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

许多人认为，自然灾害加剧了暴力冲突，令人担心持续的气候变化将增加冲突风险。然而，自然灾害对冲突的影响在各国之间和各国内部各不相同。例如，2012年菲律宾台风过后，摩罗伊斯兰解放阵线与政府达成和平协议，而新人民军则继续战斗。因此，迫切需要研究自然灾害导致冲突的条件。本研究将从理论和实证两个方面探讨自然灾害加剧民间冲突的条件。现有的关于自然灾害对冲突影响的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，这些模型专注于选定的行为体（例如反叛政府或政府人口），而忽略了其他行为体。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，无法解释这种复杂的实证结果。笔者将提出一个统一的理论模型，考察自然灾害对政府、叛乱分子和民众这三个冲突主体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，利用国内灾害地点，反叛能力和政府能力的变化，以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的混合实证结果，并提供了更准确和可操作的政策含义。

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.