We Need To Do More To Understand How Climate Change And Conflict Are Linked. Here's Why

World Economic Forum | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Previous studies have concluded that the effects of climate change can increase the risk of violent conflict Image: REUTERS/Amit Dave

The impacts of climate change are increasingly viewed as global security risks, which will have far-reaching implications for both human and renewable natural systems.

Most climate–conflict research has focused on East Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
The SIPRI Insights paper, Climate change and violent conflict: Sparse evidence from South Asia and South East Asia, explores and summarizes the findings from a systematic literature review of climate–conflict research on South Asia and South East Asia.

Although these regions have been greatly affected by both climate change and conflict, there have only been a small number of rigorous academic studies that focus on the climate–conflict relationship.

Interlinked causes

While this constrains the ability to draw general conclusions, there is context-specific evidence that climate change can have an effect on the causes and dynamics of violent conflict in the region when: (a) it leads to a deterioration in people’s livelihoods; (b) it influences the tactical considerations of armed groups; (c) elites use it to exploit social vulnerabilities and resources; and (d) it displaces people and increases levels of migration.
In acknowledging that these mechanisms are often interlinked and more noticeable in some climatic, conflict and socio-economic contexts than in others, the need for more research in both South Asia and South East Asia is clear.

In summary, and acknowledging the limited evidence base, what can be gleaned about the linkages between climate change and violent conflict in South Asia and South East Asia?

The key finding from the systematic literature review is that knowledge is worryingly limited. In fact, countries such as Pakistan, Myanmar and Afghanistan, which are experiencing climate change and are host to notorious violent conflicts, are underrepresented in academic research.

Similarly, the low number of rigorous academic studies that have so far been conducted in the countries and regions of South Asia and South East Asia constrains the ability to draw broader conclusions about the regions as a whole.

Nonetheless, the studies reviewed confirm previous analyses and show that, under certain circumstances, climate change increases the risk of conflict.

Four mechanisms

Moreover, this study demonstrates that the four mechanisms identified in previous reviews of the climate–conflict linkage are also at play in the context of South Asia and South East Asia, albeit with notable differences.

Climate-related environmental change influences violent conflicts when: (a) it negatively affects people’s livelihoods; (b) it influences the tactical considerations of armed groups in ongoing conflicts; (c) elites exploit social vulnerabilities and resources; and (d) it displaces people and increases migration in vulnerable and highly vulnerable natural resource dependent contexts.

It is important to analyze and compare regions that, despite being vulnerable and highly exposed to climate change, are able to peacefully mitigate such stressors

Due to the limited amount of rigorous empirical research on the climate–conflict linkage in South Asia and South East Asia, more research will be indispensable to refining understanding of how climate change might increase the risk of violence and under what circumstances it is likely to do so.

As violent conflicts are multi-causal, context-specific and develop over time, further research is essential not only to address knowledge gaps, but also to enable a more refined understanding of the applicability and adequacy of different response mechanisms in diverse contexts.

To this end, it is important to analyze and compare regions that, despite being vulnerable and highly exposed to climate change, are able to peacefully mitigate such stressors. Nonetheless, there are relevant lessons to draw from the available research.

The climate–conflict linkage primarily plays out in contexts that are already vulnerable to climate change, and where income is highly dependent on agriculture and fishing. Therefore, it is important to support the development of alternative sources of income, to increase the coping capacity of communities to manage temporary losses of income and to strengthen communities’ resilience in order to mitigate conflict risks.

Various scholars have made suggestions that this might entail insurance schemes that smooth out the annual income of vulnerable populations, a reduction in income sensitivity to climate conditions, legal reform and improved land rights, drought preparedness programmes and agricultural assistance.
Previous programmes, such as food assistance programmes, have been followed by either a decrease or an increase in violence at different periods of implementation, as they are likely to alter the power relations in a community.

