That's what they say.

"Climate change" is responsible for the Darfur conflict, right?

This meme has been parroted endlessly (and of course it made it into Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"), but trained economist Chris Blattman asked a basic question:

The pundits say yes, but what do the data say?

Rainfall in Darfur did not decline significantly in the years prior to the eruption of major conflict in 2003; rainfall exhibited a flat trend in the thirty-years preceding the conflict (1972-2002). The claim that climate change explains the conflict rests on the observation that rainfall in Darfur has declined when comparing the present thirty-year period of 1972-2002 with earlier periods. This is strongly evident for El Fasher and El Geneina but less clear for the more southerly rainfall stations. Rainfall is basically stationary over the pre- and post-1972 sub-periods. A theory linking climate change around 1972 with an outbreak of conflict in 2003 has no compelling supporting evidence at present.

Proponents of the climate change "narrative" have limited their focus to rainfall as the causal link "from low incomes to the outbreak of civil war." According to Blattman, this violates what economists call the exclusion restriction.

While I'm not an economist, I enjoyed his understated conclusion:

Statistically speaking, the exclusion restriction on the instrument is potentially violated.