The Impact of Natural Disasters on the Ongoing Civil War: The Role of Spatial Configuration of Territorial Control

Abstract

Understanding how natural disasters impact ongoing civil wars is increasingly important as more extreme weather events are expected due to climate change. Existing literature suggests that there is substantial unexplained variation in the consequences of natural disasters for conflict. I present a theoretical model, which provides insights into how the pre-disaster spatial configuration of territorial control can moderate the impact of natural disasters on conflict dynamics. Investigating these insights empirically, I introduce a new measure of natural disasters based on precipitation data, which improves geographical precision and mitigates endogeneity concerns in existing literature. Using the ongoing civil war between the New People’s Army (NPA) and the Philippine government as a testing ground, results show that the impact of natural disasters on both shifts in territorial control and battle-related violence varies by the pre-disaster spatial configuration of territorial control.