Socio-economic impacts in a Changing Climate: Case Study Syria

Abstract

As a result of climate change, it is clear in the coming years to provide an instability for conflict zones. Climate change has potential socio-economic consequences in addition to environmental impacts. Drought is one of the result of climate change especially in Mediterranean. It can also increase by unsustainable government policies and effects quality of life of people. Decreasing of water resources and rural land using force people to migrate from rural areas to urban areas as a consequence of low productivity from agriculture and animal husbandry, rising of food prices and decreasing of wealth level. Results of climate change have differences depends on features of countries as climate vulnerability, social policies, ethnicity. In this study we evaluate socio-economic impacts of 2006-2010 severe drought in Syria comparing with other climate impacted countries. There are a number of studies in which the Syrian war is overstated by the excess of the relationship as much as the work that expresses the emergence of climate changes as a result. We observed that in addition current problems in Syria, drought between 2007 and 2010 contributed to uprising in 2011 and consequently to immigration, conflict and terrorism. It is not wrong to evaluate that the impact of the spread of conflicts inherited from generations before the arid years of succession is at least as effective as the causes of other conflicts. The long-term effects of climate change, which has begun to emerge, indicate potential conflicts that can develop in water-scarce, multicultural geographies, particularly in the Middle East.

Keywords

• Syria,Immigration,drought,climate change,climate oscillation

References

1. Åkesson, U. and K. Falk (2015). "Climate Change in Syria–trends, projections and implications."
2. Al-Riffai, P. Breisinger, C. Verner, D. And Zhu, T.(2012). Droughts in Syria: An assessment of impacts and options for improving the resilience of the poor. Quarterly Journal of International Agriculture, Vol. 51(1): 21-49.
3. Albrecht, E., M. Schmidt, M. Mißler-Behr and S. P. Spyra (2014). Implementing Adaptation Strategies by Legal, Economic and Planning Instruments on Climate Change, Springer.
4. Alesina, A., A. Devleeschauwer, W. Easterly, S. Kurlat and R. Wacziarg (2003). "Fractionalization." Journal of Economic growth 8(2): 155-194.
5. Buis, A., S. Cole and J. Wilson. (2013). "NASA Satellites Find Freshwater Losses in Middle East." Retrieved 25.01.2018, from https://www.NASA.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20130212.html.
6. Burke, M. B., E. Miguel, S. Satyanath, J. A. Dykema and D. B. Lobell (2009). "Warming increases the risk of civil war in Africa." Proceedings of the national Academy of sciences 106(49): 20670-20674.
7. Chander, G., B. L. Markham and D. L. Helder (2009). "Summary of current radiometric calibration coefficients for Landsat MSS, TM, ETM+, and EO-1 ALI sensors." Remote sensing of environment 113(5): 893-903.
8. FAO (2017). GIEWS Crop Prospects and Food Situation. Quarterly Global Report, GIEWS-Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture.

