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Although many scholars, policy makers, and relief organizations suggest that natural disasters bring groups together and dampen conflicts, earthquakes can actually stimulate intrastate conflict by producing scarcities in basic resources, particularly in developing countries where the competition for scarce resources is most intense. Capitalizing on a natural experiment design, this study examines the impact of earthquakes on intrastate conflict through a statistical analysis of 185 countries over the period from 1975 to 2002. The analysis indicates that earthquakes not only increase the likelihood of conflict, but that their effects are greater for higher magnitude earthquakes striking more densely populated areas of countries with lower gross domestic products as well as preexisting conflicts. These results suggest that disaster recovery efforts must pay greater attention to the conflict-producing potential of earthquakes and undertake certain measures, including strengthening security procedures, to prevent this outcome from occurring.
Keywords: earthquakes; natural disasters; conflict; civil war; natural experiment
After an earthquake killing 30,000 struck Kashmir in 2005, hopes were high that the disaster would unite people across boundaries and bring an end to conflicts simmering in the region. "This is a common tragedy," declared Lalit Mansingh, India's Ambassador to Washington, DC.1 "It can bring people together" and "help in furthering the peace process."2 Policy makers such as Mansingh and many scholars suggest that natural disasters can reduce conflict by uniting people in a common fate and a shared goal of reconstruction. In Kashmir, however, hopes for peace were quickly dashed as talks between India and Pakistan over the disputed land continued to stumble after the quake, while violence in the region was unabated.3 Elsewhere, including Colombia in 1999 and El Salvador in 1986, earthquakes have not only failed to foster peace but have seemed to spur intrastate violence as well. What effect do earthquakes have on conflict, if any, and why?
Earthquakes, I argue, promote intrastate conflict by increasing competition among groups for scarce resources (e.g., food, water, housing, medicine, and relief aid). Scarcities, in turn, provoke frustrations, which lead to anger and violence. Their effects are greater in economically developing countries than in developed ones since earthquakes have more severe consequences in the former than in the latter. Earthquakes also have larger effects in countries already experiencing conflict since...