Somalia is Caught in a Conflict-Climate Change Nexus

Somalia is ground zero for an emerging trend in global affairs-- the nexus between climate change and conflict. My guest today, journalist Laura Heaton  spent years reporting on how climate change and conflict feed off each other in profoundly destabilizing ways in horn of Africa.  She's the author of a feature story in Foreign Policy magazine that uses the work and life story of  a British Scientist named Murray Watson to explain how climate change in Somalia has exacerbated conflict -- both local and international -- and how that conflict and insecurity has inhibited policies to mitigate the destabilizing effect of climate change.   Watson went missing on 2008 after being kidnapped in Somalia, and it was assumed that his trove of ecological research went missing with him -- until Laura uncovered its existence in an attic in the British countryside.