How Government Policies Reduce Security Threats from Environmental Shocks

地震、洪水和干旱等自然灾害变得越来越频繁，到2050年将有多达10亿人流离失所。本项目考察政府应对自然灾害的政策，以更好地了解哪些类型的政策会增加政治暴力风险。研究小组确定了几种灾难政策应对措施，并预测在不同的政策应对措施下，何时更有可能发生政治暴力。该项目包括收集各国政府1900-2020年的灾害应对情况，以及各国的灾害应对案例研究。这项研究将产生一个新的公开可用的数据集和科学出版物，研究结果将为美国政府应对国外自然灾害的安全和准备工作提供信息，考虑到美国灾害援助的规模和范围，这是一项重要的任务。将气候冲击、灾害和国内冲突联系起来的研究对环境冲击导致政治暴力的条件得出了不同的结论。本项目通过研究政府政策反应如何干预灾害-冲突关系来解释这些不同的发现。研究人员的理论是，当政府1)限制受灾人口的流动，2)限制第三方行动者的援助努力，3)不平等地向政治上受欢迎的地区提供援助，4)依赖分散的灾害管理策略时，政治暴力更容易发生；5)灾前汇款很少。为了验证这些说法，这组科学家将统计分析1900-2020年政府对灾害反应的一个新的全球数据集，并进行24个案例研究。该项目的成果将推动气候变化与冲突关系、各国应对自然灾害的能力以及国际灾害援助政策等方面的基础研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, and droughts have become more frequent and threaten to displace as many as one billion people by 2050. This project examines government policy responses to natural disasters to better understand which types of policies increase political violence risks. The research team identifies several disaster policy responses and predicts when political violence is more likely to occur given different policy responses. The project involves collection of government disaster responses for all countries from 1900-2020 as well as case studies of disaster responses for countries. The study will result in a new publicly available dataset, scientific publications, and the results will inform the security and preparedness of the U.S. government to respond to natural disasters abroad, an important task given the size and scope of US disaster aid.Research connecting climate shocks, disasters, and civil conflicts reaches divergent conclusions about the conditions under which environmental shocks lead to political violence. This project explains these disparate findings by examining how government policy responses intervene in the disaster-conflict relationship. The researchers theorize that political violence occurs more often when governments 1) restrict movement of disaster affected populations, 2) restrict third party actor aid efforts, 3) give aid unequally to politically favored areas, 4) rely on decentralized disaster management strategies; and 5) when pre-disaster remittances are small. To test these claims the researchers will statistically analyze a new global dataset on government responses to disasters from 1900-2020 and undertake twenty-four case studies. The results of this project will advance basic research on the relationship of climate change to conflict, the resilience of countries to natural disasters, and international disaster aid policy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.