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The Evolution of Environment-Conflict Research: Toward a Livelihood Framework
- Global Environmental Politics
- The MIT Press
- Volume 12, Number 1, February 2012
- pp. 78-100
- Article
- Additional Information
The focus of qualitative environment-conflict research since the early 1990s on the state level of analysis has led to considerable uncertainty about the validity of hypothesized connections and under-specification of existing pathways inhuman-environmental change interactions. As a corrective, this article proposes a household-livelihood framework for qualitative environment-conflict research. This approach begins at the local level and then scales the analysis of social-political effects to higher levels. A household-livelihood framework also improves our understanding of many previously-ignored violent conflicts at the local level that have roots in human-environmental change.