About

Countries need ambitious policies for climate-resilient development (CRD) to reduce climate change and mitigate its impacts. Meanwhile, such actions evolve slowly and thus the urgent transformation envisioned by global agendas seems farfetched. Disasters are often cited as opportunities for policy-making, yet this effect is contested; some scholars argue that disasters will alter policy agendas, while others anticipate defensive behaviors and stability.

This project brings together political scientists, economists, peace and conflict researchers, anthropologists, and computational linguists to address the debate and answer important unresolved questions about CRD policy-making after climate disasters. How common is it that disasters enable CRD policy action around the world? Do disasters alter countries’ mixes of climate mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development policies? And, why do some disasters enable policy action while others do not, particularly in vulnerable societies?

The project combines data of CRD policy measures and policy documents coded through computational text-analysis with data on over 10,000 disaster events in 1970-2022. Econometric techniques are used to estimate causal effects of disaster frequency and severity on country-level CRD policies globally and in a subsample of vulnerable low-income countries. Comparative case-studies are conducted to unveil conditions that enable and constrain policy action in the wake of disasters. The results will advance new empirical and theoretical knowledge regarding the influence of disasters on CRD policy action globally. The project is implemented by forming a new and vibrant interdisciplinary partnership at Uppsala University, fostering exchanges across three centres and platforms: Centre for Natural Hazards and Disaster Science (CNDS); UU Sustainability Initiatives (UUSI); and AI4Research. The project has the added benefit of supporting several early-career scientists from these environments.

Contact

Daniel Nohrstedt (coordinator), Sara Stymne (CSS Lab)

Funding

• Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation