ABSTRACT
This applied chapter focuses on the intersection of climate-related disasters and violent conflict, drawing on mixed methods data analysis from India, the Philippines, Kenya, Ethiopia and Niger. It first outlines the relationship between violent conflict, climate-related disasters and negative poverty dynamics, which vary depending on conflict ideologies but generally converge to drive the amplification and protraction of polycrisis. The chapter presents competition over resources as a key deliberate mechanism driving this downward mobility at the conflict–climate nexus, linked to weak governance and corruption as historical structural dimensions shaping crisis vulnerability. It then considers the crises-like economic conditions that conflict itself may generate, for example by depressing labour markets, reinforcing exploitation and criminality, or reducing confidence to invest in infrastructure development. It finally recognises that impacts at the climate–conflict nexus have both a bidirectional and forward-reinforcing relationship with poverty, marked by its production of intangible harms including through intersectional effects on education and mental health that perpetuate poverty’s intergenerational persistence.
