Author’s Accepted Manuscript

Natural Disasters and Social Conflict: A Systematic

Literature Review

Jiuping Xu, Ziqi Wang, Feng Shen, Chi Ouyang,

Yan Tu

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PII: S2212-4209(16)30002-4
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2016.04.001
Reference: IJDRR336
To appear in: International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
Received date: 2 January 2016
Revised date: 1 April 2016
Accepted date: 1 April 2016
Cite this article as: Jiuping Xu, Ziqi Wang, Feng Shen, Chi Ouyang and Yan Tu,
Natural Disasters and Social Conflict: A Systematic Literature Review,
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2016.04.001
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 Natural Disasters and Social Conflict: A Systematic Literature Review

Jiuping Xu1 ; Ziqi Wang2 ; Feng Shen3 ; Chi Ouyang4 ; Yan Tu5

Abstract
Natural disasters often result in fatalities, injuries, diseases and other negative physical and mental health effects.
Indirectly, disasters can result in social grievances and resource scarcities which can trigger social conflicts. Despite
the many natural disaster studies, however, little attention has been devoted to the study of conflicts following a natural
disaster. Through a systematic literature review from 1986-2013, this paper examines social conflicts resulting from
natural disasters. In this paper, a three dimensional analysis, Description-Theme-Mechanism, is used to combine
and analyze the current state of research, with the ultimate goal of clarifying the concept of social conflicts arising
from natural disasters, summarizing existing research on the links between natural disasters and social conflicts,
determining any significant rules and trends, and providing recommendations and directions for future research.
Keywords: Natural disaster; Social conflict; Literature review; Current focus; Future research

1. Introduction

Natural disasters are catastrophic events with atmospheric, geological, and hydrological origins (e.g., droughts,
earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, landslides) that can cause fatalities, property damage and social environmental dis-
ruption [1]. After a severe natural disaster, roads, communication and power sources are often damaged, so there are
immediate localized resource shortages, and disordered and chaotic economic, political and social environments [2].
Natural disasters have been previously related to consequent social conflicts and a further entrenchment of existing
poverty levels and inequalities [3, 4]. In this study, we adopted a classic definition for social conflict; a controversial
interaction among social actors to realize scarce or incompatible aims and prevent the opponent from attaining them
[5]. Social conflicts have existed since the beginning of human society and have exerted a significant influence on
social evolution [6]. Conflict theory holds that conflicts are a basic state in society, and can function to encourage
social integration and improve and/or stabilize social order [7].
In disaster research, there has been significantly more emphasis placed on disaster impact, risk management, and
post-disaster recovery and reconstruction than on the social consequences arising from the disaster [8]. Sorokin (1946)
first identified the polarizing effects of disasters in his work ”Man and Society in Calamity” [1] , and Cuny (1983)
noted that natural disasters can act as triggers for social structural change [9]. Natural disasters can also cause political
unrest [10] and some studies have explored how the occurrence of natural disasters can significantly increase the risk
of violent civil conflict in both the short and medium term [11, 12, 8]. Some investigations into the causal relationship
between natural disasters and conflict have been undertaken [3, 4, 13, 14]. In addition, some research has examined
the conflict-inducing consequences of climate change, causing a heated debate in academic and open communities
[15, 16, 17, 18, 19]. Despite this wide body of research, however, there has been a lack of systematic evaluative
studies on the correlation between natural disasters and disaster-based conflicts. In this study, we discuss and analyze

1 Corresponding author. Professor, Institute of Emergency Management and Reconstruction in Post-disaster, Sichuan University, Chengdu,

610064, P. R. China. E-mail: xujiuping@scu.edu.cn.

2 Ph.D. Candidate, Institute of Emergency Management and Reconstruction in Post-disaster, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, P. R. China.

E-mail: 1988229wzq@163.com.
3 Ph.D., School of Finance, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, 611130, P. R. China. E-mail: shen-
feng1213@gmail.com.
4 Ph.D., Institute of Emergency Management and Reconstruction in Post-disaster, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, P. R. China. E-mail:

warmouyang@gmail.com.
5 Ph.D., School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, P. R. China. E-mail: tuyan1988@whut.edu.cn.

Preprint submitted to Elsevier April 2, 2016

the mechanism behind natural disaster caused social conflict through a systematic literature review. The goals of this
study are as follows: (1) to analyze and summarize the significant rules and trends from previous studies into natural
disasters and social conflict; (2) to explore the mechanisms connecting natural disasters and social conflict; (3) to
provide recommendations and directions for future research.
Beck believed that today’s society is constantly changing from industrial society to the risk-based society [20].
Risk society is a transformation of society from industrial to post-industrial [21]. The main feature of risk society
is filled with uncertainties and conflicts in economy, politics, environment [20]. As Beck first proposed the notion
of the risk society in 1986 and the research for this paper commenced in 2014, this study used this time frame
(1986-2013) to build a literature database from the Web of Science Core Collection and Google Scholar based on
the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), a global database on natural and technological disasters. For a natural
disaster to be entered into the database, at least one of the following criteria must be met: (1) 10 or more people have
been reported as killed; (2) 100 or more people have been reported as affected; (3) There has been a declaration of
a state of emergency; (4) There has been a call for international assistance. Using knowledge management software,
we analyzed the literature database and summarized the significant relationships between natural disasters and social
conflicts.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the systematic literature review method
used for the combing and analysis of research from a global perspective. Section 3 presents the literature analysis
results. In this section, we identify the past and present research foci and give guidance as to possible avenues for
future research. Some related special themes and mechanisms are discussed in detail and the relationships between
those themes and achievements are analyzed. In Section 4, some findings and recommendations for future research
are given. Finally, Section 5 concludes the study with a summary of the research and findings.

2. Method

Literature mining from published literature is very useful to explore key areas and trends [22]. In this section, we
describe the synthesis analysis method and literature mining procedure.

2.1. Synthesis analysis

A systematic review is a pragmatic, transparent and reproducible research methodology for the analysis of existing
literature [23]. Fig.1 shows how a systematic review on natural disaster caused social conflict can be clearly specified
through the use of a three dimensional analysis made up of descriptive analysis, thematic analysis, and mechanism
analysis. First, we developed a rigorous search strategy and selection criteria. As this process required the collection
and analysis of many documents, the knowledge management software, Note Express, was used as the primary filter
to compile the research paper statistics. Then, Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for EXCEL (NodeXL)
were utilized to assist in providing a descriptive analysis of the literature, such as the author(s) and key words. NodeXL
was specifically designed to facilitate the learning of concepts and methods in a network analysis and, as a key
component, to provide a visualization of that network [24]. Many studies have used NodeXL to analyze knowledge
networks and have achieved good results [25, 26]. Finally, through a systematic three-dimensional analysis, some
significant findings concerning natural disaster caused social conflicts were identified, from which we were able to
decide on recommendations for future research.

2.2. Literature mining

A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify the relevant studies and articles were collected from
the Web of Science Core Collection and Google Scholar (1986-2013). The Web of Science Core Collection consists of
the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), the Arts &Hu-
manities Citation Index (A&HCI), the Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (CPCI-S), the Conference
Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities (CPCI-SSH), and others. The manual search was predom-
inantly based on reference articles. The literature search was conducted with a focus on two main fields: conflicts and
natural disasters. In each search, the two keywords were used together with the logical operator “and”. The keywords
selected were as shown in Table 1.

2
 Search Strategy & Selection Criteria
Keywords used selection

Conflict Earthquake
Web of Science

Source
Conflict related words

Natural disasters type

Violence Tsunami
Google Scholar

...... ......
NoteExpress

War Flood
Finally document
Instability Drought database

NoteXL

Descriptive analysis Publish years

Thematical analysis

Meteorological
Key words

Climatological
Document

Hydrological
Geophysical
Authors

Mechanism

Biological
analysis
type

Literature Review & Results

Discussions & Future Re se arch

Figure 1: A framework synthesis analysis method for natural disaster caused social conflict.

The number of articles retrieved using the Web of Science Core Collection and the manual search was initially
quite large; however, there were also many redundant items. To ensure an accurate identification, the following
exclusion criteria were applied:
(1) Repetitive articles, as some journals appear in more than one database.
(2) Articles in which the conflict issues were not directly or indirectly caused by natural disasters.
(3) Articles which were only limited to medical and psychological issues caused by natural disasters, such as the
medical treatment of the wounded and mental disorder diagnoses.
Using this search strategy, a 4×30 search matrix was constructed. The Web of Science Core Collection was used
to search for the key words, from which 813 articles were initially identified; then, using NoteExpress, 45 repeated
articles were eliminated. For all other articles in the database, titles and abstracts were scrutinized and 704 articles
were eliminated using exclusion criteria 2 and 3. Then, using a manual search in Google Scholar with the key words
appearing only in the article title, 8 highly cited articles not included in the Web of Science search were included
because of their direct relationship to our studies. In the above way, the literature was scrutinized until 72 documents
were selected for the final document database.

3. Results

In this section, the three dimensional analysis; descriptive analysis, thematic analysis, and mechanism analysis;
conducted on the literature is described.

3.1. Descriptive analysis

After a further classification of the final document database, descriptive analyses were conducted to identify doc-
ument type, author(s), year and key words.

