Could environmental scarcities cause violent conflict? This article from International Security reports on the impacts of environmental change, population growth and unequal distribution of resources. Environmental scarcities are already contributing to violent conflict in the developing world. There are early signs of an upsurge in violence in the coming decades that will be induced or aggravated by scarcity. Poor societies will be less able to protect themselves from environmental scarcities and the social crises they cause.
Mass mobilisation and civil strife can produce opportunities for changes in the distribution of land and wealth and in processes of governance. But fast moving, unpredictable and complex environmental problems can overwhelm social reform efforts. Scarcity increases demands on institutions, including the state, while reducing their capacity to meet those demands. These pressures increase the chance the state will fragment or become authoritarian. The social impacts of environmental scarcity deserve concerted attention.
Resource depletion and degradation: Vast populations in the developing world are already suffering from shortages of good land, water, forests and fish. The longer-term social effects of climate change and ozone depletion will probably interact with other resource, demographic and economic pressures.
- Environmental scarcity: This concept encompasses environmental change, population growth and unequal distributions of resources. The first two sources of scarcity are more pernicious when they interact with unequal resource distribution.
- Interaction of sources of environmental scarcity: Two patterns of interaction are common. In ‘resource capture’, resource depletion and population growth cause unequal resource access. In ‘ecological marginalisation’, unequal resource access and population growth cause resource degradation and depletion.
- Social and technical ingenuity: Societies are more able to avoid turmoil if they can adapt to environmental scarcity. Strategies for adaptation depend on social and technical ingenuity. Societies may use their resources more sensibly or find ways to ‘decouple’ themselves from dependence on environmental resources.
Environmental scarcity has many social impacts, including population movement, economic decline and the weakening of states. These can contribute to sub-national violence, with implications for international security:
- Countries under environmental stress may fragment. Governments of countries as different as the Philippines and Peru have lost control over outer territories. Fragmenting countries will be the source of large out migrations and be unable to implement international agreements on security, trade and environmental protection.
- States may avoid scarcity-induced weakening and fragmentation by becoming a ‘hard’ regime: authoritarian, intolerant of opposition and militarised. Relatively wealthy developing countries have the highest probability of becoming hard regimes. Candidates include Indonesia and Nigeria.
- Environmental pressures in China may cause its fragmentation. This is against received wisdom. