A disaster for whom? The conditional impact of natural disasters on civil conflicts

Many argue that natural disasters aggravate violent conflicts, raising concerns that ongoing climate change will increase conflict risk. However, the impact of natural disasters on conflicts varies across and within countries. For example, after the 2012 typhoon in the Philippines, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front struck a peace deal with the government, while the New People's Army kept fighting. Consequentially, research into the conditions under which natural disasters lead to conflicts is urgently needed. This research will investigate theoretically and empirically the conditions under which natural disasters increase the severity of civil conflicts.
Existing research on the impact of natural disasters on conflicts offers mixed theoretical predictions and empirical results. Mixed theoretical predictions follow from incomplete theoretical models focusing on select actors (e.g. rebel-government or government-population) while ignoring others. Consequentially, most existing empirical research assumes an unconditional relationship between natural disasters and conflicts, and thus cannot explain the mixed empirical results.
I will contribute to this scholarship by proposing a unified theoretical model that looks at the impact of natural disasters on the strategic interaction between all three relevant conflict actors - the government, the rebels, and the population. This integrates existing divergent theoretical predictions. Empirically, I will use rigorous research designs that exploit within-country variation in disaster location, rebel capacity, and government capacity to adequately assess my theoretical framework's predictions. Finally, by investigating the conditions under which natural disasters lead to conflicts, this research clarifies the existing literature's mixed empirical findings and offers more precise and actionable policy implications.