3
 Table 1: Keywords used in the literatures selection criteria
Conflict Violence War Instability
(Logical Operator) And
Natural disaster Natural hazard Earthquake Volcanoe
Tsunami Landslide Subsidence Mudflow
Hurricane Tropical cyclone Thunderstorm Tornadoe
Lightning Hailstorm Windstorm Ice storm
Snowstorm Blizzard Cold wave Heat wave
Avalanche Flood Extreme temperature Drought
Wildfire Climate change Epidemic Pandemic
Insect infestation Animal stampede

3.1.1. Document type analysis

After the rigorous search and selection, the articles fell into two main categories: thematic analyses and mechanism
analyses (Table 2). Because different types of natural disasters may trigger different conflicts, the thematic analysis
articles were divided into five themes according to the natural disaster classification: geophysical disaster caused social
conflicts, meteorological disaster caused social conflicts, hydrological disaster caused social conflicts, climatological
disaster caused social conflicts, and biological disaster caused social conflicts [84]. Fig. 2 shows that a majority
of existing studies have been focused on thematic analyses (83.3%) rather than mechanism analyses (16.7%). The
mechanism analyses papers generally focused on natural disasters as a whole and systematically explored how natural
disasters affected the evolutionary patterns of conflict, violence, instability and even war.

Figure 2: Proportional relationship of the document database.

3.1.2. Publication year analysis

Fig. 3 shows the numbers and corresponding percentages of the document types in the database. As shown, the
selected studies in this field dated back to 1988, and little research was conducted in this early phase. Generally, there
has been a gradual development in research since 2005. There were 9 articles in 2007, 8 articles in both 2009 and
2010, 12 articles in 2011, and a small decline in 2012. The reason for this increase in studies was mainly because

4
 Table 2: Classification of the document database
Thematic analysis Geophysical Castanos and Lomnitz (1995)[27], Uyangoda (2005)
[28], Billon and Waizenegger (2007)[7], Ahlerup
(2009)[29], Hyndman (2009)[30], Fisher(2010)[31],
Gupta and Agrawal(2010)[32], Waizenegger and Hynd-
man (2010)[33], Chan and Zhang (2011)[34], Zeccola
(2011)[35];
Meteorological Dorozynski (2003)[36], Tierney et al. (2006)[37], Brez-
ina and Kaufman (2008)[38], Vigna et al. (2009)[39],
Harville et al. (2010)[40], Gajewski et al. (2011)[41];
Hydrological Clemens et al. (1999)[42], Davis and Ender(1999)[43],
Ibanez et al. (2003)[44], Endfield et al. (2004)[45], Maier
et al. (2006)[46], Biswas et al. (2010)[47], Smith et al.
(2011)[48], Doocy et al. (2013)[13];
Climatological Carroll et al. (2006)[49], Zhang et al. (2006)[50],
Barnett and Adger (2007)[51], Hendrix and Glaser
(2007)[15], Nordås and Gleditsch (2007)[52], Reuveny
(2007)[53], Stott (2007)[54], Zhang et al. (2007)[55],
Eriksen and Lind (2009)[56], Moszynski (2009)[57],
Raleigh (2010)[58], Tol and Wagner (2010)[16], Zhang
et al. (2010)[59], Hsiang et al. (2011)[60], Mason
et al. (2011)[17], Theisen et al. (2011)[61], Verho-
even (2011)[62], Zhang et al. (2011)[63], Adano et al.
(2012)[64], Benjaminsen et al. (2012)[65], Bergholt and
Lujala (2012)[66], Bernauer and Siegfried (2012)[67],
Devitt and Tol (2012)[18], Gleditsch (2012)[68], Hen-
drix and Salehyan (2012)[69], Scheffran et al. (2012)[19],
Slettebak (2012)[70], Theisen et al. (2013)[71];
Biological Benatar (2002)[72], Singh et al. (2005)[73], Watson et
al. (2007)[74], Gayer and Legros (2008)[75], Crossman
(2009)[5], Steele and Collins(2009)[76], Chambers et al.
(2012)[77];
Mechanism analysis Stallings (1988)[3], Anderson (2005)[78], Redmond
(2005)[79], Bhavnani (2006)[6], Nel and Righarts
(2008)[8], Sandin and Wester (2009)[80], Birkmann et al.
(2010)[4], Berrebi and Ostwald (2011)[81], Omelicheva
(2011)[11], Kreutz (2012)[82], Lindell (2013)[14], Reza-
eian (2013)[83].

the frequent natural disasters in recent years have caused heavy fatalities and significant damage to properties and
economy [85]. In addition, it could be said that this surge in interest indicates that social conflict resulting from
natural disasters has become a relatively new research area with further studies expected in the future.

