A disaster for whom? The conditional impact of natural disasters on civil conflicts

对谁来说是一场灾难？

• 批准号: 2757461
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Durham University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2757461
• 关键词: disaster; whom; conditional; impact; natural

Many argue that natural disasters aggravate violent conflicts, raising concerns that ongoing climate change will increase conflict risk. However, the impact of natural disasters on conflicts varies across and within countries. For example, after the 2012 typhoon in the Philippines, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front struck a peace deal with the government, while the New People's Army kept fighting. Consequentially, research into the conditions under which natural disasters lead to conflicts is urgently needed. This research will investigate theoretically and empirically the conditions under which natural disasters increase the severity of civil conflicts.Existing research on the impact of natural disasters on conflicts offers mixed theoretical predictions and empirical results. Mixed theoretical predictions follow from incomplete theoretical models focusing on select actors (e.g. rebel-government or government-population) while ignoring others. Consequentially, most existing empirical research assumes an unconditional relationship between natural disasters and conflicts, and thus cannot explain the mixed empirical results.I will contribute to this scholarship by proposing a unified theoretical model that looks at the impact of natural disasters on the strategic interaction between all three relevant conflict actors - the government, the rebels, and the population. This integrates existing divergent theoretical predictions. Empirically, I will use rigorous research designs that exploit within-country variation in disaster location, rebel capacity, and government capacity to adequately assess my theoretical framework's predictions. Finally, by investigating the conditions under which natural disasters lead to conflicts, this research clarifies the existing literature's mixed empirical findings and offers more precise and actionable policy implications.

许多人认为，自然灾害加剧了暴力冲突，引发了人们对持续的气候变化将增加冲突风险的担忧。然而，自然灾害对冲突的影响在国家之间和国家内部各不相同。例如，2012年菲律宾台风过后，摩洛伊斯兰解放阵线（Moro Islamic Liberation Front）与政府达成了和平协议，而新人民军（New People’s Army）则继续战斗。因此，迫切需要对自然灾害导致冲突的条件进行研究。本研究将从理论和实证两方面探讨自然灾害增加国内冲突严重程度的条件。关于自然灾害对冲突影响的现有研究提供了混合的理论预测和实证结果。混合的理论预测来自于不完整的理论模型，这些模型只关注特定的参与者（例如叛军政府或政府-人口），而忽略了其他参与者。因此，现有的实证研究大多假设自然灾害与冲突之间存在无条件的关系，因此无法解释混合的实证结果。我将通过提出一个统一的理论模型来为这一学术研究做出贡献，该模型着眼于自然灾害对所有三个相关冲突参与者（政府、叛军和民众）之间战略互动的影响。这整合了现有的不同理论预测。从经验上讲，我将使用严格的研究设计，利用国内在灾难地点、反叛能力和政府能力方面的差异，充分评估我的理论框架的预测。最后，通过调查自然灾害导致冲突的条件，本研究澄清了现有文献混杂的实证结果，并提供了更精确和可操作的政策启示。