Environmental Performance in Conflict-Affected Countries: The Moderating Role of Institutional Capacity and Its Implications for Reconstruction in Syria

This study proposes that institutional capacity constitutes the missing structural condition that shapes how conflict translates into measurable environmental harm.

The analysis draws on an unbalanced panel of sixteen developing and fragile economies observed annually from 2002 to 2024. Environmental performance is measured by two complementary indicators: greenhouse-gas emissions per capita (scale) and GHG intensity (efficiency). Institutional capacity is constructed as the standardized first principal component of four Worldwide Governance Indicators dimensions—Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. Conflict intensity is operationalized as a log-transformed, population-normalized battle-death rate.

Results show that conflict intensity exhibits no significant unconditional association with either environmental outcome. Once the interaction with institutional capacity is introduced, a clear conditional pattern emerges for the scale measure only: a significant negative association at low levels of institutional capacity, a significant positive association at very high levels, and a statistically indistinguishable-from-zero effect across roughly two-thirds of the sample. No equivalent moderation appears for GHG intensity, although institutional capacity itself retains a strong negative association with intensity.

For Syria, which falls within the low-institutional-capacity group, the results imply that institutional reconstruction is not environmentally neutral. Restoring administrative and economic capacity may raise absolute emissions unless it is accompanied from the outset by deliberate environmental governance measures, including emissions-monitoring systems and sector-specific regulation.