Disaster risk management

The dynamics of violence following the implementation of projects need to be considered when policy responses are planned. The research therefore points to the need to develop conflict-sensitive analyses when designing and implementing disaster risk management and climate programming.

In conclusion, the underlying review illustrates the interplay between different mechanisms that link climate change and conflict.

To further understand the relationship and advance policy guidance on how to mitigate conflict risks, future research should address resource management, conflict prevention and disaster risk reduction in an integrated manner.

Future research needs to contribute in the following three key areas.

1) Addressing spatial and temporal differences.The impacts of climate change are expected to increase over time, but many climate-related disasters are seasonal and affect the dynamics of conflicts differently throughout the year. In addition, few studies address urban contexts despite increased urbanization and the vulnerability of urban centres in the region.

2) Making use of contextual understanding.Climate change and conflict events have different effects on different societies. It is therefore crucial to understand these context-specific differences in order to enable tailored responses. These should include local and marginalized communities. To provide contextually adequate responses that empower vulnerable groups, it is important to assess the needs, vulnerabilities and resilience of affected communities.

3) Taking account of institutional capacity and governance. The transnational character of climate change provides new challenges, but also increased relevance, for institutions and organizations. Where institutional capacity is low, there is an increased risk that aid will be mismanaged and the risk of conflict after a climatic event increases. It is therefore important to analyze how local, national and regional institutions are developing their ability to deal with these risks.

Links

• Climate change and violent conflict: Sparse evidence from South Asia and South East Asia
• We can save the Earth. Here's how | World Economic Forum
• UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals
• 100 Coalitions Raise Ambition for Climate Change and Sustainable Development Goals at Impact Summit
• From clean energy to gender equality, these innovators are changing the world
• UN police don’t just keep the peace, they help prevent future conflict
• Is there a link between climate change and conflict?
• We need to address the impact climate change will have on migration

On The Attack Against Climate Change

New York Times - Alina Tugend

A woman collecting plastic in Haiti, where the Plastic Bank began its work three years ago. The company aims to stop plastic before it gets into the ocean. Credit Plastic Bank

Thousands of organizations around the world are trying in big ways and small to confront the challenges of climate change. Here are 10 examples.

Under the Sea

Coral reefs are beautiful to look at, but they also play a crucial role as coastal barriers when storms or flooding hits, absorbing about 97 percent of wave energy.

But because of rising temperatures, coral cover in the Caribbean is estimated to have decreased by about 80 percent in the last few decades, said Joseph Pollock, Caribbean coral strategy director at the Nature Conservancy. He added that in 2016, a marine heat wave was estimated to have killed about a third of the shallow corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The Nature Conservancy in partnership with Secore International, a conservation organization and a leader in coral restoration, are using an innovative approach to address the problem: helping coral reproduction.

Coral mating works this way, Dr. Pollock said: Many coral species spawn by putting out bundles of eggs and sperm one night a year.

“It’s like the craziest singles bar ever,” he said.

Researchers know when those nights are, so they go out, collect the eggs and sperm and then mix them together to cross-fertilize, grow them for a few days or weeks until they become coral juveniles, then place them back in the sea.

The survival rate is about 10 percent, Dr. Pollock said, but that’s much better than the survival rate without the help of the scientists. And compared with other restoration techniques, the cross-fertilization creates greater genetic diversity, and that creates more resilience.

The work is focused on the Caribbean now, but Dr. Pollock said the hope is that it can be used throughout the world.

“The aim of the work is to develop tools and techniques that are low cost and don’t require a huge amount of super specialized personnel and infrastructure,” he said.

One of the solar microgrids that have been installed by Resilient Power Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria knocked out most of the island’s power grid last year. Credit Resilient Power Puerto Rico

A New Kind of Power

After Hurricane Maria swept through Puerto Rico last year and knocked out almost all of its power grid, most residents were left without electricity for months. Jonathan Marvel, one of the founders of Marvel Architects, was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He wanted not only to help bring back power but also do it in a way that would be more environmentally sustainable than it was before the storm.

So, with colleagues and friends, he created Resilient Power Puerto Rico, to develop and install solar microgrids for as many people as he could in the most efficient way possible. The organization, which received an early donation of batteries from Tesla, focused its efforts on areas with high-density, low-rise housing and installed the grids on rooftops of community centers that typically serve 3,000 to 4,000 people.

Their work complements other efforts not only to rebuild the island but also to make its infrastructure more resilient and environmentally green.

One benefit of the solar microgrids is that they can store solar power — allowing them to operate if the main power source is disrupted — which solar panels alone can’t do.

So far, 28 microgrids have been installed, serving close to 100,000 people, Mr. Marvel said, and 30 more are almost finished. The cost, covered by donations from companies and individuals, is about $25,000 to $30,000 per solar hub.

Almost all of the power on the island is supplied by fossil fuels, but Puerto Rico is “an ideal locale to use solar power and renewable energy because it has so many more solar days than in many parts of the world,” said Mr. Marvel, whose offices are based in Manhattan and San Juan. “We want to keep the candle burning with solar energy, not fossil fuel.”

Saving the Soil

The role that soil plays in climate change is often ignored, but changing the way it is managed could have a big impact on global warming.

Unfortunately, most soil has become less productive, with environmental consequences, said Michael Doane, managing director for agriculture and food systems at the Nature Conservancy. That’s because it has been eroded through too much tilling, lack of adequate ground cover and a failure to diversify crops.

“This living ecosystem has become dead and we’re trying to bring it back to life,” Mr. Doane said.

One pilot program, now taking place on more than 100 American farms in about six states, is focused on reducing or eliminating the amount of tillage done on farms. It is done under the auspices of the Soil Health Partnership, a collaboration of environmental groups, farmers, academics and industry working to alter soil health practices.

“Tillage is actually detrimental to soil,” he said. One of the main problems is that tilling releases carbon stored in the soil, which becomes carbon dioxide when exposed to air and contributes to global warming. Tilling also makes the earth more susceptible to erosion and less able to absorb heavy rainfalls.

One solution is using plants — either rotating crops or using ground cover such as grass, depending on what’s needed to repair the soil — to cover the soil before and after the main cash crop is planted. Diverse plant cover has been found to make the soil healthier and helps control weeds, Mr. Doane said.

“We want to try to avoid soil bare of plant cover,” he added. “Instead, our vision is a continuous living cover.” Calling it “nature’s solution to climate change,” he said the process of photosynthesis — where plants store the carbon in the soil and release oxygen — could be “a very cost-effective way to mitigate climate change.”

This won’t work on every farm, because each is different, but “we know this works for many farmers in many situations — we have good data on that,” Mr. Doane said.

And the process can make farms more productive by creating soil that can better hold water and recycle nutrients, meaning farmers can spend less money on fertilizer.

“If we’re going to solve climate change,” he said, “We have to find economic solutions for people who don’t know they’re solving climate change.”

Up on the Roof

Keeping cool is becoming more and more difficult as temperatures across the world spike. In addition, air-conditioning uses hydrofluorocarbons, which contribute substantially to global warming.

One solution, which numerous cities around the world have embraced, is called cool roofs, which is simply painting dark rooftops with a reflective white paint or wrapping them with a light membrane that reduces the absorption of heat. This not only addresses the “urban heat island” effect — urban areas tend to be significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas due to human activities — but also helps decrease strain on electric grids and alleviate air pollution.

A Yale University study cites a finding that if every roof in the United States were painted white, the urban heat island effect would be decreased by one-third.

New York City, for example, has a CoolRoofs Initiative. Since 2009, 5,000 volunteers have painted more than five million square feet of rooftops in the city, according to the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability.

In India, where only 10 percent of the households have air-conditioning units, two cities — Hyderabad and Ahmedabad — ran cool-roof demonstration projects. In Ahmedabad, volunteers and others painted 3,000 roofs in slum areas with white lime paint, said Anjali Jaiswal, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s India program. The environmental organization worked on the projects with local partners.

