The price of instability: hydrological disasters, food prices, and violent conflict

Abstract Floods and storms destroy harvests and disrupt food supply chains, yet whether the resulting price instability translates into violent conflict, and whether this pathway depends on global climate conditions, has never been systematically tested across independent climate episodes. Pooling causal estimates from 17 El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes across 62 countries over two decades (2000–2021), this study finds that both floods and storms significantly raise battle events, with effects that replicate across El Niño, La Niña, and Neutral phases. A month-by-month event study reveals flat pre-treatment trends and a delayed conflict peak at 5 to 6 months post-disaster, consistent with food price transmission rather than immediate displacement. Food prices moderate this relationship in two distinct ways. Wheat and sugar price instability amplifies disaster-induced conflict without the sign reversal that distinguishes rice imports. Rice import prices, by contrast, are phase-dependent: their interaction with storms strongly and robustly amplifies conflict during El Niño, when drought suppresses Southeast Asian rice exports and raises import costs for dependent countries, with suggestive evidence of a dampening effect during La Niña, when favourable growing conditions expand supply. These findings reframe food prices as an accelerant of disaster-induced conflict rather than a complete mediator, and identify a commodity-specific channel with direct implications for ENSO-contingent crisis preparedness.