Climate Security in Latin America and the Caribbean: Crime, Social Unrest and, Interstate Conflict

Over the past decade, studies of different disciplinary areas have focused on the relationship between climate change and violence, drawing attention to the potential for increased interpersonal and group conflict (inter- and intrastate) as global temperatures
rise and extreme weather phenomena accelerate. The goal of this chapter is to discuss this relationship in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) for the next two decades. Our work then involves a reflection on the future impact of climate effects on LAC security,
extrapolating some of the key elements of the region in relation to the issue, particularly its high vulnerability to climate extremes, low
interstate conflict, and high crime. We thus study a causal — but exploratory — link between the effects of climate change and the
worsening of violence in the region.
In this way, our work is inferential, oriented to anticipate or estimate risks that may not eventually become such. In this sense, there
are still great uncertainties regarding the concrete global and local impacts of climate change, and even more uncertainty regarding
its effects on social relations. This situation has been aggravated by the still unknown contours of the Covid-19 pandemic. This fluidity,
however, should not be a reason to avoid substantial considerations on the social and political impacts of global climate change.