DuPont, which has a research center in Hyderabad, owns Tyvek, a synthetic material that is often used in construction and can cover dark roofs. The company donated the material to cover 25 roofs in the city. Both paint and the coverings are considered equally effective, Ms. Jaiswal said.

Cool roofs can reduce indoor temperature by three to nine degrees Fahrenheit, she added, for as little as seven cents a square foot or $4 a home.

As incomes and temperatures rise, so is demand for air-conditioning, she said. An important aspect of addressing climate change will be both developing more environmentally friendly units and reducing the demand for them.

Both Indian cities are now developing a citywide cool-roofs policy mandating them for all municipal buildings and working with business leaders’ corporate responsibility programs to expand them throughout the cities.

For relatively little cost, Ms. Jaiswal said, cool roofs are “saving lives, reducing temperatures and responding to climate change.”

Turning Plastic Into Money

Collecting plastic to recycle as a way to earn money is nothing new. But David Katz, founder and chief executive of the Plastic Bank, has created a virtuous cycle of buying and reselling the plastic.

The company’s idea, which last year received one of the United Nations’ “Momentum for Change” climate solutions awards, aims to stop plastic before it even gets to the ocean by having collectors pick it up around canals, waterways and other areas that lead into the ocean. Through partnerships between the Plastic Bank and major corporations such as the German-based Henkel, the plastic is then reused. That cuts down on the emissions that cause greenhouse gasses used to make new plastic.

According to research from the nonprofit Earth Day Network, about eight million metric tons of plastic pollution are discarded into the ocean every year, equivalent to one garbage truck full of plastics being dumped every minute.

Plastic Bank, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, started its work in Haiti three years ago; now about 2,000 collectors there can either receive cash, buy goods or services — such as cooking oil, LED lights or topping off pay-as-you-go cellphones — at one of the 40 recycling outlets around the country. They also have the ability, through the Plastic Bank’s app developed in partnership with IBM, to transfer the money into an online savings account.

In Haiti, where more than half the people live on less than $2 a day, a full-time collector can receive several dollars a day, Mr. Katz said.

The company also trains and supports local people who run the recycling outlets.

The Plastic Bank has expanded to Brazil, and Indonesia; this month, it opened its first site in the Philippines and in the first week, Mr. Katz said, collected around 120,000 bottles.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Constance Okollet had never heard of climate change, but she knew that her village in Uganda had been devastated by a 2007 flood that affected most of the country. She knew the weather was growing increasingly unpredictable, making the farming of the typical crops such as maize, sorghum and millet ever more difficult and sending a population that had been poor but self-sufficient spiraling into destitution.

“We thought God was punishing us,” Ms. Okollet said. She suggested to her neighbors that they form a group to help one another and was elected to lead what was soon called the Osukuru United Women Network.

At first, they helped each other in small ways, such as pooling their savings. Then in 2009, Ms. Okollet heard on the radio that Oxfam, the global relief organization, was holding a meeting focused on food insecurity in the area, and she decided to go.

Once at the meeting, she said: “They kept talking about climate change and I asked, ‘What are you people talking about? What do you mean by that?’”

She learned. And she and other members of the network (which now includes some men) have since begun awareness education about climate change — its impact and how to adapt — through workshops in churches and wherever people gather.

They have undertaken numerous larger projects as well. The network received a $5,000 grant from the Global Greengrants Fund, a nonprofit that provides small grants to local groups working on environmental issues. The money went to buy six teams of oxen, which are much faster than the traditional hand tilling. An acre can be tilled in two days, compared with a hoe, which can take four weeks. Ms. Okollet said. This makes it easier to time the planting to good weather.

Two years ago, 60 members of the network were also flown to Nairobi, Kenya, to learn how to make and sell charcoal briquettes; deforestation means firewood is scarce and the briquettes in any case are greener. They mix ash, dry leaves and water, which when dried, actually even cook better than wood, she said.