3.1.3. Author analysis

In Fig. 4, the disks represent the different authors and countries, and the lines represent the connections between
the authors and countries. First, most research has been conducted in the USA, the UK, Norway, Germany, China,
Switzerland, and Sweden, with the majority coming from North America and the European Union (EU). Second,
there appeared to be a lack of cooperation between countries such as in Mexico, Sweden,Switzerland and Sri Lanka,
and even though there were cooperative relationships between the USA and Germany, China and the UK, Norway
and Germany, New Zealand and the UK, Canada and the USA, and China and Norway, most authors seemed to prefer
within country cooperation rather than cross-national collaboration. This finding could be relevant in terms of the
knowledge that could be gained from sharing research hurdles, the different study foci, and funding support across the
different countries, as shown in Fig. 4.

3.1.4. Key word analysis

In our target document database, we collected key words from each paper to analyze the possible connections
between the various fields. Similar papers would reflect on the key words or topics in a similar way if they were in

5
 14

Publication numbers

12

10

0
1988 1995 1999 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Figure 3: Published documents within the period of 1986-2013.

Figure 4: Cooperation of authors constructed by the affiliations.

the same field. Key words were considered to be of differing importance based on occurrence frequency. From this
analysis, several connections were presented in the key word connection net (Fig. 5). The frequency of each item
was an indicator of a closer relationship with other key words. With a higher occurrence frequency, the key word
was given a larger label. The more times a pair of key words appeared, the wider the edge was between them. As
shown in Fig. 5, the item “conflict” was found to be the largest, followed by “climate change”, “natural disaster”,
6
 Figure 5: Cooperation of authors constructed by the affiliations.

“violence”, “security”, “drought” and “flood”. This result implied that except for the two most related topics conflict
and natural disaster, climate change, drought and flood seemed to have attracted the most attention. There was a subtle
relationship found between the key words “ risk” and “conflict” and although the distance between them was close,
the width was very narrow, indicating that there were few studies in the risk/conflict area.

3.2. Thematic analysis

3.2.1. Geophysical disaster caused social conflict
As can be seen in Fig. 2, 15.3% of the research in the final document database was focused on geophysical disaster
caused social conflicts. These studies were mainly concerned with the social conflict arising out of earthquake and
tsunami disasters. Earthquakes can stimulate intrastate conflicts by producing scarcities in basic resources, particu-
larly in developing countries where the competition for scarce resources is most intense. Capitalizing on a natural
experimental design, Brancati (2007) examined the impact of earthquakes on intrastate conflict through a statistical
analysis of 185 countries from 1975 to 2002 [12]. The results indicated that earthquakes not only increased the risk
of social crisis, but that the effect was greater from higher magnitude earthquakes that struck more densely populated
areas in countries with lower gross domestic products and preexisting conflicts. Ahlerup (2009) theoretically demon-
strated that moderate earthquakes increased the risk of civil wars, but that stronger (and therefore rarer) earthquakes
reduced the risk of civil wars [29]. One of the reasons given was that moderate earthquakes made people politically
motivated to rebel because the low efficiency and discriminative policies of the government became more apparent,
while potential rebels would lose economic motivation after a strong earthquake [29].
Most studies suggested that natural disasters exacerbated pre-existing conflicts, but some studies also found that
disasters could reduce or mitigate existing conflicts. Billon and Waizenegger (2007) studied the moderating effects of
natural disasters on the armed conflicts in Aceh and Sri Lanka following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami [7]. Uyangoda
(2005) examined how the tsunami redefined some key dimensions of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict and peace processes,
and demonstrated that the responses to the tsunami disaster and the advancement in the stalled peace process were
closely interwoven [28].
Some research also supported the link between geophysical disasters and increased rates of physical, emotional
and sexual violence. Fisher (2010) found that there were increased levels of violence against women in disaster-
7
affected communities for a considerable time after the onset of the crisis [31]. In the chaos of the first hours and days
of the crisis, the likelihood of rape and other forms of sexual violence was at its highest. At the same time, this tem-
porary social instability further undermined the government’s ability to deal with unexpected incidents and triggered
new conflicts [31]. Chan and Zhang (2011) surveyed female survivors from the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China
and found that both physical violence and psychological aggression between partners increased after the earthquake
[34]. Following the earthquake, these figures increased to 6.6% for physical violence and 19.3% for psychological
aggression.

3.2.2. Meteorological disaster caused social conflict

As seen in Fig. 2, 8.3% of the research in the final document database focused on meteorological disaster caused
social conflicts. These studies focused mainly on conflicts resulting from hurricane disasters. Vigna et al. (2009)
outlined how hurricane exposure had different effects on the relationship between community violence and corporal
punishment in the home [39]. Harville et al. (2011) examined this relationship in Hurricane Katrina and found a
relationship between aggression and violence in a cohort of 123 postpartum women [40]. These results indicated that
certain hurricane experiences were associated with an increase in the likelihood of conflict as well as an increased
likelihood of the use of violence for conflict resolution. Schumacher et al. (2010) conducted research on a population-
based representative sample in southern Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina, which compared reports of Intimate
Partner Violence (IPV) for the six months before and after the hurricane [86]. They found that the percentage of
physical and psychological victimization of women and the psychological victimization of men all increased signif-
icantly following Hurricane Katrina, and IPV was a significant but frequently overlooked public health concern in
communities affected by disasters.
Generally, opinion polls and the mass media promote information feedback and therefore affect how we judge
facts. However, Tierney et al. (2006) and Brezina and Kaufman (2008) found that the mass media played a significant
role in promulgating erroneous beliefs about disaster behavior [37, 38]. After Hurricane Katrina, the media was found
to have greatly exaggerated the incidence and severity of looting and lawlessness, consequently affecting the disaster
victims’ responses [37].

