New Delhi, Aug. 1: India could face escalating levels of interpersonal and domestic violence, even dowry deaths, under the influence of abnormal rainfall and temperature driven by climate change, new research suggests. A new study, described as the most rigorous quantitative analysis yet of how climate change can influence conflict in human societies, has found that rainfall and temperature changes could stir more conflict across all regions of the world. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University in the US analysed 60 earlier studies, including three from India, one of which had found dry spells increased domestic violence, dowry deaths and kidnappings. Their findings, published today in the US journal Science, indicate that a temperature rise only one standard deviation from the normal increases the frequency of interpersonal violence by 4 per cent and the frequency of intergroup conflict by 14 per cent. "We believe multiple mechanisms are at play," Solomon Hsiang, an economist and the first author of the study at Princeton University, told The Telegraph. "Psychology, group-level effects and economic factors — there may not even be one dominant mechanism." Hsiang and his colleagues analysed evidence of rising human conflict coinciding with changes in climate such as intense drought or higher-than-average temperatures from different parts of the world at different points in human history, spanning the period from 8000BC to the present-day. "We only looked at studies that make credible causal claims about the relationship between climate change and conflict," said Marshall Burke, a team member at the University of California, Berkeley, (UCB). They found credible climate change links to spikes in domestic violence in India and Australia, assaults and murders in the US and Tanzania, ethnic violence in Europe and South Asia, land invasions in Brazil, increased use of force by police in the Netherlands and the collapse of ancient empires in China and central America. A study by US-based researchers Sheetal Sekhri at the University of Virginia and Adam Storeygard at Tufts University has found that dry spells — one standard deviation away from normal rainfall — in India are associated with a 4 per cent increase in the incidence of domestic violence and nearly 8 per cent increase in the incidence of dowry deaths. "Dry shocks tend to increase domestic violence, whereas wet shocks have no impact," Sekhri and Storeygard, who used rainfall and crime data from 583 districts across India for their analysis, wrote in their paper published earlier this year. While their study did not find any increase in burglary, robbery or murder, it observed a significant rise in kidnappings and abductions associated with an increase in rainfall. But researchers David Blakeslee at Columbia University and Ram Fishman at the George Washington University who analysed crime and rainfall in India between 1971 and 2000 have detected a 12 per cent increase in robberies and a 4 per cent increase in thefts during dry years. The Princeton-UCB team also took into account two other India-based studies by independent researchers that also point to an association between poor rainfall and an increase in property-related crimes and intergroup riots. However, Burke said the new analysis has not made any specific predictions for India or any other region. "It is always possible that future societies will respond to climate differently than the way current societies respond," Burke told this newspaper. "But what our results tell us is that if we do not become better able to deal with extreme climate, it is very likely that climate change will increase the risk of a variety of types of conflict in India and elsewhere in the world," he said. Their analysis has found that sufficiently high levels of climate stress can stir major changes in governing institutions and, in extreme cases, lead to the entire collapse of communities and civilisations. The collapse of the Maya in central America, the Tang and Yuan dynasty in China and the Angkor civilisation in southeast Asia have all been linked to climate change.  via Science - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNFTzZRZ4XAAgcBa5xZXd2SkN1QNeQ&url=http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130802/jsp/nation/story_17186566.jsp | |||
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