa and the Middle East, which became known as the Arab Spring. As prices peaked, violence broke out in countries such as Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

In Syria a local drought which coincided with this global shock in food prices resulted in dramatic changes in the availability and cost of food. In response small groups of individuals protested. The government response, combined with a background of rising protests, existing social tensions and instability in the wider region, quickly escalated into the situation we are experiencing today.

The events in Syria, then, appear to stem from a far more complex set of pressures, beyond religious tension and government brutality, with its roots in the availability of a natural resource – water – and its impact on food production. This is worrying as decreasing water availability is far from a localised issue – it is a systemic risk across the Middle East and North Africa. Over the coming decades this water security challenge is likely to be further exacerbated by climate change.

To better manage these types of risks in the future, and to build societal resilience, the world needs to understand our society’s interdependence on natural resources and how this can lead to events such as those that unfolded in Syria. We need analytical, statistical, scenario or war game-type models to explore different possible futures and policy strategies for mitigating the risk. By understanding sources of political instability we hope to get a better handle on how these types of crisis arise.

Aled Jones, Director, Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

North Korea knows it can't afford to go to war

EPA/How Hwee Young

The current flare-up over North Korea’s missile tests and Donald Trump’s belligerent response is frightening for many, but anyone worried that Pyongyang wants to start a war is – fortunately – mistaken.

For all its fighting talk, missile tests, and mooted plans for an attack on the US’s Pacific territory of Guam, North Korea is all bluster and little bite. And while most Western audiences are well aware that an attack by Pyongyang on South Korea, Japan or the US would be suicidal, what they often miss is that North Korea wouldn’t actually be able to go to war with one of its rivals – even if it wanted to.

The north is too often misunderstood as an unpredictable rogue state led by a dynasty of mad dictators. This is an inaccurate analysis, and perpetuating it is irresponsible. As has been expertly documented by North Korea analysts such as Narushige Michishita, Pyongyang’s rulers are nothing if not consistent and strategic in their approach to the rest of the world.

When trying to understand the regime’s behaviour, it’s crucial to distinguish between strategy and tactics. Yes, North Korea frequently uses surprise as a tactic, and it is well-practiced at striking fear into the hearts of Western populations. But these aren’t spasms of demented rage; they are part of a very consistent national strategy to keep the regime going.

The north has at least three goals: to keep the world’s attention in the hope of one day securing a peace treaty with the US and its allies; to demonstrate the credibility of its military deterrent; and to deflect attention away from critical domestic problems that could lead to social unrest or even revolution.

As North Korea expert Hazel Smith has pointed out, the Pyongyang government is far from a one-man band, or even a family affair. Rather, since its establishment in 1948, a number of leading players have both competed and cooperated to preserve the existing governance structure. So while there are few checks and balances on the abuse of power, the leadership’s priorities remain the same: keep the country relatively stable, head off political risks, and avoid a financially ruinous military conflict.

Feeling the pinch

The north is well aware that even in the crude terms of oil and supplies, it almost certainly lacks the funds to pay for any kind of sustained military campaign, despite having one of the world’s largest standing armies. It could in theory be bankrolled by China or Russia, but those countries no longer share the powerful ideological interests that drew them into the Korean War on Pyongyang’s side. China in particular has been seeking to reduce tensions, not escalate them – not least for its own commercial reasons, which include the economic colonisation of North Korea’s north-eastern ports and other parts of its industrial economy.

If Pyongyang’s confrontational rhetoric is little more than brazen attention-seeking, its motives are at least partly economic. Short-term military posturing and scaremongering, for example, may offer a longer-term path to economic concessions from the rest of the world. Even the newer packages of sanctions might quickly be dropped, dialogue increased and later foreign direct investment secured if the potential for sustained de-escalation and increased trade was deemed rich enough.



It’s therefore logical to assume that for the sake of its own security, North Korea will not risk escalating beyond the point of sporadic missile and nuclear tests. The missiles supposedly being readied for an assault on Guam are little more than a means to show off a new strategic capability, in this case the capacity to launch an accurate strike on a strategically important US target.