“We also sell the briquettes to make money — even $1 can help,” she said. “You can pay your school fees or start a small business, and you don’t have to take a loan from the bank.”

Peatland restoration outside Moscow. The abandonment of drained peatlands in parts of Russia has created not only widespread land degradation but also huge quantities of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Credit Kirill Shahmatov

Restoring Peatlands

Peatlands may not be the first thing people think about when focusing on climate change, but the abandonment of drained peatlands in parts of Russia has created not only widespread land degradation, but also huge quantities of carbon dioxide, through peat oxidation. And carbon dioxide contributes to global warming.

Over the decades, millions of acres have been drained and used for agriculture, forestry and the extraction of peat, a fuel used for heating and electrical energy. But when it was no longer profitable to dig out the peat, many of the areas were deserted, said Jozef Bednar, project manager for Wetlands International.

“Peatland ecosystems play a crucial role in global climate,” said Dr. Bednar, noting that they store several times more carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas than any other ecosystem. As such, he added, “the world’s peat bogs represent an important ‘carbon sink’ — a place where carbon dioxide is stored below ground and can’t escape into the atmosphere and exacerbate global warming.”

Dr. Bednar offered one staggering number: Peatlands cover only 3 percent of the global total land area, but emit twice as much carbon dioxide as the world’s forests, which cover more than 30 percent. The peatlands drained by people are prone to fires and the accompanying smoke spreads long distances, creating serious health problems.

Wetlands International, along with its partners under the International Climate Initiative of the German government, began a major restoration of the peatlands after the extensive peat fires in the Moscow region in 2010. The goal is to return the peatlands to their original waterlogged state. With the help of experts, this is done by correctly blocking drainage ditches and channels so the peatlands’ water-storage capacity is re-established, Dr. Bednar said.

The project was awarded a United National “Momentum for Change” climate solutions award last year and, to date, about 100,000 acres of drained peatlands have been restored in Russia and the process can be replicated in other countries facing the same problem, he added.

Climate Literacy

Climate and climate change are complicated, and while schools are a good place to learn about it, not all teachers have the knowledge and resources to teach the topic. That’s why the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a partnership of federal agencies, education-focused nongovernmental organizations, teachers and scientists wrote “The Essential Principles of Climate Literacy,” a curriculum guide for teachers.

Available since 2009, but in the process of being updated for release at the end of the year, it is for at all ages and all forms of education, said Frank Niepold, a senior climate education program manager for NOAA and lead author of the guide.

“In the 1990s, less than 1 percent of the national standards for science education was related to climate change. Now about 30 percent is,” he added.

At the same time, the partnership established a website, Cleanet.org, that offers climate and energy educational resources — including quizzes- and guidance for teachers.

Mr. Niepold estimated that over 50 percent of children in kindergarten through 12th grade nationwide are learning from all or some of the climate literacy framework, and “we’re on our way to 75 percent,” he said.

Other countries are also using the guide in creating their own curriculums and standards, he added, and this month the National Science Teachers Association released its position paper on teaching climate science, referencing the Essentials of Climate Literacy as one of its sources.

“Students are aware of climate change and want to know more and want to be part of solving it,” Mr. Niepold said. “And they know that requires an understanding of the fundamentals.”

An Ethiopian baby delivered with help from WeCareSolar, a nonprofit whose Solar Suitcases have been received by 3,500 facilities in 27 developing countries. Credit Liz Hale

Fighting Energy Poverty

When Laura Stachel, an obstetrician, took a two-week trip to a remote hospital in Nigeria 10 years ago, she was interested in maternal health, not solar energy. But what she saw there changed her mind and her life.

She knew maternal mortality was high: Worldwide, Dr. Stachel said, about 300,000 women and two million newborns die every year from pregnancy and childbirth complications. But she did not realize the extent of what has been called energy poverty.

