Conflicting messages? The IPCC on conflict and human security – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

The document evaluates how the IPCC has addressed the climate change-conflict nexus across its reports. While the Fifth Assessment Report is noted as a significant improvement over the Third and Fourth reports, the author identifies internal inconsistencies between chapters and a lack of clear probability assessments in causal statements, which may lead to alarmist interpretations.

• The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) provides a more rigorous analysis of the climate change-conflict nexus than the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports, which were criticized for shallow discussions on the topic.
• The Human Security chapter of the Fifth Assessment Report finds robust evidence that climate change threatens human security, but it concludes that research does not show a strong positive correlation between global warming and armed conflict.
• The Fifth Assessment Report contains internal contradictions regarding the climate-conflict link, with the Africa chapter and the 'Emergent trends' chapter offering more dramatic conclusions than the 'Detection and attribution' chapter, which dismisses the link.
• A significant weakness in the Fifth Assessment Report is the absence of explicit probability levels in its causal statements, relying instead on vague terminology.

APA

Peace Research Institute Oslo (2014). Conflicting messages? The IPCC on conflict and human security – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). https://www.prio.org/publications/7497

Chicago

Peace Research Institute Oslo. Conflicting messages? The IPCC on conflict and human security – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). 2014. https://www.prio.org/publications/7497.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Peace Research Institute Oslo |title=Conflicting messages? The IPCC on conflict and human security – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) |date=6 October 2014 |url=https://www.prio.org/publications/7497 |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{peaceresearchinstituteoslo2014conflicting, author = {{Peace Research Institute Oslo}}, title = {{Conflicting messages? The IPCC on conflict and human security – Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)}}, institution = {Peace Research Institute Oslo}, year = {2014}, month = oct, url = {https://www.prio.org/publications/7497}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }