Environment and Natural Disasters

Environment, Natural Resources, and Disaster Politics

Mitchell, Sara and Elise Pizzi. 2021. "Natural Disasters, Forced Migration, and Civil Conflict: The Importance of Government Policy Responses." International Studies Review.

Understanding the connections between environmental change, migration, and conflict is urgent as natural disasters increase in frequency and intensity. Migration is one response to these environmental changes. Existing literature suggests that this environmental migration can cause violent conflict as migrants lose livelihoods, move to new areas, or compete over scarce resources. However, the path through which migration leads to conflict—and the policy responses that either fuel conflict or promote stability—are not well understood. Some countries develop adequate proactive (e.g. infrastructure) and reactive post-disaster (e.g. reconstruction) policies to mitigate grievances and conflict risks from forced migration. Other countries fail to respond adequately to disasters, opening the door for insurgent groups to garner support. We argue that we must collect better data on government policies related to relocation programs, restrictions on movement, and post-disaster reconstruction to identify trigger situations where disasters and migration are most likely to produce violence.

Burch, Michael and Elise Pizzi. 2020. "Strategic Targeting: The Islamic State and Use of Violence in Iraq and Syria." Terrorism and Political Violence.

What explains the specific location of Islamic State attacks in Syria and Iraq? We consider previous arguments that emphasize either ethnic or economic endowments shape a group’s use of violence throughout conflict. We explore these competing motivations using a spatial analysis of the Islamic State’s individual acts of violence from 2011-2017. We find that both areas with ethnic heterogeneity and valuable economic rents are associated with more individual Islamic State violent events. By examining the micro-foundations of the Islamic State’s conflict decisions, we provide further nuance to understanding the strategic logic of rebel groups during wartime.

L. Dilling, E. Pizzi, J. Berggren, A. Ravikumar, K. Andersson. 2017. "Drivers of Adaptation: Responses to weather- and climate-related hazards in 60 local governments in the Intermountain Western U.S." Environment and Planning A. [online]

Cities are key sites of action for adaptation to climate change. However, there are a wide variety of responses to hazards at the municipal level. Why do communities take adaptive action in the face of weather- and climate-related risk? We study what cities are doing in response to existing natural hazards, such as floods, droughts, and blizzards as an analog for understanding the drivers of adaptive behavior toward climate change risks. We conducted a survey of 60 U.S. municipalities and 6 in-depth case studies in the intermountain west states of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah that regularly experience weather and climate extreme events. Our analysis shows that perception of risk and external drivers such as planning requirements or availability of funding stand out as important drivers, although a combination of factors is likely important for taking action. Other important factors include the presence of a policy champion, perceived vulnerability to extreme weather and climate events, and previous experience with a range of types of extreme events. Overall, our results suggest that multiple factors interact or act in combination to produce an enabling environment for action in the face of weather- and climate-related risk.

Burch, Michael, and Elise Pizzi. 2014. "Local Fights in National Conflicts: Understanding the Location of Conflict Events during Intrastate Conflict." Civil Wars. 16(1): 24-45. [PDF]

How do rebel groups determine their targets during intrastate conflict? We build upon two competing theories in conflict studies that emphasize either the social or economic determinants of violence during war and use geographic information systems (GIS) analysis to explore these competing theories. To do this, we utilize a subnational analysis of the most likely case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to understand whether ethnicity or natural resources motivates the location of conflict events. Accounting for geography, we find that economic endowments in the form of natural resources are highly related with the number of violent attacks, while the presence of competing ethnic groups does not offer much help in understanding the location of conflict events.