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Floods and armed conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2015

Ramesh Ghimire  and
Susana Ferreira
Ramesh Ghimire
Affiliation:
University of Georgia, Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Athens, Georgia, USA. E-mail: ghimire@uga.edu
Susana Ferreira
Affiliation:
University of Georgia, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 313 Conner Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA. Tel: +1 706-542-0086. Fax: +1 706-542-0739. E-mail: sferreir@uga.edu
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 23 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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