When disasters and conflicts collide: Improving links between disaster resilience and conflict prevention.
Abstract
This study assesses the evidence base for how natural disasters affect conflict, how conflict affects natural disasters, and how people living in complex environments are affected by multiple risks. It also considers what can be learned from current practices to improve conflict prevention, statebuilding and disaster risk management in ways that help build resilience.
The report is structured as follows: Section 1 is the introduction. Section 2 reviews the scale of the challenge by examining the extent to which conflict and natural disasters overlap and which countries are of most concern now and in the future. Section 3 looks at the evidence for how natural disasters affect conflict and fragility, before Section 4 examines the complementary question of how conflict and fragility affect resilience to natural disasters. Section 5 explores how the disaster–conflict interface might be understood conceptually and how the relationship between disaster risk management and conflict prevention might be strengthened. Section 6 reviews current practices and includes a set of case studies, and section 7 outlines recommendations for strengthening international policy, programming and finance and the current evidence base.
Examples are provided in the report of disaster risk reduction in Afghanistan, resilience building in the Sahel region, community based risk reduction in Karamoja and national risk reduction in Nepal.
Citation
Harris, K.; Keen, D.; Mitchell, T. When disasters and conflicts collide: Improving links between disaster resilience andconflict prevention. Overseas Development Institute, London, UK (2013) x + 54 pp.
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