Introduction

The relationship between climate vulnerability and conflict has received considerable attention from the academic and donor community (World Bank 2011; Gleditsch 2012; Scheffran et al. 2012a; USAID 2012). Some studies have identified an overlap of countries facing a double exposure of natural disasters and armed conflict (Scheffran et al. 2012c), whilst others attempt to demonstrate (Burke et al. 2009; Hsiang, Burke, and Miguel 2013) or reject (Buhaug 2010; Slettebak 2012) causal trends between climatic change and incidence of conflict. So far, the field is dominated by quantitative approaches analysing temperature and precipitation data in conjunction with conflict records (Scheffran et al. 2012c, 2012b; Theisen, Gleditsch, and Buhaug 2013 provide overviews).