LINCOLN - The University of Nebraska-Lincoln will play a significant role in helping the U.S. military develop an early warning system for global political instability fueled by drought.

UNL's School of Natural Resources is home to the National Drought Mitigation Center which received $1 million from the U.S. Defense Department to develop a method for forecasting drought hotspots.

Ross Miller, a UNL associate professor of political science, said that drought is often a contributor to violent conflicts globally. Miller pointed to research that indicates drought worsened the civil wars in two African countries: the Darfur region of Sudan and in Burundi.

Research has also found that severe droughts, fueled by climate change, contributed to the Arab Spring protests and uprisings in the Middle East in the early 2010s.

The drought tool is one part of a larger Defense Department effort to get ahead of brewing trouble spots.

Climate change is expected to increase the severity of drought, which affects more people worldwide than any other natural hazard, according to the United Nations. The percentage of the world affected by drought has more than doubled in the last 40 years, according to the U.N. The risk of instability is greater in those countries where there’s little to no social safety net and families depend upon farming and gardening for their food.

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