The hospital in northern Nigeria that she visited did not have electricity for 12 hours a day. Daytime cesarean sections were done by ambient light, and once, when it occurred in the middle of the night and the power went out, one was performed by the light of Dr. Stachel’s headlamp.

She told the stories to her husband, Hal Aronson, who holds a doctorate in environmental sociology and has focused on solar energy issues for years. He designed and built what is now called a Solar Suitcase: solar equipment that is easy to transport, install and use in areas where power supplies are unreliable.

The kit, the size of a suitcase, comes with everything needed from solar panels to medical lighting to fetal monitors. As news about the Solar Suitcases was spreading, Dr. Stachel and Dr. Aronson also started the nonprofit WeCareSolar, which has received grants from foundations, corporations and individuals. Last year, it received a United Nations “Momentum for Change” climate solutions award.

Working in partnership with nonprofits and United Nations agencies, about 3,500 facilities in 27 developing countries around the world have received the Solar Suitcases. It costs $3,000 to support a clinic with a Solar Suitcase for five years, Dr. Stachel said, including all the equipment, transportation and training.

The organization also works to train local people to install and maintain solar power.

The health impact is clear, but so is the impact on the environment, she said. Diesel fuel generators and kerosene lamps are polluting and generate carbon dioxide. But perhaps even more important, the move toward solar would reduce the reliance on fossil fuel — something that some major American hospitals are now trying to do.

“We could leapfrog right past that and go right to clean, green electricity,” she said.

Greener Refrigeration

Supermarkets around the world are major users of hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, which contribute to ozone depletion and global warming — and in Chile, they are the biggest user. So, it is fitting that a supermarket chain called Jumbo has become the first in the country to adopt new refrigeration technology that is far more climate friendly than traditional methods.

The new refrigeration technology uses transcritical CO2, which is a refrigerant that has a much smaller effect on the ozone layer and global warming. Hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants had replaced ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, but because their effects on global warming are so severe, there has been a worldwide effort to find a replacement. Hydrofluorocarbons have 1,000 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide.

Under the Montreal Protocol’s Kigali Amendment, countries must meet specific targets and timelines to replace hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants with more environmentally friendly alternatives.

So far, Jumbo has installed the systems in three supermarkets in Chile and will convert four more stores in the near future, said Claudia Paratori Cortés, coordinator of the Ozone Unit in in the Office of Climate Change in Chile’s Ministry of Environment.

Ms. Cortés said comparisons between two types of refrigeration — transcritical C02 and one containing hydrofluorocarbons — found that the transcritical C02 systems were 20 percent to 40 percent more energy efficient, saving around $20,000 annually.

In addition, she said, the residual heat from the transcritical CO2 systems can be used to heat water and therefore save energy.

Links

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• Saving Hummingbirds Is One Small Step in Saving the Planet
• G.E. Steps Into Europe’s Offshore Wind Market
• In Sweden, Trash Heats Homes, Powers Buses and Fuels Taxi Fleets

Geologists Are Feuding About The Collapse Of Civilization

The Atlantic - Robinson Meyer*

The year’s most acrimonious scientific fight is a mega-drama over a mega-drought.

