Climate, urbanization, and conflict: the effects of weather shocks and floods on urban social disorder

This paper tests the effects of weather shocks and floods on urban social disorder in a panel of large cities in developing countries. The authors focus on a particular mechanism, namely the displacement of population into large Asian and sub-Saharan African cities. The paper tests this hypothesis using a novel dataset on floods—distinguishing those that affected large cities directly from those that occurred outside the sample of large cities.

Floods are found to be associated with faster growth of a population in a city, and in turn with a higher likelihood (and frequency) of urban social disorder events. The 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. These findings have important implications for evaluating future climate change, as well as for policies regarding adaptation to climate change and disaster resilience.