ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The threat of climate change is not only limited to the environment, but impacts political and social issues worldwide, including contributing to a rise in radical armed groups and an increase in violence against women, famed French sociologist Michel Wieviorka told Rudaw.
“There will not be, from my point of view, direct changes, modification of borders and these kind of things, directly connected with the climate change. But the climate change is creating conditions, new conditions, so that the world could change, indirectly,” he said in an interview with Rudaw’s Nwenar Fatih in May.
The sociologist claimed that the emergence of the Islamic State (ISIS) could be correlated to worsening climate conditions in Syria in the previous decade.
“In Syria… it was very, very dry between, more or less, 2009 and 2016… Many people could not have cattle anymore, could not have access to water anymore, could not have access to the resources they need to live in the countryside. So these people change, and decided to go to the west… In the western part of Syria there was no assistance, there was no help, there were no structures, there were no institutions to help these people and to make these migrants, coming from the east part of the country, be more comfortable.”
“So what do you do when you have nobody to help you? No structures, no institutions that take you seriously? You go where people listen to you. So where did they go? Not all of them, but some of them? They go to the mosque. They go to Islamic groups. They go to those people that were listening to them. And if you want to understand how in Syria you had Daesh [ISIS] and so on, you must take into consideration climate change.”
Wieviorka also touched on how worsening climate conditions could lead to further violence and discrimination against women.
“Women are the first, generally, that suffer from the consequences of climate change. I’ll give you a very small example: In many situations, women are in charge of finding water for the family… If you are a young 18 or 19-years-old girl having to walk three or four kilometers to find water, what will happen between the place you live and the place you will find water? There will be arrests, there will be violence, there will be many problems.”
Wieviorka stressed that he believes political leaders understand the gravity of the threat of climate change, but cannot always prioritize it over immediate issues that are considered more pressing by the general public.