At the same time – assuming that Donald Trump can be trusted to act as rationally as Kim Jong-Un – the north can rest assured that until US citizens or their allied counterparts are actually killed with North Korean weapons, the US is highly unlikely to risk military action on the Korean Peninsula. There is simply too little domestic appetite for a mission that could easily spiral into a politically dubious, economically costly and militarily hazardous war.

The outside world needs to apply a different kind of pressure: a diplomatic and economic push for regime-led reforms, commercial investment, and reduced military spending. The discussion should focus on political freedom, economic growth and greater peace and prosperity. Fixating on Kim’s weapons of mass destruction helps nobody – and least of all everyday North Koreans.

Ra Mason, Lecturer in International Relations and Japanese Foreign Policy, University of East Anglia

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Even a 'minor' nuclear war would be an ecological disaster felt throughout the world

Markus Gann / shutterstock

President Donald Trump’s vow to hit North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” is an unveiled threat to unleash America’s most potent weapons of mass destruction onto the Korean peninsula. According to many defence analysts, the risk of nuclear confrontation over Europe and the Indian subcontinent has also increased in recent years.

In a more hopeful turn of events, 122 countries voted in June to adopt the United Nations Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons in New York. The “ban treaty” will make nuclear weapons illegal for ratifying countries, and many see it as an opportunity to kick start a renewed effort towards multilateral disarmament. Supporters of the treaty argue that even a limited, regional nuclear war would produce a catastrophic and global humanitarian crisis.

Equally, other analysts suggest that the reality is not as severe as is often depicted. In March this year, Matthias Eken, a researcher of attitudes towards nuclear weapons, wrote in The Conversation that their destructive power “has been vastly exaggerated” and that one should avoid overusing “doomsday scenarios and apocalyptic language”.

Eken argued that nuclear weapons are not as powerful as often described, on the basis that a 9 megaton thermonuclear warhead dropped over the state of Arkansas would only destroy 0.2% of the state’s surface area. He also observed that more than 2,000 nuclear detonations have been made on the planet without having ended human civilisation, and argued that if we want to mitigate the risk posed by nuclear weapons, we must not exaggerate those risks.



Eken’s sanguine approach towards nuclear weapons stands in contrast to the more dramatic rhetoric of global humanitarian catastrophe and existential threats to humanity. So what is the basis for the latter?

Nuclear war is also a war on the environment

The greatest concern derives from relatively new research which has modelled the indirect effects of nuclear detonations on the environment and climate. The most-studied scenario is a limited regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan, involving 100 Hiroshima-sized warheads (small by modern standards) detonated mostly over urban areas. Many analysts suggest that this is a plausible scenario in the event of an all-out war between the two states, whose combined arsenals amount to more than 220 nuclear warheads.

In this event, an estimated 20m people could die within a week from the direct effects of the explosions, fire, and local radiation. That alone is catastrophic – more deaths than in the entire of World War I.

But nuclear explosions are also extremely likely to ignite fires over a large area, which coalesce and inject large volumes of soot and debris into the stratosphere. In the India-Pakistan scenario, up to 6.5m tonnes of soot could be thrown up into the upper atmosphere, blocking out the sun and causing a significant drop in average surface temperature and precipitation across the globe, with effects that could last for more than a decade.

This ecological disruption would, in turn, badly affect global food production. According to one study, maize production in the US (the world’s largest producer) would decline by an average by 12% over ten years in our given scenario. In China, middle season rice would fall by 17% over a decade, maize by 16%, and winter wheat by 31%. With total world grain reserves amounting to less than 100 days of global consumption, such effects would place an estimated 2 billion people at risk of famine.

