On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict
Publisher: International Security
Author(s): Thomas F. Homer-Dixon
Date: 1991
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes, Renewable Resources, Weapons, Waste, and Pollution
Countries: Philippines, Syrian Arab Republic, Türkiye
How might environmental change lead to acute conflict? Some experts propose that environmental change may shift the balance of power between states either regionally or globally, producing instabilities that could lead to war. Or, as global environmental damage increases the disparity between the North and South, poor nations may militarily confront the rich for a greater share of the world’s wealth. Warmer temperatures could lead to contention over new ice-free sea-lanes in the Arctic or more accessible resources in the Antarctic. Bulging populations and land stress may produce waves of environmental refugees that spill across borders with destabilizing effects on the recipient’s domestic order and on international stability. Countries may fight over dwindling supplies of water and the effects of upstream pollution. In developing countries, a sharp drop in food crop production could lead to internal strife across urban-rural and nomadic-sedentary cleavages. If environmental degradation makes food supplies increasingly tight, exporters may be tempted to use food as a weapon. Environmental change could ultimately cause the gradual impoverishment of societies in both the North and South, which could aggravate class and ethnic cleavages, undermine liberal regimes, and spawn insurgencies. Finally, many scholars indicate that environmental degradation will “ratchet up” the level of stress within national and international society, thus increasing the likelihood of many different kinds of conflict and impeding the development of cooperative solutions.