Articles | Volume 16, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1197-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-1197-2025
Review
 | 
30 Jul 2025
Review |  | 30 Jul 2025

Tipping cascades between conflict and cooperation in climate change

Jürgen Scheffran, Weisi Guo, Florian Krampe, and Uche Okpara

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Cited articles

Abid, M., Scheffran, J., Schneider, U. A., and Ashfaq, M.: Farmers' perceptions of and adaptation strategies to climate change and their determinants: the case of Punjab province, Pakistan, Earth Syst. Dynam., 6, 225–243, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-6-225-2015, 2015. 
Abrahams, D. and Carr, E. R.: Understanding the Connections Between Climate Change and Conflict: Contributions From Geography and Political Ecology, Current Climate Change Reports, 3, 233–42, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40641-017-0080-z, 2017. 
Açıkalın, Ş. N. and Artun, E. C.: The Concept of Self-Organized Criticality: The Case Study of the Arab Uprising, in: Chaos, Complexity and Leadership 2017, edited by: Erçetin, Ş. Ş., and Potas, N., Springer Nature, Berlin, 73–85, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89875-9_7, 2019. 
Adams, C., Ide, T., Barnett, J., and Detges, A.: Sampling Bias in Climate–Conflict Research, Nat. Clim. Change, 127, 1–203, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0068-2, 2018. 
Adger, W. N., Fransen, S., de Campos, R. S., and Clark. W. C.: Scientific frontiers on migration and sustainability, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 121, e2321325121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2321325121, 2024. 
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Short summary
To study tipping cascades in the climate–conflict nexus, a bi-stable tipping model analyses transitions between conflict and cooperation. The Lake Chad case demonstrates climate change as a risk multiplier combined with poor governance, lowering resilience and barriers of communities to conflict. Adaptive and anticipative governance can prevent tipping to violent conflict and induce positive tipping towards cooperation through civil conflict transformation and environmental peacebuilding.
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