ACADEMIC
environmental scarcity & violent conflict
The Environment and Violent Conflict: A Response to Gleditsch’s Critique and Suggestions for Future Research
with Daniel Schwartz and Tom Deligiannis | The environment, population, and conflict thesis remains central to current environment and security debates. During the 1990s, an explosion of scholarship and policy attention was devoted to unraveling the linkages among the three variables.
Resource Scarcity and Innovation: Can Poor Countries Attain Endogenous Growth?
Edward Barbier and Thomas Homer-Dixon | Endogenous growth models have revived the debate over the role of technological innovation in economic growth and development. The consensus view is that institutional and policy failures prevent poor countries from generating or using new technological ideas to reap greater economic opportunities. However, this view omits the important contribution of natural-resource degradation and depletion to institutional instability
Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of South Africa
Valerie Percival and Thomas Homer-Dixon | The causal relationship between environmental scarcities – the scarcity of renewable resources – and the outbreak of violent conflict is complex. This article analyses the link between South Africa’s environmental scarcity and violent conflict.
Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of Rwanda
Valerie Percival and Thomas Homer-Dixon | On April 6, 1994, President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane exploded in the skies above the Kigali region of Rwanda. Violence gripped the country. Between April and August of 1994, as many as 1 million people were killed and more than 2 million people became refugees.
Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of Pakistan
Peter Gizewski and Thomas Homer-Dixon | This paper examines the contribution of environmental scarcity to violent conflict in Pakistan. It argues that scarcity is never the sole cause of Pakistan’s social conflict.
Strategies for Studying Causation in Complex Ecological-Political Systems
This paper shows that some commonly advocated methodological principles of modern political science are inappropriate for the study of complex ecological-political systems. It also provides conceptual tools for thinking about the causal roles of environmental and demographic factors, and it discusses various strategies for hypothesis and inference testing.
The Ingenuity Gap: Can Poor Countries Adapt to Resource Scarcity?
As human population and material consumption increase in coming decades, scarcities of natural resources will increase in some regions. Will societies be able to adapt?
Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of Gaza
Kimberley Kelly and Thomas Homer-Dixon | The achievement of limited autonomy for Palestinians in Gaza and Jericho in 1993 engendered hope for peace in the Middle East, yet violence persists. The links between environmental scarcity and conflict are complex, but in Gaza, water scarcity has clearly aggravated socioeconomic conditions.
Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of Chiapas, Mexico
Philip Howard and Thomas Homer-Dixon | This paper identifies the different forms of environmental scarcities that affect the people of Chiapas, Mexico. In recent years, these scarcities have become acute.
Urban Growth and Violence: Will the Future Resemble the Past?
Peter Gizewski and Thomas Homer-Dixon | Many social, economic, and political problems have accompanied urban growth in the developing world. Will further growth result in violent behavior as expectations of economic improvement and social mobility are dashed?
Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases
Within 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.
On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict
A number of scholars have recently asserted that large-scale human-induced environmental pressures may seriously affect national and international security. Unfortunately, the environment-security theme encompasses an almost unmanageable array of sub-issues, especially if we define “security” broadly to include human physical, social, and economic well-being.
