How Government Policies Reduce Security Threats from Environmental Shocks

University Of Iowa, Iowa City IA

Investigators

Abstract

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.