9. Flato, G., J. Marotzke, B. Abiodun, P. Braconnot, S. C. Chou, W. J. Collins, P. Cox, F. Driouech, S. Emori and V. Eyring (2013). "Evaluation of climate models. In: climate change 2013: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change." Climate Change 2013 5: 741-866.
10. Gepts, P. (2010). "Crop domestication as a long-term selection experiment." Plant breeding reviews 24(Part 2): 1-44.
11. Gleditsch, N. P. (2012). Whither the weather? Climate change and conflict, Sage Publications Sage UK: London, England.
12. Gleditsch, N. P., P. Wallensteen, M. Eriksson, M. Sollenberg and H. Strand (2002). "Armed conflict 1946-2001: A new dataset." Journal of peace research 39(5): 615-637.
13. Gleick, P. H. (2014). "Water, drought, climate change, and conflict in Syria." Weather, Climate, and Society 6(3): 331-340.
14. Gray, E. (2016). "NASA Finds Drought in Eastern Mediterranean Worst of Past 900 Years." Retrieved 25.01.2018, from https://www.NASA.gov/feature/goddard/2016/NASA-finds-drought-in-eastern-mediterranean-worst-of-past-900-years.
15. Hoerling, M., J. Eischeid, J. Perlwitz, X. Quan, T. Zhang and P. Pegion (2012). "On the increased frequency of Mediterranean drought." Journal of Climate 25(6): 2146-2161.
16. IFAD (2010). Syrian Arab Republic: Thematic study on land reclamation through de-rocking. Near East and North Africa Division Programme management department. Rome, Italy, International Fund for Agricultural Development
17. IPCC (2007). Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [B. Metz, O.R. Davidson, P.R. Bosch, R. Dave, L.A. Meyer (eds)]. Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.,: 851.
18. IPCC (2014): Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Edenhofer, O., R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, E. Farahani, S. Kadner, K. Seyboth, A. Adler, I. Baum, S. Brunner, P. Eickemeier, B.
19. Kriemann, J. Savolainen, S. Schlömer, C. von Stechow, T. Zwickel and J.C. Minx (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA
20. Jones, P. and I. Harris (2008). "CRU Time Series (TS) high resolution gridded datasets." Clim Res Unit, Univ East Anglia, Norwich, UK). Available at iridl. ldeo. columbia. edu/expert/SOURCES/. UEA/. CRU/. TS3p1/. monthly/. pre.
21. Kaisi, A., M. Yasser and Y. Mahrouseh (2004). Syrian Arab Republic Country Report. Non-conventional water use workshop, Cairo.
22. Kelley, C. P., S. Mohtadi, M. A. Cane, R. Seager and Y. Kushnir (2015). "Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(11): 3241-3246.
23. Mathbout, S., Lopez-Bustins, J.A., Martin-Vide, J., Bech, J. and Rodrigo, F.S. (2018). Spatial and temporal analysis of drought variability at several time scales in Syria during 1961–2012Atmospheric Research, Vol.200: 153-168.
24. Meehl GA et al. (2007) The WCRP CMIP3 multimodel dataset: A new era in climate change research Bulletin of the American meteorological society 88:1383-1394
25. Mohtadi, S. (2012). "Climate change and the Syrian uprising." Retrieved 19.01.2018, from https://thebulletin.org/climate-change-and-syrian-uprising.
26. Mourad, K. A. and R. Berndtsson (2011). "Syrian water resources between the present and the future." Air, Soil and Water Research 4: 93.
27. Müller, M. F., J. Yoon, S. M. Gorelick, N. Avisse and A. Tilmant (2016). "Impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on land use and transboundary freshwater resources." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(52): 14932-14937.
28. Nett, K. and L. Rüttinger (2016). Insurgency, terrorism and organised crime in a warming climate, Analysing the links between climate change and Non-State Armed Groups. A. Climate Diplomacy, Federal Foreign Office. Berlin: 64.
29. New, M., M. Hulme and P. Jones (2000). "Representing twentieth-century space–time climate variability. Part II: Development of 1901–96 monthly grids of terrestrial surface climate." Journal of climate 13(13): 2217-2238.
30. Republic of Turkey Ministry of Interior Directorate General of Migration Management. (2018). Retrieved 24.01.2018, 2018, from http://www.goc.gov.tr/icerik3/kitlesel-akinlar_409_558_559.
31. Selby, J., Dahi, O.S., Frohlish, C. and Hulme, M. (2017). Climate change and the Syrian civil war revisited, Political Geography, Vol.60:232-244.
32. Schleussner, C.-F., J. F. Donges, R. V. Donner and H. J. Schellnhuber (2016). "Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(33): 9216-9221.
33. Schmandt, J. and A. l. Kibaroğlu (2016). Sustainability of Engineered Rivers in Arid Lands, PRP 190, LBJ School of Public Affairs.
34. Schneider, U., T. Fuchs, A. Meyer-Christoffer and B. Rudolf (2008). "Global precipitation analysis products of the GPCC." Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), DWD, Internet Publikation 112.
35. Shamout, N. (2014). "Syria Faces an Imminent Food and Water Crisis." from https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/syria-faces-imminent-food-and-water-crisis.
36. Slettebak, R. T. (2012). "Don’t blame the weather! Climate-related natural disasters and civil conflict." Journal of Peace Research 49(1): 163-176.
37. Sorooshian, S., K. Hsu, D. Braithwaite and H. Ashouri (2014). "NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information Using Artificial Neural Networks (PERSIANN-CDR), Version 1, Revision 1." Available at gis. ncdc. noaa. gov/geoportal/catalog/search/resource/details. page.
38. The World Bank. (2017). "Data - Syrian Arab Republic." Retrieved 17.01.2018, from https://data.worldbank.org/country/syrian-arab-republic.Themnér, L. and P. Wallensteen (2011). "Armed conflict, 1946–2010." Journal of Peace Research 48(4): 525-536.
39. Trondalen, J. M. (2009). "Climate changes, water security and possible remedies for the Middle East." Scientific Paper from Potential Conflict to Co-operation Potential (UNESCO PCCP, 2009. http://www. unwater. org/downloads/181886E. pdf.
40. Tucker, C. J. (1979). "Red and photographic infrared linear combinations for monitoring vegetation." Remote sensing of Environment 8(2): 127-150.
41. URL 1: (2018). Is Syria really a ‘climate war’? We examined the links between drought, migration and conflict, https://theconversation.com (12.03.2018).
42. Vose, R. S., R. L. Schmoyer, P. M. Steurer, T. C. Peterson, R. Heim, T. R. Karl and J. K. Eischeid (1992). The Global Historical Climatology Network: Long-term monthly temperature, precipitation, sea level pressure, and station pressure data, Oak Ridge National Lab., TN (United States). Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.
43. Wu, W. and E. De Pauw (2011). A simple algorithm to identify irrigated croplands by remote sensing. Proceedings of the 34th International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment (ISRSE), Sydney, Australia.
44. Xu, H. (2006). "Modification of normalised difference water index (NDWI) to enhance open water features in remotely sensed imagery." International journal of remote sensing 27(14): 3025-3033.
45. Zakhem. BA. and Kattaa, B. (2016). Cumulative drought effect on Figeh karstic spring discharge (Damascus basin, Syria), Environmental Earth Sciences, Vol. 75(2): 1-17.