Climate, Urbanization, and Conflict: The Effects of Weather Shocks and Floods on Urban Social Disorder

David Castells-Quintana () and Thomas K.J. McDermott ()
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Thomas K.J. McDermott: National University of Ireland Galway

No 588, ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: In this paper, we test the effect of weather shocks and floods on urban social disorder for a panel of large cities in developing countries. We focus on a particular mechanism, namely the displacement of population into (large) cities. We test this hypothesis using a novel dataset on floods—distinguishing those that affected large cities directly from those that occurred outside of our sample of large cities. Floods are found to be associated with faster growth of the population in the city, and in turn with a higher likelihood (and frequency) of urban social disorder events. Our evidence suggests that the effects of floods on urban social disorder occur (mainly) through the displacement of population, and the “push” of people into large cities. Our findings have important implications for evaluating future climate change, as well as for policies regarding adaptation to climate change and disaster resilience.

Keywords: climate change; conflict; floods; migration; rainfall; social disorder; urbanization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D90 I30 J60 O10 Q00 Q01 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2019-07-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-env and nep-ure
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:adbewp:0588

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