Tobias Ide is a German-Australian

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

and

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

. He is currently Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at

Murdoch University Murdoch University is a public university in Perth, Western Australia, with campuses also in Singapore and Dubai. It began operations as the state's second university on 25 July 1973, and accepted its first undergraduate students in 1975. Its ...

in Perth and Specially Appointed Professor of Peace and Sustainability at

Hiroshima University is a Japanese national research university located in Higashihiroshima and Hiroshima, Japan. Established in 1929, it was chartered as a university in 1949 following the merge of a number of national educational institutions. Its abbreviated f ...

. Ide is well known for his research on

climate security Climate security is a political and policy framework that looks at the impacts of climate on security. Climate security often refers to the national and international security risks induced, directly or indirectly, by changes in climate patte ...

and environmental peacebuilding. He also consults decision makers, for instance at the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

, and

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

Research

Ide has worked extensively on the impacts of

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

and conflict risks. In several studies, he showed that climate-related

disaster A disaster is an event that causes serious harm to people, buildings, economies, or the environment, and the affected community cannot handle it alone. '' Natural disasters'' like avalanches, floods, earthquakes, and wildfires are caused by na ...

s increase the risk of

protest A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration, or remonstrance) is a public act of objection, disapproval or dissent against political advantage. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooperation in which numerous people cooperate ...

armed conflict War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

onset, and

civil war A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...

escalation. However, he argues that this does not happen always and automatically, but only if certain context factors are present. These include the political exclusion of ethnic groups, low levels of

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development (music), the process by which thematic material is reshaped * Photographic development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting * Development hell, when a proje ...

, a weakening of the government, and unsuitable government responses to the disaster. He finds similar patterns when analysing conflicts about

renewable resource A renewable resource (also known as a flow resource) is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of t ...

s. In his 2023 book Catastrophes, Confrontations, and Constraints, Ide argues that disasters can also lead to temporary reductions in conflict intensity by weakening the conflict parties. Such time periods provide windows of opportunity for

aid In international relations, aid (also known as international aid, overseas aid, foreign aid, economic aid or foreign assistance) is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another. Th ...

delivery and

conflict resolution Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of Conflict (process), conflict and Revenge, retribution. Committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively co ...

. Furthermore, Ide has conducted widely cited research on environmental peacebuilding. He demonstrated that water and conservation cooperation between states can support already existing reconciliation efforts, drawing on examples like the

Lempa River The Lempa River () is a river in Central America. It is a transboundary river shared by El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Geography Its sources are located in between the Sierra Madre and the Sierra del Merendón mountain ranges in southern ...

and the

Virunga National Park Virunga National Park is a national park in the Albertine Rift Valley in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was created in 1925. In elevation, it ranges from in the Semliki River valley to in the Rwenzori Mountains. ...

. He also argues that environmental cooperation contributes to

peacebuilding Peacebuilding is an activity that aims to resolve injustice in nonviolent ways and to transform the cultural and structural conditions that generate deadly or destructive conflict. It revolves around developing constructive personal, group, and ...

within countries by improving the environmental situation, increasing trust and understanding, and building shared institutions. Such efforts can contribute to local and everyday peace if relevant institutions support the efforts and there is widespread agreement on the nature and urgency of environmental problems. Ide has coined the concept of the “dark side of environmental peacebuilding”, by which he refers to six potential adverse effects of environmental peacebuilding efforts: * depoliticization (of underlying conflict drivers), * (unvoluntary) displacement of people (e.g., by cooperative dam projects), * discrimination of certain groups, * deterioration into conflict (due to grievances about the efforts), * delegitimization of the state (if NGOs and international actors perform more successful environmental management), and * degradation of the environment (e.g., cooperative resource exploitation). These adverse effects are often unintended and avoidable. In 2022, he received the Enhancing the Environmental Peacebuilding Knowledge Base Award for this work.

Career

Ide was born in 1985. He studied

Political Science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

and Media and Communication Studies at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

(2005–2012). Afterwards, he went on to receive a PhD in

Earth Sciences Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four spheres ...

from the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...

(2015) and his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

from the

Technical University of Braunschweig TU Braunschweig (, unofficially ''University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology'') is the oldest ' (comparable to an institute of technology in the American system) in Germany. It was founded in 1745 as Collegium Carolinum and is a membe ...

(2019). After his PhD, he worked at the Georg Eckert Institute and at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

. He was also a visiting researcher at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

and the

American University The American University (AU or American) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Its main campus spans 90-acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, in the Spri ...

in Washington, DC.

Impact and awards

Media and decision makers have drawn on Ide's research. He was worked with the

(Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction), the

(

UN Economic and Social Council The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is one of six principal organs of the United Nations, responsible for coordinating the economic and social fields of the organization, specifically in regards to the fifteen specialized ...

, the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

, and the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through p ...

, among others. Ide's work featured in many news articles, including in the Atlantic, CTV News, ''

de Volkskrant ''De Volkskrant'' (; ), stylized as de Volkskrant, is a Dutch daily morning newspaper. Founded in 1919, it has a nationwide circulation of about 250,000. Formerly a leading centre-left Catholic broadsheet, ''de Volkskrant'' today is a medium- ...

'', ''Publico'',

Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen ("Swiss Radio and Television"), shortened to SRF, is a subsidiary of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR), operating in German-speaking Switzerland. SRF was created on 1 January 2011 through the merger of r ...

