
"When that news broke there was a massive demonstration on the street, and that was the first spark one can call of the Syrian uprising," Nayan Chanda tells NPR's Jacki Lyden. But long before a single shot was fired in Syria, there was drought in Dara'a, laying the groundwork for social unrest.
Chanda, the editor-in-chief the YaleGlobal Online Magazine, argues that there are many ways to look at civil war: ethnic factions, economic divides and religions differences. But increasingly, he says that we should also look at climate change as a factor.
Syria faced a devastating drought between 2006 and 2010, affecting its most fertile lands. The four years of drought turned almost 60 percent of the nation into a desert. It was a huge amount of land that could not support cattle trading and herding, Chanda says, killing about 80 percent of cattle by 2009.
The water shortage and drought drove up unemployment, in agriculture. So hundreds of thousands of farmers, Chanda says, went to where they might find work: the cities. He says they were met "almost callously" by the Syrian government....
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