​​Rune Slettebak, a PhD candidate at NTNU and a research associate of CSCW/PRIO successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in Trondheim on 3 May. The title of the dissertation is 'Climate Change, Natural Disasters, and the Risk of Violent Conflict'.

This PhD project assesses the relation between natural disasters triggered by extreme weather events and the risk of violent conflict. Han Dorussen (University of Essex) and Espen Sjaastad (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) were the opponents at the dissertation defense, while Indra de Soysa and Henrik Urdal were PhD supervisors.

The Research Council of Norway's NORKLIMA programme has decided to allocate 7.5 million NOK to support a three-year CSCW project on Security Implications of Climate Change. The project will be led by Halvard Buhaug and involves CSCW associates Henrik Urdal, Nils Petter Gleditsch, Indra de Soysa, and Gudrun Østby, as well as PhD candidates Rune Slettebak and Ole Magnus Theisen at NTNU, and Tor A. Benjaminsen and Gufu Oba at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, UMB.

The existing literature identifies natural resource wealth as a major determinant of civil war. This research note by Indra de Soysa and Eric Neumayer uses a new dataset on natural resource rents that are disaggregated as mineral and energy rents for addressing the resources-conflict relationship.

Simon Dietz, Eric Neumayer & Indra de Soysa has published an article in Environment and Development Economics. 
Genuine saving is a measure of net investment in produced, natural and human capital. It is a necessary condition for weak sustainable development that genuine saving not be persistently negative. Alongside the well-known resource curse on economic growth, resource abundance might have a negative effect on genuine saving.