A team of PRIO researchers just published a new study in the flagship multidisciplinary journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on how socioeconomic, political, and security contexts affect vulnerability to extreme events across the world.
The study shows that illiberal political rule and proximate armed conflict are associated with higher levels of flood displacement, all else equal, pointing to how building peace and inclusive institutions (SDG 16) can directly contribute to disaster risk reduction.
At the same time, this is a highly complex issue (displacement not only is an undesirable “impact” but also a life-saving coping mechanism) with critical data quality challenges that point to important priorities for future research. The study, which is an output of the ERC project POLIMPACT, is part of a special feature of PNAS on Migration and sustainability.
