Exploiting Uncertainty: How Non-State Armed Groups Capitalize on Climate Change

Non-state armed groups (NSAG's) have been feeding on state fragility for decades. Many states' inability to maintain hegemonic territorial control or not conceptualize beyond military presence has enabled these groups the space to fill that power vacuum. What happens when we add anthropogenic climate change to this puzzle? It is urgent to monitor NSAG's adaptation to climate change in real-time as the planet is expected to continue to warm, leading to more droughts, floods, and fires in ecologically fraught zones. How are NSAG's using and rationalizing anthropogenic climate change to advance their goals? Here I use original journalistic evidence and field work -including interviews with experts, local community leaders and former combatants in the Colombian Amazon- to argue that NSAG's are not only exploiting anthropogenic climate change to finance, recruit or govern -as in the Congo Basin or the Lake Chad Area in África- but also to negotiate with the state.