3.2.3. Hydrological disaster caused social conflict

As can be seen from Fig. 2, 11.1% of research in the final document database was focused on hydrological disaster
caused social conflict. These studies were mainly concerned with flood disaster caused social conflicts. Although the
immediate impact of a flood disaster on survivors is most likely to be from injury to or the death of relatives, damage
to crops, housing and infrastructure, and sewage contaminated water supplies, these factors can also cause acute food
shortages and homelessness [79]. Doocy et al. (2013) described the impact of floods in terms of mortality, injury,
and displacement to identify the risk factors associated with these outcomes [13]. Maier et al. (2006) investigated the
transport paths from the flood to the retention area to the groundwater and waterworks and concluded that conflicts of
interest could be expected for virtually all major rivers in Germany [46]. To provide a deeper historical perspective on
the social effect of droughts and floods, Endfield et al. (2004) explored the response to events in Guanajuato, Mexico,
from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, and suggested that an intensification of class conflict was not
the only result of droughts and floods as in some case these events had stimulated increased cooperation between the
different social groups to recover and further reduce disaster losses [45]. A survey of 140 adults in Grand Forks, ND
following the Grand Forks flood in 1997 found increased rates of domestic violence, anxiety, depression [42].
Conversely, sometimes the disaster strengthened marriage and family relationships and reduced the hostility. Davis
and Ender (1999) interviewed ten married couples from North Dakota and Minnesota who had survived the 1997 Red
River flood to investigate the impact of the flood on their relationships [43] and found that five to eight months after
the flood, stronger marital relationships emerged, while vulnerable relationships appeared to be further weakened.

3.2.4. Climatological disaster caused social conflict

As can be seen from Fig. 2, 38.9% of the research in the final document database focused on climatological
disaster caused social conflicts, in which the significance of climate change as “a trigger” for conflict and social unrest
was highlighted. Zhang et al. (2007) explored the association between climate change and warfare in eastern China
over the past millennium from a macro-historic perspective [55]. Similarly, Tol and Wagner (2010) investigated the

8
relationship between the thousand-years of violent conflict in Europe and the various changes in temperature and
precipitation and found that conflict was more intense during colder periods [16].
Some studies showed strong temporal correlations between past climate changes and societal crises. However,
the specific causal mechanisms underlying this relationship have not been addressed. Zhang et al. (2011) explored
the quantitative responses of 14 fine-grained agro-ecological, socioeconomic and demographic variables to climate
fluctuations from A.D. 1500-1800 in Europe [63]. The results showed that the cooling from A.D. 1560-1660 caused
successive agro-ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic catastrophes, leading to the General Crisis of the Seven-
teenth Century, and a set of causal links between climate change and human crises was identified. Bergholt and Lujala
(2012) used econometric methods to study the consequences of climate-induced natural disasters on economic growth
and investigated how these disasters were linked to the onset of armed civil conflict either directly or through their
impact on economic growth [66]. It was found that climate-related natural disasters had a negative effect on growth
and that the impact could be considerable; however, the analysis of conflict onset found that climate-related natural
disasters did not increase the risk of armed conflict. The conventional discourse that has related climate change to
conflict has tended to focus on the long term trends in temperature and precipitation that define ecosystems and their
subsequent impact on access to renewable resources. Because these changes occurred over long time periods they
may not have captured the factors that trigger conflict. Hendrix and Glaser (2007) estimated the impact of both long
term trends in climate and short term climatic triggers on civil conflict onset in Sub-Saharan Africa and found that
both had a significant impact [15].
It has been claimed that global climate changes may have been responsible for episodes of widespread violence
and even the collapse of civilizations, yet previous studies have not shown that violence can be clearly attributed to
the global climate, and only random weather events have been correlated with conflict in some cases [60]. Although
comparative research on the security implications of climate change is rapidly expanding, major gaps in knowledge
still exist. Taken together, extant studies have provided mostly inconclusive insights, with contradictory or weak
effects demonstrated for climate variability and changes in conflict situations [71]. Current debates over the relation-
ship between climate change and conflict have arisen from a lack of data as well as the complexity of the pathways
connecting these two factors. In addition to data, it is important to account for the complexities in the relationship
between climate change and conflict. There are multiple pathways and feedback loops between the climate system,
natural resources, human security, and societal stability. Both climate change research and conflict research has been
progressing but given the uncertainties in both fields, there is a clear gap in our knowledge in this area [52].

