LUCSUS Seminar: Drought, war and rural livelihoods in Syria’s northeast: a spatiotemporal perspective

Mismanagement, drought, migration, civil war, and more drought. The social-ecological situation in Syria is worsening due to climate stress and prolonged conflict. While the research community is still debating the role of the 2007-2009 drought in the onset of the civil war, farmers in the northeast continue to suffer from degraded resources, reduced river flows, and conflict related violence. Warnings of a collapse in water and food production due to multiple drought-induced crop failures in the northeast showcase a vulnerable population at risk of severe food insecurity and devastated livelihoods. In this paper we investigate the effects of drought and armed conflict on the social-ecological system in Syria’s northeast, from 2000 until 2020. We do that through a spatiotemporal analysis of drought focusing on rainfall, river flows, and agricultural production. We also look into patterns of land abandonment, indicative of migration, and their relationship to drought and local violence. With this paper we wish to move away from the debate about the role of climate stress in sparking the Syrian civil war, and instead highlight the impacts of drought and conflict on rural livelihoods in north-eastern Syria.

Bio

Lina Eklund has a Ph.D. in Physical Geography and Ecosystem Analysis from Lund University. She finished her Ph.D. in 2015 with the dissertation “No Friends but the Mountains: Understanding Population Mobility and Land Dynamics in Iraqi Kurdistan”. Her current research interests are placed within the fields of land system science and environmental security. With the use of satellite images and spatial methods, she explores the potential connections between drought, migration, land use, fire, and conflict in the Middle East. She is a researcher at the Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science at Lund University.

The seminar is a part of the theme: Connecting the Local and the Global.

Venue/Registration

The seminar will be hybrid with in-person event in Wrangel, Biskopsgatan 5, room 117.

If you are interested in participating online, please sign up here. You will then receive a confirmation email with a Zoom-link to the seminar (if you participate in person you do not need to register).

The LUCSUS seminars are open for the public, held online or in-person and take place Thursdays from 11am to 12 noon. We are looking forwards to seeing you!