Growing crops or growing conflicts? : Climate variability, rice production and political violence in Vietnam

Abstract: This thesis contributes to research on climate change and violent conflict by testing the theory of a causal relationship between climate variability, agricultural production and political violence in the case of Vietnam 2010-2019. Climate-related negative shocks to agricultural production in developing countries are expected to lower the opportunity cost of violence through an income effect. This increases the risk of violent conflict. The thesis draws on a framework that combines climate-conflict research, civil war theory and research on how climactic factors affect rice cultivation in Southeast Asia. It tests the hypotheses emerging from the framework using mixed-effect models and a counterfactual comparison. Minimum temperature increases in the growing season for rice have been found to decrease rice yields, while maximum temperature increases have a positive effect on yield.The results show that minimum temperature increases are averse to Vietnamese rice production and have a positive relationship with political violence in the following year. Maximum temperature however is not significantly related to either rice production or violence. These results are in line with the hypotheses drawn from the framework. The minimum temperature effect on political violence is small compared to some of the covariates but robust to several different model specifications. The results provide evidence of a climate-conflict link through agricultural production in contemporary Vietnam which is similar to the findings in existing case studies in Southeast Asia. However, more research will be needed to decisively identify the causal mechanism and the specifics of how it works.