Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases

Environmental Scarcitiesand Violent Conflict I Thomas F. Evidence from Cases Iw i t h i n the next fifty years, the planet’s human population will probably pass nine billion, and global economic output may quintuple. Largely as a result, scarcities of renewable resources will increase sharply. The total area of high-quality agricultural land will drop, as will the extent of forests and the number of species they sustain. Coming generations will also see the widespread depletion and degradation of aquifers, rivers, and other water resources; the decline of many fisheries; and perhaps significant climate change. If such “environmental scarcities” become severe, could they precipitate violent civil or international conflict? I have previously surveyed the issues and evidence surrounding this question and proposed an agenda for further research.’ Here I report the results of an international research project guided by this agenda.2Following a brief review of my original hypotheses and the project’s research design, I present several general findings of this research that led me to revise the original hypotheses. The article continues with an account of empirical evidence for and against the revised hypotheses, and it concludes with an assessment of the implications of environmentally induced conflict for international security. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Toronto. From 1990 to 1993, he was co-director and lead researcher of the Project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict. Portions of this article have been drawn from Thomas Homer-Dixon, Jeffrey Boutwell, and George Rathjens, ”Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict,” Scientific American, February 1993;and from Homer-Dixon, ”EnvironmentalScarcityand GlobalSecurity”Headline Series (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1993). The author thanks the participants in the Project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict, especially project co-directors Jeffrey Boutwell and George Rathjens. The Donner Canadian Foundation funded the article’s preparation. 1. Thomas Homer-Dixon, “On the Threshold: Environmental Changes As Causes of Acute Conflict,” International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991),pp. 76-116. 2. The three-year Project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflictbrought together a team of thirty researchers from ten countries. It was sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Toronto. Intnnational Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 5 4 0 0 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 5 lnternational Security 19:1 I 6 In brief, our research showed that environmental scarcities are already contributing to violent conflicts in many parts of the developing world. These conflicts are probably the early signs of an upsurge of violence in the coming decades that will be induced or aggravated by scarcity. The violence will usually be sub-national, persistent, and diffuse. Poor societies will be particularly affected since they are less able to buffer themselves from environmental scarcities and the social crises they cause. These societies are, in fact, already suffering acute hardship from shortages of water, forests, and especially fertile land. Social conflict is not always a bad thing: mass mobilization and civil strife can produce opportunities for beneficial change in the distribution of land and wealth and in processes of governance. But fast-moving, unpredictable, and complex environmental problems can overwhelm efforts at constructive social reform. Moreover, scarcity can sharply increase demands on key institutions , such as the state, while it simultaneously reduces their capacity to meet those demands. These pressures increase the chance that the state will either fragment or become more authoritarian. The negative effects of severe environmental scarcity are therefore likely to outweigh the positive. General Findings Our research was intended to provide a foundation for further work. We therefore focused on two key preliminary questions: does environmental scarcity cause violent conflict? And, if it does, how does it operate? The research was structured as I proposed in my previous article. Six types of environmental change were identified as plausible causes of violent intergroup conflict: 0 greenhouse-induced climate change; 0 stratospheric ozone depletion; 0 degradation and loss of good agricultural land; 0 degradation and removal of forests; 0...