3.2.5. Biological disaster caused social conflict

As can be seen from Fig. 2, 9.7% of research was focused on this theme, with most studies being focused on
epidemic or pandemic disaster caused social conflicts. Natural disasters cause many fatalities in a short period of time,
thus placing overwhelming stress on individuals and the society, and presenting health officials with the challenge of
handling the many human remains in the disaster-affected area, thus raising disease outbreak concerns [87]. However,
the relationship between natural disasters and communicable diseases has often been misunderstood. In the disarray
that usually follows natural disasters, the risk of an outbreak is often thought to be high,mainly because people think
that when there are many corpses,there may a high risk of epidemics. However, Watson et al. (2007) found that the
risk of an outbreak after a natural disaster was low, particularly when the disaster did not result in any substantial
population displacement [74]. Gayer et al. (2007) suggested that the detection and control of emerging infectious
diseases in conflict situations were major challenges because of the many risk factors associated with emergence and
transmission [88]. These factors, which tended to be even more inadequate in resource-poor settings, included poor
surveillance and response systems, destroyed infrastructure, collapsed health systems and the disruption of disease
and infection control programs, as well as ongoing insecurity and poor humanitarian agency coordination. Chambers
et al. (2012) described the experience of local public health agencies during a pandemic in the UK, identified the
problems within the hierarchical and hermetic national policy making systems,and offered a unique insight into the
conflicts that can arise between local and national governance levels and health and security governing registers when
handling a pandemic [77].

3.3. Mechanism analysis

As can be seen from Fig. 2, 16.7% of the research in the final document database focused on a mechanism analysis
of natural disaster caused social conflicts. These studies systematically explored how natural disasters affected the
9
evolutionary patterns of social conflict, violence, instability or war.
There is a difference in the meanings for natural hazard and natural disaster. A natural disaster is the effect of
a natural hazard on the environment which can result in economic, environmental and human losses [68]. Natural
hazards refer to any nature-triggered event which can adversely affect people or property. Natural hazards become
natural disasters when the affected groups do not have the capabilities to recover without external assistance [2].
Vulnerability is the primary driving factor in determining whether or not a particular event is a hazard or a disaster
[23]. Vulnerability refers to a community’s ability to mitigate and cope with the negative impacts of natural disasters
[17]. Therefore, vulnerability is a product of the human actions that occur when seeking to obtain economic, political,
social and environmental assets, with vulnerability levels determined by the human and physical forces (e.g., labor
markets or exchange relations) that control the allocation of these assets [89]. All disasters are fundamentally a result
of human actions, as they are a function of where and how people choose to or are forced to live [14]. Disasters can
badly damage communities or societies because of the economic, political or environmental losses and the inability
to recover without external assistance [23]. The trigger may be natural events such as earthquakes, but the adverse
impacts are controlled by the prior vulnerability of the affected community [79]. Therefore, studies on natural disasters
should be based on both natural and social-economic attributes and should be examined using a systematic engineering
approach. Lindell (2013) summarized a basic disaster research framework and outlined how disaster effects could
be determined by the presence of three pre-impact conditions; hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social
vulnerability; and three event-specific conditions; hazard event characteristics,improvised disaster responses, and
improvised disaster recovery [14]. These disaster characteristics and improvised disaster responses were combined
with the pre-impact conditions to produce disaster physical impacts, which, in turn, were combined with recovery
actions to give a realistic picture of the overall social impact of the disaster.
Communities can engage in three types of emergency management interventions to ameliorate the disaster impact.
Hazard mitigation practices and emergency preparedness practices can reduce the effect of the physical impact, and
recovery preparedness practices can reduce the social impact. Nel and Righarts (2008) used available data from 1950-
2000 from 187 political units to systematically explore this question, which has received remarkably little attention
in civil war literature [8]. In this study, a triadic distinction (motive, incentive, and opportunity) was employed to
analyze the mechanisms through which natural disasters could give rise to violent civil conflict. These mechanisms
were summarized and it was found that natural disasters significantly increased the risk of violent civil conflict both
in the short and medium term,and specifically in low- and middle-income countries that had intermediate to high
levels of inequality, mixed political regimes,and sluggish economic growth. Omelicheva (2011) revisited this ongoing
debate over the nature of the association between disasters and conflict and reassessed the relationship using data
from a conflict model developed by the Political Instability Task Force to measure political instability and assessment
methods [11]. The study found that there was only marginal support for the impact of certain types of disasters on the
onset of political instability. Birkmann et al. (2010) suggested that natural disasters could lead to important positive
or negative changes in socio-ecological systems [4].
Natural disasters and their relationship to terrorism have also appeared in contemporary security policy studies.
It has been posited that natural disasters can put significant pressure on a society and its government, which then
results in societal vulnerabilities that terrorist groups can exploit. Berrebi and Ostwald (2011), in a study which
investigated the links between terrorism and natural disasters, used a structured methodology to interrogate detailed
data on terrorism,disasters, and other relevant controls for 167 countries between 1970 and 2007, and found that there
was a strong positive relationship between disaster-related deaths and subsequent terrorist incidents and fatalities [81].
Another focus in this general area has been led by the belief that in disaster emergencies, people may seek to take
advantage of the disorder and indulge in selfish and self -seeking behavior such as looting and price gouging. This
belief by authorities that if emergencies are not controlled, there will be a breakdown in the ‘moral order’ of society
has been the main reason for the implementation of extraordinary measures in emergencies. Using a natural disaster
example, Sandin and Wester (2009) argued that this type of thinking was generally invalid in emergency situations
other than war and armed conflict [80]. Kreutz (2012), however, found that natural disasters could lead to a situation
which requires conflict resolution, as governments in an emergency were faced with demands for effective disaster
relief, so may need to offer concessions to separatist groups [82]. Therefore, natural disasters can often increase the
likelihood that opposing parties may initiate talks or agree to a cease fire, but may have little influence on the signing
of peace agreements.