Asmaa Waguih / Reuters

This summer, the decree went out: We are living in a new geological chapter in the planet’s 4.5-billion-year history.
For a certain corner of the world, this was big news. You have probably heard of the Jurassic period (when dinosaurs ruled the Earth) or the Cambrian explosion (when complex animal life arose). Now we had a new name for our own neighborhood in time: We modern humans—you, me, and Jesus of Nazareth—were all born in the Meghalayan age. According to the global governing body of geologists, this new era began 4,200 years ago, when a global mega-drought sent ancient societies around the world into starvation and collapse.
How interesting!, you may think. I love science! And perhaps in an earlier era, that’s all you would have had to think. The dawn of the Meghalayan would have earned some wide-eyed headlines, made life slightly easier for a few researchers, and promptly been relegated to a second-round Jeopardy! question.
Instead, the Meghalayan kicked off one of the cattiest, most intransigent fights among earth scientists that I can remember—a battle that now concerns some of the most profound questions up for scholarly debate today, including the importance of climate change, the likelihood of societal collapse, and the ultimate place of humanity in the universe.
Not that you would always know this from listening to them. “What the fuck is the Meghalayan?” a tenured professor of geology asked me in July. “It’s silly,” another said. Meanwhile, the new age’s beleaguered advocates claimed an “incredible press campaign” had misrepresented their work.
This week, the fight spilled into the pages of one of the country’s most prestigious journals, as a critic raised a new concern with the embattled age. A short article published Thursday in Science contends that the Meghalayan is premised on faulty archaeology. There is scant evidence, it says, that the worldwide mega-drought around 2200 B.C., which started the Meghalayan, brought ancient society to its knees.
“There was no sudden, universal civilizational collapse,” writes Guy Middleton, a visiting archaeologist at Newcastle University, in the piece. “Overall, the archaeological and historical evidence suggests that 2200 B.C. was not a threshold date.”

Middleton’s point is larger than just the Meghalayan: He is siding with a group of scholars, mostly at European universities, that argues that climate change has almost never led to war or total ruin in the past. He writes as much in his piece: “Climate change never inevitably results in societal collapse, though it can pose serious challenges, as it does today.”

Does climate change cause more war?
The Meghalayan’s architects did not mince words in their response.
“This is a totally misleading piece of writing, which displays a lamentable grasp of the facts,” said Mike Walker, a professor at the University of Wales and the leader of the team that proposed the Meghalayan.
“I do not see a single accurate claim,” agreed Harvey Weiss, a professor of archaeology at Yale who, also helped write the Meghalayan proposal.
In a series of emails, Weiss lambasted his critic’s credentials. “Middleton, a pop-archeology writer, failed archaeology Ph.D., and English-as-a-second-language instructor in Japan, now claims archeo-expertise in matters about which he knows nothing, and gets great audience in Science—of all journals!” he wrote.
“For me, the most intriguing question is, ‘Why does Science publish this rubbish?’” he said in another message, sent several hours later under the subject line “and Weiss added … ”
“I see you’ve been talking to Harvey Weiss!” Middleton replied when I told him about some of these charges without identifying their source. Middleton is the author of a book about societal collapse, and he holds a doctorate in Aegean prehistory. He has also “proudly” taught English for Academic Purposes classes at Tokyo University and Northumbria University, he said, writing: “It has put bread on the table since 2002 and paid me through my Ph.D.”
It wasn’t always clear that the Meghalayan would arouse this level of controversy. The new age was meant to be an aid for geologists and climate scientists who study the past 11,700 years of Earth’s history. This period of time—called the Holocene epoch—contains nearly all of modern human history and is crucial to the study of contemporary climate change.
But much to the chagrin of some scientists, the Holocene epoch is not clearly chunked into subdivisions. This ambiguity makes it hard to compare scientific conclusions: One researcher might consider the year 2000 B.C. to be “late Holocene”; another might think it the “mid-Holocene.” So in 2010, the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which standardizes geological timelines, convened a panel to fix this problem by subdividing the Holocene into thirds.

After years of discussion and debate, the commission finalized those new subdivisions in July. The “late Holocene,” it said, would start with the advent of a global mega-drought 4,200 years ago. Since the best record of this worldwide drying event comes from a stalactite in Meghalaya, India, the new age would be called the Meghalayan.

