Natural disasters and political conflicts

In social networks, the journalist Mitra Taj presents two maps of Peru. The first one highlights the areas most affected by droughts in 2022, the second one highlights the areas where there were roadblocks during the protests of the last month and a half: the areas in question (both in the southern Andes) coincide with great precision.

He adds that those who protest have specific demands that transcend the issue of droughts and that the southern Andes have been a historical source of opposition to Lima’s centralism, but that droughts, together with the lack of fertilizers, would be a factor that fuels discontent in that region (paradoxically, the lack of fertilizers is the responsibility of the Castillo government, whose dismissal after his failed coup was one of the triggers for the protests).

I would complement what Taj said with two observations. The first is that if we compare the electoral trends since 2006 on maps of Peru, we would see that the Andean south tends to vote for candidates critical of the status quo in a much higher proportion than Lima or the north coast. The second observation is that the historian Javier Puente made a contrast between three maps of Peru a few years ago, with similar results.

The first one highlighted the areas affected by drought as a consequence of the El Niño phenomenon that occurred between 1982 and 1983 (of unusual intensity). The second map contained the areas that, according to the CVR, were the epicenter of the violence in the Peruvian State’s war against the terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso (and in which the political-military commandos were installed): this map is contained entirely within of the first (which relieves the center and south of the Andean mountain range). The third map indicates the places where the Shining Path carried out its largest massacres against the civilian population: all but one occurred within the area affected by the drought.

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Like Taj, Puente did not claim that such a coincidence, staggering as it may seem, is enough to explain the protests or political violence. After all, this El Niño phenomenon also caused major flooding on the north coast, without this then being associated with an increase in political violence.

But natural disasters could provide an explanation in conjunction with other variables. For example, according to researcher Alastair Smith, the variable that best explains the proportion of deaths among the population caused by natural disasters is per capita income and, in turn, deaths and the economic cost produced by natural disasters contribute to explain the probability of protests. If we apply this criterion within our country, the north coast has and has historically had a per capita income significantly higher than the Andean south.

On the other hand, according to research by economists such as Paul Collier, per capita income is also an important variable to estimate the probability that a country will suffer from an armed conflict: countries (and regions) with very low per capita income have a significantly higher probability of suffering from one.

Some studies maintain that both the number of victims and the economic cost caused by natural disasters are increasing worldwide, and that climate change is one of the explanations for this. For example, according to the United Nations Environment Program, one of the effects of climate change is the change in the distribution and intensity of precipitation (ie, a factor that contributes to causing both droughts and floods). And, for example, according to the Annual Disaster Statistical Review, in 2012 the American continent was the region that suffered the greatest damage worldwide as a result of natural disasters.

Source: Elcomercio

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I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.