Climate shocks, such as floods and landslides, are likely to contribute to a rise in domestic violence over the next two years, according to researchers who analyzed survey data from 156 countries spanning the years 1993 to 2019.
As global warming intensifies, researchers, led by those at University College London (UCL), UK, are urging countries to incorporate funds and gender action plans into their climate mitigation strategies to address this issue. They noted that the relationship between climate shocks and domestic violence is complex and challenging to present in a way that policymakers can easily understand.
The research team emphasized that domestic violence is increasingly prevalent, especially in countries with patriarchal societies where violence against women is considered acceptable. On the other hand, countries with higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) tended to report lower rates of violence.
The analysis, published in the journal PLoS Climate, is the first of its kind to provide evidence of how climate shocks influence national rates of physical and sexual intimate partner violence. It adds to the growing body of global evidence on the social impacts of climate shocks, which can persist long after the events, further strengthening the call for effective policy making and action.
"All of this happens 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," said lead author Jenevieve Mannell from UCL's Institute for Global Health.
"Climate-related disasters increase stress and food insecurity in families, leading to more violence. Additionally, they reduce the availability of social services, such as police and civil society organizations, which are often focused on addressing the disaster rather than domestic violence," Mannell explained.
Previous studies have also found that rising heat and humidity levels can increase aggressive behavior.
"We aimed to explore what was happening at a national level to help inform international climate change policy," Mannell added.
The researchers incorporated climate shock data—including floods, storms, landslides, extreme temperatures, droughts, earthquakes, volcanoes, and wildfires—from 1920 to 2022 across 190 countries in their analysis.
Floods were found to have the strongest correlation with domestic violence, followed by storms and landslides. In contrast, earthquakes, volcanoes, and wildfires did not appear to significantly affect 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 were unable to determine why certain types of climate shocks had a greater impact on intimate partner violence than others. They suggested that the effects of different climate shocks might take varying amounts of time to manifest, which may not have been fully captured within the two-year study window.
As a result, the researchers called for more frequent data collection by countries to better measure domestic violence in the context of climate change.
(This story has been slightly reworked from an auto-generated PTI feed.)