The July paper proposing the new age described the mega-drought of 2200 B.C. as “one of the most pronounced climatic events” to afflict human communities since the end of the Ice Age. It offers a tour of a world in catastrophe circa 2200 B.C.: In Egypt, the Old Kingdom “seems to have collapsed” after the Nile’s floods faltered. In Mesopotamia, the Akkadian empire crumbled, a disaster “linked to sudden acidification.” Throughout the Levant, people abandoned towns and cities. In modern-day Pakistan, the urban Harappan civilization—which once flourished in the Indus Valley—transitioned to a “rural, post-urban society.” In China, multiple Neolithic cultures failed. Settlement around the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers seems to have reached a nadir.
Middleton disputes almost all of these conclusions. Take Egypt, for instance. The pharaoh did lose power during that period, he writes, but he largely chalks this up to bureaucratic changes: “There was no disruption to Egyptian civilization, no dark age, and no mass starvation and death,” he writes.
Weiss directly contests some of these claims. “The great hallmarks of the Old Kingdom, the pyramid royal tombs cease to be built after the … mega-drought,” he said in an email. “Central government diffused to the provinces. Nile flow was diminished significantly—and thereby agricultural revenues for Old Kingdom pharaohs and their pyramid constructions.”
“I don’t think you can point to just the climate and say that the climate caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom,” said Peter Der Manuelian, a professor of Egyptology at Harvard who was not connected to either Meghalayan effort. “There’s also changes to the kingship, to the bureaucracy, economic factors, and also this general desiccation [of the environment]. Some people lean more toward the climate, and some lean more toward economics or the kingship.”
But he agreed that there was “definitely some fragmentation” in the Old Kingdom around 2200 B.C. “But thinking these days is that it was not anarchy, total collapse, and chaos and starvation,” he said.
Middleton takes a skeptical view of the idea that the 23rd century B.C. was especially devastating for human society. “I think that if you take a two-century period, you are indeed likely to find lots of changes and potentially things that modern scholars might sometimes term collapse (not necessarily helpfully),” he told me in an email. “Two hundred years separates us from the Napoleonic Wars … Take any 200 years of archaic or classical Greece or modern Europe and see how much the world changes in different ways.”

He declined to say whether the Meghalayan should be reexamined. “The Meghalayan may exist stratigraphically, that is ultimately for geologists to determine,” he told me. “As a threshold for human cultures, and in terms of the archaeology, the Meghalayan seems to me to be questionable and rather pointless.”

Walker, the professor who led the Meghalayan team, told me that “the archaeological record has no relevance whatsoever” in helping to set the new age. The mega-drought that set in 4,200 years ago is the important boundary in time, he said, adding: “I cannot understand why Science, which is supposed to be a flagship journal for global science, would publish such a poorly researched article as this.”
Middleton’s article ran as a short, two-page “perspective” in Science. In a statement, a spokeswoman for Science said that articles like Middleton’s “are examined by members of Science’s Board of Reviewing Editors (outside practicing scientists) who are experts in the related topic, as well as by Science’s in-house editors who handle papers in related areas.”
Middleton’s “call for archaeologists to pursue more interdisciplinary collaborations and publish in journals so that their latest assessments are visible to the wider discourse—for further evaluation—is one that makes it a good candidate for a perspective,” she added.
Even if Middleton’s criticism prompts no change to the Meghalayan, it points to a scholarly battle that remains unresolved. As I wrote earlier this year, scholars across economics and the social sciences currently do not agree about whether environmental change increases the chance of war and societal collapse. European scholars tend to dispute such a link; American scholars have mostly affirmed it.
“A decade ago Jared Diamond’s book was called Collapse. But reading it carefully suggested that numerous societies had actually survived remarkably in the face of environmental adversity,” said Simon Dalby, a professor of political economy at the Balsillie School of International Affairs who mostly disputes a climate-conflict connection. The next few centuries “are likely to be much less conducive to human flourishing than the last few centuries, but humanity will survive unless some major disease event transpires.”

*Robinson Meyer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers climate change and technology. 

Links

• Welcome to the Meghalayan Age - a new phase in history
• Meghalayan - Wikipedia
• Bang or whimper?
• Geology’s Timekeepers Are Feuding
• The Nastiest Feud in Science
• What Did the Continents Look Like Millions of Years Ago?