The effect of water scarcity and climate events on socio-political stability can be analysed as a triggering element of conflict and displacement, and will become increasingly critical as climate change makes disruptive events more frequent, their consequences more severe, and their extent larger. For this reason, the effectiveness of policy and crisis management in the coming years will depend heavily on how decision-makers understand communities, their environment, and their socio-economic conditions, as a system that reacts in specific ways to climate change disturbances like desertification or rising sea levels. With this aim, this paper analyses the system dynamic behind the case of Syria to understand 1) the differential effect that climate variability has on communities depending on their location, their economic activities, and their socio-economic conditions, 2) what are the dynamics and conditions that determine migration patterns in the affected population, and 3) how social and political tensions can be aggravated by environmental shocks turning into large scale refugee crises. This analysis provides a tool for decision-makers to understand the crucial elements that influence this phenomenon, and the effective leverage points that can be addressed to alleviate the pressure on the system and provide support to countries that are likely to have environmental stresses, such as the approximately 700 million people that may be displaced because of water scarcity by 2030, according to the UN. The case of Syria is compared with the famine in Bangalore in 1943 to show how policy can aggravate an environmental constraint, and with the inefficient crisis management that lead to the agrarian strike in Colombia in 2013, and uses tools for the analysis of system dynamics to reveal elements that are consistently present as common drivers and leverage points. By studying the repeated elements in these case studies, it is possible to understand the role that governmental actions, such as sensible agriculture policies, adaptation plans, or early responses to civil movements, can be decisive in how the social fabric interacts with its ecological and political environment, and how vulnerable it is to the effects of climate change. Therefore, by extracting the structural dynamics that are consistently present in different contexts, and how environmental impacts can potentially catalyse certain socio-political structures into crises, it is possible to develop a model that offers decision-makers a practical tool to face the social challenges of climate-induced disruptions.
Keywords: climate change, refugees, conflict, migration, system dynamic
