Climatic Disasters and armed intrastate conflict : A quantitative analysis assessing how abrupt hydrometeorological disasters affect the risk of conflict termination, covering the years 1985 to 2007

Abstract

This thesis covers the relatively unstudied connection between hydrometeorological disasters and the duration of armed intrastate conflict, and aims to discover how abrupt climate changes affect the prospects for conflict termination. By performing several Weibulldistributed survival models, it specifically examines the effects of the rapid-onset climatic disasters floods, windstorms, waves, and extreme temperatures on the risk of conflict termination. The central hypothesis leans on a number of theoretical arguments holding that disasters have the capacity to act as catalysts for peace. The results of the analysis do however indicate that disasters reduce the risk of conflict termination, but with the caveat that this effect might reverse with time. With somewhat indistinct empirical results, the thesis falls in line with existing research on the topic arguing that closer, more disaggregated analyses of the mechanisms at play between climatic disasters and conflict dynamics are in demand.