Browsing by Author "Imran, Zafar"
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Item Climate Change and its Impact on the Political Dynamics of Pakistan(2013-07) Imran, ZafarThe assessment report of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council on Climate and Social Stress and the Intelligence Community Assessment on Global Water Security both refer to a possible link between climate change and social instability in countries around the world. They argue that climatic variations in combination with preexisting social and political problems may contribute to social disruptions that could result in political instability, state failure, and sub-national violence, and thereby pose threats to international security. Although there is a growing consensus about climate change’s ability to disrupt societies, and ultimately threaten global security, little is understood about what these climate-induced social and political stresses will look like and how they may interact with each other, as well as with other factors endogenous to a society, to destabilize countries and regions. Most of the literature on the subject points to a mono-causal link between climate change and resource scarcity (predominantly food and water), and explains how food and water insecurity may stoke socio-political stresses. Although, this “neo-Malthusian” theory has improved our understanding about the dangers that climate change poses to international security, it is far from being complete and is over simplistic. Using Pakistan as a case study, this paper argues that the link between climate change, resource scarcity, and conflict is not as straightforward as many studies suggest it to be. Piecing together publicly available data about Pakistan, this paper suggest two points: First, climatic changes disturb the social and political equilibrium of a society by either creating new fault lines in the social, political, or ethnic landscape of that society, or by exacerbating existing ones. Disequilibrium brought about by climatic variability creates new winners and losers, and manifests itself in the form of social and political unrest by heightening tensions among them. Conflict may come later and will be difficult to reverse, as it will occur not only due to resource scarcity but also because of political grievances and tensions in a highly fragmented society. Second, the preexisting social and political configuration of a society will determine how that society responds to climate change disturbing this equilibrium. For example, a reduction in water availability may not always translate into a lower agricultural yield. This dynamic is likely to depend on the influence agriculturists have over the distribution of water resources and related policy tools. The nature and level of stresses will differ from society to society and will depend on how new winners and losers adjust as climatic changes alter the availability of resources.Item CLIMATE CHANGE AND POLITICAL CONTENTION – A MECHANISM BASED FRAMEWORK(2019) Imran, Zafar; Gallagher, Nancy W; Patwardhan, Anand; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation proposes a framework to systematically analyze the potential of climate change to cause social and political unrest. Extant literature generated on the topic seems to have come to a standstill in establishing whether such a link exists, as there is no clear evidence that climate-related stresses directly contributed to civil war onset. The framework put forth in this research makes the case that climate change process, contrasted from climate change variables aggregated at the country-year level, unfolds in a varied manner within and across societies. It is the interaction of changes in the natural system with a society’s preexisting social, economic, and political processes, in addition to coping responses from vulnerable populations, that determine the nature and trajectory of social and political stresses. The dissertation contends, most notably, that the fundamental problem with the extant analytical approach has more to do with ontological assumptions than explanatory approaches (qualitative vs. quantitative). Given the complexity and emergence inherent in the phenomenon under consideration, the positivist ontology is unsuited and incapable to reveal causal pathways linking climate change with predictors of social and political instability and conflict. This research uses critical realism as an ontological basis for the mechanism-based framework proposed in this dissertation. The framework is applied on the case study of Pakistan where direct and indirect effects of climate change are interacting with the country’s political economy, and imposing social and political stresses to the extent of stoking a social movement organized and run by vulnerable farmers. Intra-annual changes in the Indus stream-flows, as well as temporal and spatial changes in the long-term trends of temperature and rainfall have destabilized Pakistan’s agricultural sector. Coping responses taken by vulnerable populations appear to be not just ineffective but are producing system effects with society-wide implications. The result is a farmers’ movement that is although in its early phases, has become a potent political force, and has resulted in more than 700 large increasingly violent protests in the last few years alone.