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4. Findings and recommendations for future research

4.1. Findings
From the systematic three dimensional Description-Theme-Mechanism analysis, it was found that natural disaster
caused social conflicts did not follow the simple logic that “natural disaster A leads to conflict B”. In most studies, the
natural disaster caused social conflict had an overall adverse impact on the society and increased social risk. In most
instances, the natural disaster caused social conflicts increased the risk of future social crises and impeded existing
social crisis recovery efforts. This was particularly obvious at the local level, where the identified common negative
tendencies were found to be:
(1) Natural disaster caused social conflicts were found to almost always increase local social risk and destroy local
people’s lives, which further disrupted their response capacities and increased poverty levels [39, 81]. This intensified
social disorder and instability resulting from the disaster greatly increased the risk of social crisis and commonly
undermined government coping strategies [45, 31].
(2) Natural disasters such as drought and earthquake were found to gradually deepen overall social conflict and
crisis risk in disaster areas, especially in larger areas where the people faced higher levels of poverty and competition
over limited resources [45, 7] .
(3) Natural disasters, and particularly climatological disasters, were found to be more likely to trigger longer
cumulative social contradictions than any other type of natural disasters [55, 71]. These events often caused local
political tensions and even national level crises, and distracted government attention from the immediate and urgent
natural disaster issues [15, 16].
(4) Social conflicts caused by natural disasters as well as the impact of the disaster itself were found to worsen the
vulnerabilities of children and older people and increase gender-related violence [40, 42].
(5) Timely national and international disaster assistance was found to greatly reduce the risk of natural disaster
caused social conflicts. However, unsustainable disaster assistance and inappropriate volunteer services were shown
to often cause new adverse community impacts and increase local social risk [88].
While natural disasters and the related conflicts were found to have obvious adverse effects on societies, some
positive impacts or by-products were identified, particularly at the national level. The common positive tendencies
were found to be:
(1) Small-scale natural disasters were found to often create opportunities to enhance government response capaci-
ties to deal with large-scale natural disasters and reduce contradictions at the local level, thereby increasing community
trust [88, 11].
(2) Large destructive natural disasters sometimes provided opportunities to reduce existing and potential conflicts
and to establish a temporary peace, particularly in extremely tense regions [7]. However, these dramatic opportunities
were not strong enough to overcome deep social contradictions, and the peace was not often long-lasting [28].
(3) In some special instances, the impact of natural disaster caused social conflicts was found to reduce the risk of
social crisis, mainly because the event promoted interpersonal harmony and kept people together [43].

