Floods and armed conflict

We estimate the impact of large, catastrophic floods on internal armed conflict using global data on large floods between 1985 and 2009. The results suggest that while large floods did not ignite new conflict, they fueled existing armed conflicts. Floods and armed conflict are endogenously determine...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environment and development economics 2016-02, Vol.21 (1), p.23-52
Main Authors: Ghimire, Ramesh, Ferreira, Susana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archives & records
Civil war
Climate change
Conflict
Disasters
Economic theory
Economics
Empirical analysis
Environmental economics
Estimates
Flood control
Floods
Natural disasters
Politics
Precipitation
Specifications
Studies
Violence
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Summary:We estimate the impact of large, catastrophic floods on internal armed conflict using global data on large floods between 1985 and 2009. The results suggest that while large floods did not ignite new conflict, they fueled existing armed conflicts. Floods and armed conflict are endogenously determined, and we show that empirically addressing this endogeneity is important. The estimated effects of floods on conflict prevalence are substantially larger in specifications that control for the endogeneity of floods, suggesting that treating natural disasters as exogenous phenomena may underestimate their impacts on sociopolitical outcomes.
ISSN:1355-770X
1469-4395
DOI:10.1017/S1355770X15000157