Climatic Disasters and the Dynamics of Conflict
My PhD project is a part of the EU-financed PRIO project Climate Variability and Security Threats (CLIMSEC). In my project I will look specifically at how climatic disasters might affect ongoing conflict, aiming to uncover some of the mechanisms at play between disaster events and the course of ongoing conflicts. The overarching research question asks: Under which conditions do climatic disasters affect the dynamics of ongoing conflict? Conflict dynamics refers to type of termination, duration, severity and diffusion of conflict. The project will develop theoretical expectations on the intermediate effects of climatic disasters on conflict dynamics, looking both at armed intrastate conflict as well as communal conflicts and other “low threshold” types of political violence, and then test them empirically. In order to discover whether the theoretically proposed effects occur I will rely on a quantitative testing design, hopefully supplemented by a survey-based case study of an Asian country/region. The dissertation will be structured as a collection of 4–5 articles published in relevant peer-reviewed journals.