War and peace ‐ reconsidered

Abstract

Environmental Change and Violent Conflict, by T.F. Homer-Dixon, J.H. Boutwell, G.W. Rathjens, Project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict, University of Toronto, Canada and American Academy of Arts and Sciences, USA. Scientific American 1993; 268 (2): 16-23. Within the next 50 years the human population is likely to exceed nine billion, and economic output may quintuple. Scarcities of renewable resources may increase sharply. Such scarcities already contribute to violent conflict in the developing world. There are many historical examples of this, but evidence from this study suggests that social and political turbulence set in motion by changing environmental conditions will not follow familiar patterns of conflict. Thirty researchers were assembled to examine how resource-scarcity may contribute to future conflict in a set of specific cases. Examples examined include the increasing imbalance of population and land area in Bangladesh (created in 1971 by conflict between India and Pakistan), the disruption of patterns of subsistence and fuelling of ethnic conflict in Mauritania and Senegal by construction of dams along the border, the environmental degradation and increased internal strife in the Philippines resulting from agricultural impoverishment, unemployment and economic crises, and El Salvador and Honduras which ex- perienced a shortlived but devastating wars in 1969 from similar processes. Other examples detailed include South Africa, the Middle East, China, the Himalayas, the Sahel, Indonesia, Brazil and Costa Rica. The evidence set out in each case suggests significant causal links between resource-scarcity and violent conflict. Thus reduction of such scarcities is essential, by restraining population growth and consumption, and by ensuring more equitable distribution of resources and sustainable development.