Researchers link climate shocks with increased domestic violence

Climate shocks such as floods and landslides are likely to lead to an increased domestic violence over the next two years, say researchers, who analysed survey data from 156 countries between 1993 and 2019.

As global warming intensifies, the researchers, led by those at the University College London, UK, have urged countries to include funds and gender action plans in climate mitigation to address this issue even as they said the climate shock-violence link remained complex and challenging to discern in a manner understandable to policymakers. However, the team did add that domestic violence was increasingly prevalent and severe, especially in countries having patriarchal societies where violence against women was considered acceptable. Violence rates were found to be low in countries having a higher gross domestic product (GDP).

The analysis, published in the journal, PLoS Climate, was the first to provide evidence of how climate shocks could influence national rates of physical and sexual intimate partner or domestic violence, the authors said. It also added to global evidence regarding the social impacts of climate shocks, which could often be felt long after the events, thereby building a case for policymaking and action, they said.

“All of this happened more often, and with increased severity in countries that have patriarchal gender norms and where the use of violence against women is widely accepted as normal behaviour,” lead author Jenevieve Mannell from the University College London's Institute for Global Health said. “Climate-related disasters increase stress and food insecurity in families in ways that can lead to increases in violence. They also reduce the social services often available for dealing with partner violence, such as police and civil society who are more focused on the disaster,” Mannell said.

Previous studies have found that rising heat and humidity increases aggressive behaviour. “We set out to explore what was happening at the national level to help inform the international climate change policy,” Mannell said. The researchers also included climate shocks data — floods, storms, landslides, extreme temperatures, droughts, earthquakes, volcanoes and wildfires — from 1920 to 2022 across 190 countries in their analysis. Floods were found to be the most strongly linked with domestic violence, followed by storms and landslides. Earthquakes, volcanoes and wildfires, on the other hand, were found to not influence violence rates.

“National data representing 156 countries suggest a significant relationship between intimate partner violence and a climate factor composed of storms, landslides and floods,” the authors wrote. The researchers said they could not assess as to why certain kinds of climate shocks impacted the intimate partner violence more than others.

They proposed that varied types of climate shocks can take different times before showing their effects on violence against women, which they said could possibly not be captured within the two-year window of the study period.

Therefore, they called for more regular data collection by countries for measuring domestic violence in the context of climate change.