(SRF),

Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service is an American news service primarily focusing on civil litigation. It offers both free and paid services. Its core audience is lawyers and law firms, who subscribe to the service;Courthouse News Service v. Schaefer', Civi ...

, as well as in podcasts like Policy, Guns & Money, POLIS180 and New Books in World Affairs. Ide received several awards for his research. These include: * named Australia's top research in the field of Diplomacy and International Relations by The Australian in 2025, * the 2023 Emerging Peace Studies Scholar Award of the

International Studies Association The International Studies Association (ISA) is a US-based professional association for scholars and practitioners in the field of International relations, international studies. Founded in 1959, ISA has been headquartered at the University of Con ...

, * the 2023 International Science Prize for Peace and Ecology in the Anthropocene (awarded by the Foundation), * the 2022 Enhancing the Environmental Peacebuilding Knowledge Base Award (awarded by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association. Ide is a director of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and editor of the journal Environment and Security. His work has been cited 2,828 times according to GoogleScholar (June 2024).

Selected publications

* Ide, Tobias (2023): Catastrophes, confrontations, and constraints: how disasters shape the dynamics of armed conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. * Ide, Tobias (2023): Rise or recede? How climate disasters affect armed conflict intensity. International Security 47(4), pp. 50–78. * Ide, Tobias, McKenzie F. Johnson, Jon Barnett, Florian Krampe, Philippe Le Billon, Lucile Maertens, Nina von Uexkull and Irene Vélez-Torres (2023): The future of environmental peace and conflict research. Environmental Politics 32(6), pp. 1077–1103. * Ide, Tobias and Patrick A. Mello (2022): QCA in International Relations: a review of strengths, pitfalls, and empirical applications. International Studies Review 24(1), p. viac008. * Ge, Quansheng, Mengmeng Hao, Fangyu Ding, Dong Jiang, Jürgen Scheffran, David Helman and Tobias Ide (2022): Modelling armed conflict risk under climate change with machine learning and time-series data. Nature Communications 13(1), p. 2839. * Ide, Tobias (2021): COVID-19 and armed conflict. World Development 140(1), p. 105355. * Ide, Tobias, Carl Bruch, Alexander Carius, Ken Conca, Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Richard Matthew and Erica Weinthal (2021): The past and future(s) of environmental peacebuilding. International Affairs 97(1), pp. 1–16. * Ide, Tobias, Juan Miguel Rodriguez Lopez, Christiane Fröhlich and Jürgen Scheffran (2021): Pathways to water conflict during drought in the MENA region. Journal of Peace Research 58(3), pp. 568–582. * Ide, Tobias, Lisa Palmer and Jon Barnett (2021): Environmental peacebuilding from below: customary approaches in Timor-Leste. International Affairs 97(1), pp. 103–118. * Ide, Tobias (2020): The dark side of environmental peacebuilding. World Development 127(1), p. 104777. * Ide, Tobias, Michael Brzoska, Jonathan F. Donges and Carl-Friedrich Schleussner (2020): Multi-method evidence for when and how climate-related disasters contribute to armed conflict risk. Global Environmental Change 62(1), p. 102063. * Ide, Tobias and Amit Tubi (2020): Education and environmental peacebuilding: insights from three projects in Israel and Palestine. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 110(1), pp. 1–17. * Wiederkehr, Charlotte, Tobias Ide, Ralf Seppelt and Kathleen Hermans (2022): It's all about politics: migration and resource conflicts in the global south. World Development 157(1), p. 105938. * Ide, Tobias (2019): The impact of environmental cooperation on peacemaking: definitions, mechanisms and empirical evidence. International Studies Review 21(3), pp. 327–346. * Ide, Tobias (2018): Does environmental peacemaking between states work? Insights on cooperative environmental agreements and reconciliation in international rivalries. Journal of Peace Research 55(3), pp. 351–365. * Ide, Tobias and Adrien Detges (2018): International water cooperation and environmental peacemaking. Global Environmental Politics 18(4), pp. 63–84. * Ide, Tobias (2018): Climate war in the Middle East? Drought, the Syrian civil war and the state of climate-conflict research. Current Climate Change Reports 4(4), pp. 347–354. * Adams, Courtland, Tobias Ide, Jon Barnett and Adrien Detges (2018): Sampling bias in climate-conflict research. Nature Climate Change 8(3), pp. 200–203. * Ide, Tobias (2017): Research methods for exploring the links between climate change and conflict. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change 8(3), pp. 1–14. * Ide, Tobias (2017): Space, discourse and environmental peacebuilding. Third World Quarterly 38(3), pp. 544–562. * Ide, Tobias and Christiane Fröhlich (2015): Socio-environmental cooperation and conflict? A discursive understanding and its application to the case of Israel/Palestine. Earth System Dynamics 6(2), pp. 659–671. * Ide, Tobias (2015): Why do conflicts over scarce renewable resources turn violent? A qualitative comparative analysis. Global Environmental Change 33(1), pp. 61–70. * Ide, Tobias, Janpeter Schilling, Jasmin S. A. Link, Jürgen Scheffran, Grace Ngaruiya and Thomas Weinzierl (2014): On exposure, vulnerability and violence: spatial distribution of risk factors for climate change and violent conflict across Kenya and Uganda. Political Geography 43(1), pp. 68–81.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ide, Tobias 1985 births Living people German political scientists German geographers Leipzig University alumni University of Hamburg alumni Academic staff of the University of Melbourne Academic staff of Murdoch University