Despite the growth in literature on the climate-conflict nexus since the 1990’s, globalization of climate-exacerbated conflict through means such as trade and finances has received little attention until recently. Studies on globalized food supply chains have led to significant theoretical causal links between food supply shocks in food exporting economies and the preconditions of internal conflict such as poverty, inflation, and unequal state support in importing markets.
The goal of this study is to test whether climate-induced food supply chain shocks in major food exporting markets exacerbate socio-economic preconditions for conflict (poverty, food inflation, growth) in food-importing markets, as well as whether the effects materializes into direct conflict variables such as protests or intrastate conflict intensity.
The study uses quarterly panel data from 2005 to 2018 on natural disasters, food trade, national food inflation, GDP growth, protests count and conflict-related deaths by country. Countries are then classified as food exporters, importers or autonomous depending on their net food imports relative to their total imports. A two-way fixed effects analysis and then a staggered difference in difference analysis are applied to determine the difference in effect of climate shocks in major food exporters between food importers, exporters and autonomous markets.