“One way to interpret the Syrian conflict is by understanding climate change”

24/10/2019

David Castells-Quintana, a 2004 UAB graduate in Economics, pursued a Master’s in International Relations and Development and another Master’s in Economics, and holds an international doctorate from the University of Barcelona. He is currently a professor and researcher in the Department of Applied Economics at the UAB.

One of his main avenues of research associates climate change with migratory processes and social conflicts in large cities. How should countries be planning to adapt to the consequences of climate change? What is the connection between climate change and the conflict in Syria? He tells us in this interview.

You were born in Colombia and started your studies there. How did you come to the UAB?
I moved to Barcelona when I was 19, although I had already been here before because my father is from here. One important reason for coming to Barcelona was my interest in topics like economic development, poverty and inequality. Although it may sound paradoxical, these topics are not studied in Colombia. There, economics is what people often think it is: business, finances, making money, but to me economics is studying people’s wellbeing.

What was your early career like?
While I was studying, I took classes in the morning and played tennis in the afternoons. In fact, I spent several years playing and teaching tennis, and I still play it. After that I continued to study, I worked for private companies like Decathlon and Desigual for several years, and I did a Master’s in International Relations and Development at the UAB and one in Economics from the UB. Finally, I earned a scholarship from the Government of Catalonia which enabled me to pursue a doctorate. My thesis was entitled “Concentration of Resources and Economic Development”. After I earned my doctorate in 2015 and was looking for a job, I was lucky enough to be hired by the UAB, and it’s been great to come back to my alma mater.

During your doctorate, you did a stay at the London School of Economics. 
Yes, two requirements for earning the doctorate were doing an international stay and submitting the thesis in English. London is where I began to research climate change more professionally by participating in a global project to understand its long-term effects on socioeconomic dynamics. Climate change is often studied in relation to a specific economic impact, like how many millions of euros the rising sea level is going to cost Barcelona. Or sometimes adaptation is calculated: how much it is going to cost to adapt to climate change. But this project studied climate change in relation to institutional development in terms of conflict and migrations, dynamics which are not directly related to climate change but on a longer timescale are very important effects that we are beginning to see today.

So how exactly are these dynamics related?
Sooner or later, climate change is going to displace people and end up generating conflicts. This is one of the tragedies of places like sub-Saharan Africa, for example, because it has a lot of poor people living in the rural areas which are desertifying the quickest, the Sahel. These people, who can no longer live there, are heading to cities like Lagos and Nairobi, whose populations are suddenly exploding, or they try to cross the Sahara and either stay there or die on Spain’s coasts. This is partly due to poverty and partly to conflicts, but it is also a consequence of climate change. There are also many displacements in Asia, but for the opposite reason, because it rains so much and the monsoons are more intense. 

You began to study the effects of climate change in London and made it one of your own avenues of research.
Yes, after I returned from London I kept working with some researchers, and now they’re my co-authors with whom I collaborate in one of my avenues of research. We’re an international team of four researchers who have published on climate change and development, and we currently have two parallel projects underway. Usually when you assemble these research groups you look for people with shared but complementary interests. We have an expert in climate data, an expert in satellite data on night-time luminosity, and I’m more an expert on urbanisation. Modern research makes it quite easy to work with different universities and people and gives you the opportunity to combine different fields of experience, capacities and viewpoints.

So, your international stay gave you the chance to research in other projects, as well as a connection with other researchers.
Right, in fact right now I’m the Erasmus coordinator for the Faculty of Economics and Business, and I tell students that studying abroad changes the way you think, plus it’s an antidote to many problems. When you travel abroad, you realise that perhaps your religion wasn’t as important as you thought, your flag wasn’t as important as you believed, your convictions may not have been right and other things.

Getting back to your group of researchers, what avenues of research are you currently pursuing?
One of our projects currently underway is showing migratory displacements caused by climate change using temperature and precipitation data. Through data published by NASA, we set up a database where we can see the average precipitation level and temperature of every region of the world at all times, and we combine this with a global database on population distribution. Using econometric techniques, we estimate the impact of the change in temperature or precipitation on population displacement, and we see how extreme climate conditions push people away, usually towards cities.

And you associate all these migratory movements stemming from climate change with social conflicts as well.
Yes, one of the consequences of all these displacements is that many cities are growing disproportionately. We look at what’s happening in these cities, and here we have another international database which shows the number and intensity of conflicts in a city, which can range from demonstrations or more organised protests to civil wars, and these conflicts may be the last link in climate change. People who used to live in rural areas and no longer can have to move to the city without anything. They can’t find a job, they usually live in extremely poor urban areas and naturally this ends up generating social conflicts.

This is a different way of understanding the roots of a social conflict.
Yes, and one interesting question is we see that it’s much more global than you may think. One way of interpreting the Syrian conflict is also by understanding climate change. Syria was a relatively developed country, although many people there depended directly or indirectly on farming and rural life, and it is one of the countries where desertification has been the most severe in recent decades. The struggle over land and water is one factor in understanding the conflict, not the only one, but it is yet another factor that can intensify conflicts.

