Does climate change and human pressure on local environments contribute to violent conflict?
Dr. Tom Deligiannis will present findings from research in Peru’s southern highlands that links human pressure on local agricultural resource endowments to the worsening of local group conflict in the decades leading to Peru’s dirty war against the Shining Path insurgency in the early 1980s. As climate change and development continue to transform traditional livelihoods in many developing countries, this research offers detailed local evidence about how human pressure on local resource endowments, combined with economic, political, and development changes, can exacerbate local violent conflict.
About the speaker
Tom Deligiannis is a Instructor in the Department of Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. His research focuses on the peace and conflict implications of human pressure on the natural environment, particularly qualitative research linking environmental change and violent conflict.