Not in the blast zone…but still at risk.
rCarner / shutterstock

Although a nuclear conflict involving North Korea and the US would be smaller, given Pyongyang’s limited arsenal, many people would still die and ecological damage would severely affect global public health for years. Additionally, any nuclear conflict between the US and North Korea is likely to increase the risk of nuclear confrontation involving other states and other regions of the world.

It gets worse

A large-scale nuclear war between the US and Russia would be far worse. Most Russian and US weapons are 10 to 50 times stronger than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima. In a war involving the use of the two nations’ strategic nuclear weapons (those intended to be used away from battlefield, aimed at infrastructure or cities), some 150m tonnes of soot could be lofted into the upper atmosphere. This would reduce global temperatures by 8°C – the “nuclear winter” scenario. Under these conditions, food production would stop and the vast majority of the human race is likely to starve.

Eken suggests that both the scenarios of a limited regional nuclear conflict and an all-out war between US and Russia are unlikely. He may be right. However, both scenarios are possible, even if we can’t reliably quantify the risk. Continued adversarial rhetoric from both Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un about the use of nuclear weapons is not making this possibility any smaller.

What we can say, is that the doctrine of nuclear deterrence represents a high-risk gamble. Nuclear weapons do not keep us safe from acts of terrorism, nor can they be used to fight sea level rise, extreme weather, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss or antimicrobial resistance.

This is why so many medical and public health organisations have been campaigning to make nuclear weapons illegal. Regardless of how many need to be exploded to cause a catastrophe or produce an existential threat to humanity, and regardless of the risk of this happening, the adage that “prevention is the best cure” remains the case when it comes to these abhorrent and dangerous weapons.

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Research papers and discussions on the public health and environmental effects of nuclear weapons will be part of the Health Through Peace 2017 conference at the University of York in September.

David McCoy, Professor of Global Public Health, Queen Mary University of London

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

DP Ramaphosa: Marikana visit report incorrect

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa says reports indicating his intention to visit Marikana to attend events marking the anniversary of the shooting of striking miners are incorrect.

“Reports to the effect that Deputy President Ramaphosa has indicated his intention to visit Marikana on the anniversary are incorrect,” his office said on Friday.

However, Deputy President Ramaphosa is committed to be part of the initiative proposed by struggle stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

“The feelings and wishes of the Marikana community and the families of the victims are of paramount importance in this sensitive process,” the Presidency said.

Wednesday will mark the 5th anniversary of the tragedy at Marikana.

On 16 August 2012, police gunned down 34 mineworkers, who were participating in a protracted strike at Lonmin Platinum Mine.  They were demanding that their salaries be increased to R12 500.

The commemoration of the Marikana massacre will be held next week Wednesday on the “koppie” where the workers were killed.

Meanwhile, the Deputy President will this morning deliver the eulogy at the funeral of the late Judge George Maluleke.

Maluleke (76) passed away on Tuesday while on retirement from a distinguished legal career in which he was appointed a High Court Judge in 1993, following a period of acting as a judge at the Venda High Court.

The funeral service will take place at the Memorial Park Fourways, 1 Memorial Lane, Craigavon, Johannesburg, at 9am. - SAnews.gov.za

What makes Kim Jong Un tick?

North Korean leader Kim Jung-un inspects an outpost and Jangjedo defending force. REUTERS/North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)

Kim Jong Un is a “smart cookie,” President Donald Trump said recently of North Korea’s leader.

“He’s 27 years old,” Trump mused. “His father dies, [he] took over a regime. So say what you want but that is not easy.”

Kim, who has assassinated his internal rivals using anti-aircraft guns and chemical weapons, seeks to develop a nuclear missile that can reach the United States. These actions may provoke a “major, major conflict” with the U.S., Trump has said: “I hope he’s rational.”

In my research on political leaders, I’ve found that different people have different definitions of rationality. The core question – “What is my best move?” – is often answered by a leader’s idiosyncratic beliefs, rather than by an immediately obvious logic of the situation as seen by external observers.

