Pathways to Impact: From Water Shock to Political Instability

Water stress leads to conflict. This conventional wisdom often appears in news, policy documents, and even science research. Yet conflict and instability are rare outcomes from water events like floods, droughts, and increasing inter-annual variability. Even in the context of international competition over water resources, research shows that water is more often a source of cooperation than conflict. But as the climate changes, so too does water. Understanding and communicating the impacts of these changes is imperative.

We present a framework to simplify and summarize the complex pathways through which direct and indirect effects lead to impacts like conflict and instability. Direct impacts on food, hydropower, and livelihood rarely cause instability. Rather, through indirect effects like increased grievance or loss of trust in government, changes in water can lead to conflict.

This framework builds from a workshop in spring 2023 during which authors began the work of summarizing existing research to draw out insight for decisionmakers and researchers. We developed this framework to raise awareness of how water shocks can increase the risk of or exacerbate existing instability. The causal connections we aim to identify help reveal 1) which water events are likely to affect instability, 2) what to monitor to anticipate when and where a water event could lead to instability, and 3) where interventions could stop a water event from leading to instability.