Climatic anomalies and conflicts: the role of tenure security on land disputes

Recent literature shows that deviations from normal rainfall and temperature systematically increase the occurrence of human conflicts. We investigate whether land certification can offset the effect of climate anomalies on land use conflicts. We use a large panel dataset from farm-household surveys conducted in Ethiopia in years 2005 and 2007. We exploit both the exogenous variation in climatic factors and the random assignment of property rights to answer our research question. We find robust evidence that farm-households with land tenure are less prone to land disputes and more resilient to climate anomalies than farm-households without tenure security.