You also connect political extremism and climate change.
Of course, if you’re poor, you’ve lost your job in a rural area, you move and your life is a mess, you’re likely to believe anyone who comes to you with a fantastical story: “Fight for my religion, fight for my flag…” And then climate change ends up generating more polarisation, which is something that many studies have already proven.

Half the planet’s inhabitants live in urban areas today. What does this mean for people’s wellbeing?
The world has become increasingly urban since the Industrial Revolution, and this urbanisation process is normal and positive in the sense that urban areas are more productive and have more to offer, and actually more people prefer to live in urban areas. However, this is usually a slow process. The problem is that in recent years it has sped up enormously and become detached from the industrialisation process, from the natural part of economic development. Now many cities are growing because many people are being pushed to these cities, and many cities are growing in unsustainable ways and turning into to agglomerations of people, but without the basic infrastructures, without the possibility of finding a job, and with millions of people with no access to electricity, drinking water or a transport system.

In Spain, there was a major migratory movement from country to city in the 1950s to 1980s. Around 100,000 people came to live in shanties in Barcelona, and the last ones weren’t torn down until right before the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
It’s similar, but the difference is the scale. People will always flock to cities and there will always be an excess of people who can’t find work, have no income and live in slums and shantytowns for a while, like in Barcelona. But if the city is minimally productive, opportunities will be created, and this is what happened in Barcelona over a shorter or longer timespan: the city ended up absorbing these people, they found work and the infrastructures grew. The problem is when this happens in a poor city, such as Lagos, Nigeria. Right now, Barcelona has 1.6 million inhabitants, but Lagos has approximately 24 million, 20 million of whom are relatively new. Assimilating 20 million people takes a lot longer than 100,000.

In one of your articles, you talk about how unfair it is that the consequences of pollution are much more striking in countries that don’t produce that much pollution.
Yes, it’s very sad that the countries suffering the most are, for example, the sub-Saharan African countries since they’re in the tropics and just south of the Sahara, a geographic location that has nothing to do with them, plus they are precisely the ones that create the least pollution. In contrast, Europe and the USA, which are the countries that have caused the most pollution, aren’t suffering from the consequences yet. And this is a problem that hinders us from finding a solution, because if I suffered from the cost of my own pollution, I would be more aware and stop polluting. This is the global problem: that some people pollute while others suffer from the consequences.

One of your fields of study is urbanisation. In one article, you explain that planning is essential to deal with climate change.
Yes, assuming that more and more people will be flocking to cities, long-term infrastructure planning is needed, and I also like to remember planning on a national scale. That is, assuming there will be climate-based displacements, how can we prevent everyone from going to the capital? Or to what extent can we try to help them stay in rural areas, or if the area is severely desertified and that makes no sense, then how can we help them move or adapt to other areas?

Is any country currently doing this planning? 
Right now, I don’t think any is. The United Nations is making efforts in this direction; there’s a great deal of research and progress is being made on these issues, but it doesn’t tend to be in countries’ development plans. It’s beginning to now, but it’s not something that earns politicians votes.

You have published two books, “Los riesgos de un planeta abarrotado” (The Risks of an Overcrowded Planet) and more recently “Qué planeta heredarán nuestros nietos” (What Planet Will Our Grandchildren Inherit).
Yes, in the first one I talk about the growth in the world population. Two centuries ago, there were around 1 billion inhabitants and now there are 7.5 billion. Our population has multiplied seven times in a very short period of time, meaning more consumption, more production and more pollution.
And in “What Planet Will Our Grandchildren Inherit”, I describe my research but in a very simple way since it’s meant for a general readership. I try to explain all these global dynamics in a reflective and even entertaining way, but always showing the reader that it is backed by scientific research. I want them to reflect on the world we are creating in terms of not only climate change but also conflicts and fundamentalism. And a world without species: I talk about the mass extinction of species which we’re witnessing, with a current extinction rate 100 times greater than the natural rate. A world I personally wouldn’t want to live in.

Tell us about one of your future projects.
When we finish the project we’re currently working on, our future challenge is to try to understand the impact of climate change on inequality, because the poor usually suffer more than the wealthy, because when you’re wealthy you can adapt. Therefore, it’s likely that the more the climate changes, the more poverty there will be. We want to study the mechanisms and ways and try to quantify it, while also taking a global approach to how climate change accentuates inequality.

A few months ago, the UAB declared a state of climate emergency and will dedicate its Annual Festival and an entire year of activities to the slogan: “Climate emergency: The UAB is acting!” What do you think about that?
I think it’s great! This is what made me fall in love with the UAB, the Plaça Cívica, the diversity of opinions and this activism which is a major asset of the university, even though unfortunately it’s misused at times. And I think it’s fantastic to take advantage of that to try to raise people’s awareness of climate change.