4.2. Recommendations for future research

While there is significant research that has touched on the theme of natural disaster caused social conflicts, there
is still room for further study:
As stated earlier in this paper, there has been a growing focus on this area and this review has shown that natural
disaster caused social conflicts have been examined in a wide range of academic disciplines. However, most existing
contributions are have only been general and descriptive and have lacked theoretical and or systematic analyses.
Therefore, it is expected predicted that a focus on the evolutionary mechanism and coping strategies may become
popular an increased focus in future research. As the natural disaster caused social conflict research theme is premised
on interdisciplinary paradigms, researchers need to use knowledge from natural science, social science, and systems
science to accurately identify the social conflict situations. Future research on natural disaster based social conflicts
should seek to use integrated knowledge and technologies. However, most papers reviewed here did not successfully
embody this integrative concept, and this was especially true for those papers from single discipline background
authors.
In addition, there are some specific issues that need to be addressed in future research. First, more research
needs to be focused on the role conflicts such as war and violence play on disaster impact severity. Second, how
11
natural disasters affect social conflicts given other factors (e.g., racial conflicts, religious contradictions and economic
marginalization) needs to be investigated. Quantitative empirical studies using available databases such as EM-DAT
and Armed Conflict Location and Event Database (ACLED) are needed to determine the mutual links between natural
disasters and social conflicts.
Future research needs to have a particular research paradigm. Some existing research considered conflict a static
study object but ignored the evolutionary processes and other influential factors. Unlike the existing research, future
research needs to consider the natural disaster-social risk-social crisis dynamic chain in the context of a risk society
(Fig. 6). Because of the dynamic and complex nature-society system, the evolutionary process for the natural disaster-
social risk-social crisis dynamic chain maybe slow, quick or sharp over time. In the process, conflict may not be the
only social risk factor. Natural disasters cause social conflicts and these social conflicts result in social disorder which
accelerates social instability which then aggravates the social conflicts and social disorder. Social disorder refers to
crime or other activities that create a dangerous atmosphere which is perceived by residents to be a sign of breakdowns
in social control [75]. Social crisis refers to incidents arising from the disasters which endanger normal social order
and public security causing dysfunction in the social functioning mechanism [90]. Social risk is the possibility that a
social crisis erupts as a result of the interactions between the social conflict, social disorder and social instability [11].
Not only do disasters result in casualties and the destruction of facilities, they also have a significant impact on the
society and may even cause social crises. Based on this natural disaster-social risk-social crisis dynamic chain, when
natural disasters occur, society may move into a state of weak equilibrium,weak harmony or meta-stability. Further,
due to the social conflict-disorder-instability interaction chain mechanism, the effects may be even more frightening
than the disaster itself.

Dynamic Chain

Social risk

Social conflict Social disorder Social instability

Interaction Chain

Figure 6: The dynamic interaction system for natural disaster caused social conflict.

In the light of this literature review, and from the perspective of a risk society, existing and new research paradigms
should be integrated to constitute a new framework, so that a more systematic natural disaster caused social conflict
research framework can be developed. First, any future framework should have a strong foundation, as only in
this way can follow-up studies be more targeted and scientific. There is a gap in the basic theory in the natural
12
disaster-social risk-social crisis dynamic chain, and hence,future efforts focused on this basic theory are needed to
enable a concentration on the system complexity of the natural disaster-social risk-social crisis dynamic chain as well
as on the evolutionary patterns and the evolutionary path of the dynamic chain. In the natural disaster-social risk-
social crisis dynamic chain£the natural disaster is considered an incentive factor for social risk [88]. However, as the
occurrence and impact of natural disasters are usually uncertain, natural disaster social risks are fuzzy and uncertain.
As mentioned above, social risk is usually expressed as social conflict, social disorder, and social instability [2].
Therefore, the social conflict-disorder-instability interaction chain mechanism should be more deeply examined. On
this basis, natural disaster coping strategies could be proposed, and future research could develop a comprehensive
natural disaster-social risk response system which includes disaster information systems, risk control systems and
decision evaluation systems.

5. Conclusion

In this paper, through a rigorous literature review, we examined the current available research on natural disasters
caused social conflicts, summarized the findings and achievements, and explored the effects of natural disasters on
social conflict. Even though there is a large body of research that has touched on the themes of natural disasters or
conflict, many studies have failed to conduct theoretical or operational analyses. Further, the methodologies used
and the knowledge drawn upon were not synthetic or innovative, so we concluded that the theories, methods, and
techniques required further development. From our in-depth literature analysis, as well as from the exploration of the
meaning of conflict and natural disasters in the modern context, we proposed a new comprehensive framework for the
analysis of natural disaster caused social conflicts. We feel that this comprehensive study gives detailed information
about the social conflicts that may occur post-disaster and this knowledge may assist in lessening post-disaster conflict
vulnerability and also lay the foundation for future research achievements. It is expected that a number of subject areas
could be researched further, especially those related to environmental problem induced social conflicts. However, there
are still some aspects that could be improved to allow for greater research clarity, so effective measures are needed
to expand the currently polarized general theoretical background, which is mainly because a majority of the current
contributions tend to come from western cultures whereas there are lesser contributions from Asia. Natural disaster
caused social conflicts are an important focus, research into which could assist in illuminating social risk and reducing
such conflicts when future natural disaster events occur.

6. Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Major Bidding Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China
(Grant No. 12 & ZD217), the Major Program of the Social Science Foundation of Sichuan (Grant No. SC13ZD06).
We appreciated these supports both in finance and in spirit. Further, we would like to thank all of the referees for their
insightful comments and suggestions to improve this paper.

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