Objective Despite the growing interest in the relationship between environmental degradation and political conflict, most discussions take the direction of causality for granted and try to understand whether or the extent to which environmental factors such as climate change-related drought lead or contribute to violent conflict. The aim of this project is to reverse the causality and look into how conflicts contribute to environmental degradation. It will do this by focusing on forest fires in the Middle East through a detailed study of the cases of Turkey, Syria and Israel. The questions that will be addressed in this context are: (1) Is there a positive correlation between inter- and intra-state conflict and forest fires? (2) How do conflicts affect ecosystems and biodiversity as well as the lives of inhabitants? (3) How are forest fires used discursively by conflicting groups? The proposed project is going to make a significant contribution to the existing literature in five ways: (1) It will explore whether actors deliberately damage the environment to gain the upperhand in a conflict; (2) it will focus on an underexplored aspect of the environment-conflict nexus, forest fires; (3) it will carry out fieldwork in three “non-European” cases which have spillover effects on European societies; (4) it will introduce novel techniques to the study of this problem, notably Geographical Information System (GIS) and digital Remote Sensing (RS); (5) it will combine “hard data” with qualitative analysis obtained through critical discourse analysis, elite interviews, and political ethnography to understand the political, economic and cultural dimensions of the environment-conflict relationship, thereby straddling the lines between natural and social sciences in a truly interdisciplinary spirit. Fields of science engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringremote sensingnatural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystemssocial sciences Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2017 - Individual Fellowships Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2017 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF Coordinator LUNDS UNIVERSITET Net EU contribution € 185 857,20 Address Paradisgatan 5c 22100 Lund Sweden See on map Region Södra Sverige Sydsverige Skåne län Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 185 857,20