The history of dealing with inscrutable foreign leaders is instructive: From Hitler to Saddam to Khrushchev, understanding the other is the most urgent challenge of national security decision-making for the U.S.

To influence Kim’s behavior, we must ask: What is his particular vantage point?

Lessons of the past

In the spring of 1943, the director of the first centralized U.S. intelligence agency, Colonel William “Wild Bill” Donovan, sought help in understanding Hitler. Donovan wanted to give President Franklin D. Roosevelt a sense of “the things that make him tick.”

Donovan called Walter C. Langer, a psychoanalyst helping with the war effort, in for a meeting: “What do you make of Hitler? If Hitler is running the show, what kind of a person is he? What are his ambitions?”

Langer combined the scant intelligence on Hitler with insights from Freudian psychoanalysis into a study on Hitler. He accurately predicted that Hitler would commit suicide rather than be captured by Allied forces. But his insight was largely irrelevant to the military strategy for defeating Germany. The report took so long to produce that the war was nearly over by the time it was delivered to Donovan.


More recently, the former top U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer and I studied what made former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein tick. For several years, Duelfer was the senior point of contact between Iraq and the U.S. After the regime fell, he produced the definitive report on its weapons programs.

Looking for logic in Saddam’s decisions, we found instead a morass of idiosyncratic thinking. Most astonishing was his misreading of President George W. Bush’s June 2002 speech to the West Point Military Academy. Intending to warn Saddam that he must comply with U.N. demands or face war, Bush struck a stern tone. The “gravest danger to freedom,” he said, was “unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction.” Later in the speech, Bush praised President Ronald Reagan for standing up to “the brutality of tyrants.”

What Bush said and what Saddam heard were two very different things.

Saddam did not see himself as unbalanced, and he knew that he did not have weapons of mass destruction. And U.S.-Iraq relations had been excellent under President Reagan, Saddam recalled. The United States had tilted toward his side during the Iran-Iraq war. Things started to deteriorate only under the Bushes, in his view.

Our analysis showed that Saddam believed Bush could not have been talking about him. Instead, Saddam concluded he must have been threatening North Korea, not Iraq. Kim Jong Il, father of Kim Jong Un, possessed the nuclear weapons that the Iraqi president desired but did not have.

Bush was dumbfounded by the lack of Saddam’s response to his threats. Later he asked, “How much clearer could I have been?”

Duelfer and I had the academic luxury of malleable deadlines in studying Saddam. Langer spent many months on his Hitler study. Scholarship on Kim Jong Un may be too slow for the current crisis. Major decision-makers may instead need to rely on their intuition.

Empathize with your enemy

Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara spoke about intuition in a 2003 documentary about his role in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. McNamara revealed crucial new details about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had smuggled nuclear missiles into Cuba, threatening 90 million Americans. President John F. Kennedy’s first reaction was that he must destroy them with a massive air strike. This would have courted war with the USSR.



Seeking the widest possible range of advice, Kennedy asked Llewellyn “Tommy” Thompson, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, to supplement his foreign policy team during the crisis. Thompson had come to know Khrushchev well and had stayed at his house in Moscow.

“Mr. President, you’re wrong,” McNamara recalls Thompson saying of the air strike plans. “I think Khrushchev’s gotten himself in one hell of a fix.” The former ambassador knew that Khrushchev could be impulsive and later regretful. He imagined a terrified Khrushchev, in awe of the events he had set in motion. Thompson suggested that Kennedy help the Soviet leader find his way out of the crisis. Kennedy decided on a naval blockade rather than an air strike, and Khrushchev backed down.

The lesson McNamara drew? Empathize with your enemy, and intuit how the world looks to them. “We must try to put ourselves in their skin, and look at ourselves through their eyes,” he said.

History tells us that to influence Kim, we must empathize (note: not sympathize) with him. To figure out what makes him tick, Trump and his advisers must first understand how we look to the North Korean leader, peering at us from his very particular vantage point.

Stephen Benedict Dyson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut

This article was originally published on The Conversation.