Critical Synthesis Essay

818 Words2 Pages

Whereas Olson and Drury spend very little time on analysis, both Brancati and Bhavani offer logical theories behind their results. They both argue that natural disasters/earthquakes induce a sort of resource scarcity that fuels conflict. According to Brancati Earthquakes increase decrease supply while increasing demand for natural resources. This scarcity creates conflict as people fight over resources. Bhavani makes similar findings in his study but notes other possible theories behind the positive correlation between natural disasters and conflict. He specifically states, “Natural disasters in general contribute to conflict because they create competition for scarce resources, exacerbate inequality with the unequal distribution of aid, change power relationships between individuals, groups, and the organizations that serve them, and can create power vacuums and opportunities for warlords to usurp power.” In noting the similarities …show more content…

The authors hypothesize that like conflict, terrorism increases in the aftermath of natural disasters. They attribute this to the rationality behind terrorism, noting that natural disasters take a large toll on that natural disasters make normally strong governments vulnerable. This “diminished security capacity” lowers the perceived cost of engaging in terrorism, creating a prime opportunity for terrorists to attack. To test this, the authors looked at 167 countries between 1970-2007. They used the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) to identify their independent variable and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to gather information on their dependent variable, terrorism. The authors found, for every increase of 25,000 deaths from a natural disaster, terrorist attacks increased 33% in lethality (deaths), 22% in frequency and 16% in

Open Document