Climate-related natural disasters, economic growth, and armed civil conflict

Abstract

Global warming is expected to make the climate warmer, wetter, and wilder. It is predicted that such climate change will increase the severity and frequency of climate-related disasters like flash floods, surges, cyclones and severe storms. This article uses econometric methods to study the consequences of climate-induced natural disasters on economic growth, and how these disasters are linked to the onset of armed civil conflict either directly or via their impact on economic growth. The results show that climate-related natural disasters have a negative effect on growth and that the impact is considerable. The analysis of conflict onset shows that climate-related natural disasters do not increase the risk of armed conflict. This is also true when we instrument the change in GDP growth by climatic disasters. The result is robust to inclusion of country and time fixed effects, different estimation techniques, various operationalization of the disasters measure as well as for conflict incidence and war onset. These findings have two major implications: if climate change increases the frequency or make weather-related natural disasters more severe, it is an economic concern for countries susceptible to these types of hazards. However, our results suggest-based on historical data-that more frequent and severe climate-related disasters will not lead to more armed conflicts through their effects on GDP growth.

Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries

“…Although a sequence of studies has suggested that a large number of outbreaks of armed conflicts in modern as well as premodern times have been associated with climatic variability (33,36,37,(39)(40)(41), the robustness of these findings and underlying mechanisms are controversially discussed (10,37,42,43). Other literature that assessed the influence of climate signals on armed-conflict outbreak risk did not report a robust connection (9,44,45).…”

Climate, conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?

“…The logistical constraints of terrorist attacks may differ substantially from those of many other types of violence studied here, possibly explaining why the structure of this response is inverted. Bergholt and Lujala (2012) are the only study to model the effect that floods and wind storms have on the onset of civil conflict , finding a small, negative and statistically insignificant effect. It is possible that these disasters, which are phenomenologically different from the rainfall and temperature variations studied above, have a fundamentally different impact on social conflict.…”

Discovering the differential and gendered consequences of natural disasters on the gender gap in life expectancy in Southeast Asia

“…Environmental shocks such as droughts, earthquake, cyclones and extreme flood are among the deadliest and disastrous natural disaster types that increased mortality 5 risks and economic losses affecting millions of populations (Gu, Gerland, Pelletier, & Cohen, 2015;Guha-Sapir, Below, & Hoyois, 2016). As exacerbated by climate change phenomenon, natural disasters are expected to affect millions of people across the world and impede current efforts in attaining long-term sustainable development goals (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2012; Bergholt & Lujala, 2012;Hallegate, et al, 2016).…”

“…There are numerous studies that have explored the adverse consequences of natural disasters on countries and concerned 10 population, particularly the poorest and marginalized groups (Wisner, Blaike, Cannon, & Davis, 2003;Kahn, 2005;Lin, 2010;Bergholt & Lujala, 2012;Bizzarri, 2012;Bradshaw, 2014;Kousky, 2016). However, there are currently few genderoriented research works that highlight the direct and disproportionate consequences of catastrophic events on women's life expectancy in relation to the socioeconomic and political conditions present in a country (Neumayer & Plumper, 2007).…”