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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

In Syria a multiple-year drought in the 2000s was blamed for spurring a mass
migration into towns and cities which became flashpoints for revolts in 2011/12,
beginning the protracted civil war. More recently, droughts attributed to climate
change in central America, especially Guatemala, have been blamed for spurring
migration caravans and controversies at the southern border of the USA

In the cases of Sudan and Syria, these theses were then challenged with
two main arguments. First, the doubters argued, the data are too weak to establish
a firm statistical correlation between climate change and the specific droughts in
question, or between the droughts and the political conflict. Second, the conflicts
involved many other factors, old and new, including ethnicity, ambitious leaders,
and broader geopolitics (Gleick, 2014; Selby et al., 2017; Sorbo, 2019).

In other words, it is difficult to isolate the role of climate change in these
events. As we note above, the general impact of climate change will be to intensify
existing social, economic and political stresses.

Assuming for the moment, that climate change did have some role,
of unknowable magnitude, in the Syrian crisis, the way the crisis developed
is instructive. After armed conflict began, the internal migration snowballed,
spilled over the borders, and continued for several years, involving between
6 and 12 million people (depending on methods of estimation). A movement
of this scale created massive opportunities for entrepreneurship, attracting
small-scale operators and organized crime networks into the business of moving
people. The flow then snowballed again, drawing in opportunistic and desperate
migrants from other zones, taking advantage of this infrastructure. In the
destination countries (Europe, Australia), fierce debate then arose over managing
this flow, resulting in a growth of exclusive nationalism, the election of more
right-wing governments on anti-migrant platforms, and rising conflict between
countries.

In sum, the consequences of crises (in which climate change may be a
factor) can be complex and far-reaching.

Conclusion: Inaction and Action

The novelist, Amitav Ghosh (2016, 2019), has written a think-piece
(The Great Derangement) and a novel (Gun Island) questioning why the
worldwide reaction to climate change has been so weak. A key character in
the novel says:

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