When wildfires become unstoppable, consuming forests, farmlands, communities, and anything else in their path, how will those affected cope? When typhoons slam coastal populations, dumping over a foot of rain in a single event, who will be there to help mop up? When seas rise up, drowning centuries-old communities, where will the displaced go?

Conflict is typically viewed as a failure of social and political systems and almost never as a method of transforming dysfunctional or fractured societies into cohesive units. However, in an analysis of the discourse around climate change and conflict in Local Environment, Melissa Nursey-Bray concludes that conflict is a sometimes-necessary step in a complicated process to create stable societies. Nursey-Bray separates the climate-conflict discourse into two baskets: climate change as a security risk and climate change as one of many factors that contribute to insecurity.

The Nile River is shared by 11 countries, for which it is vital for food and energy production, freshwater, and as a means of transportation. Sharing the resources of the Nile has, however, been politically difficult. Recently, the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has caused a major dispute with downstream Egypt which fears the dam will affect water flow in its own territory.

If we are to avert the worst of climate change impacts, we need better tools for identifying patterns of displacement and migration around climate extremes. In vulnerable developing countries, increasingly frequent and intense storms will likely exacerbate current patterns of displacement and permanent migration. Displacement often leads to humanitarian crises in the short term and can derail progress toward development in the long term. Because of this dangerous potential, displaced persons and migrants are a common focus in humanitarian responses. However disaster responders must often “fly blind” without the benefit of current, accurate information about the worst-affected populations. To better respond to the impacts of climate change as they unfold, we will need more rapid, cost-effective, and accurate methods for identifying patterns of displacement and migration.

Most African states are more vulnerable and less prepared to address climate change challenges than the rest of the world. This observation is supported by a wide variety of sources, including the Climate Vulnerability Index and the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index. And in fact Africans and their political leaders frequently observe that this crisis, manufactured in the developed world, disproportionately affects their continent. During a meeting of the African Union in 2007, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called climate change “an act of aggression” by the rich against the poor.

Earlier this month, armed clashes between competing factions of South Sudan’s government broke out in the capital Juba, a day after the nation’s fifth anniversary of its independence. The conflict dates back to political events and factional fighting that first emerged in 2013.

Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.

One fear of climate change is that more variable weather conditions will lead to violence and chaos in some places. But looking at it methodically, do erratic weather conditions actually lead to violent conflict and political instability? Not necessarily.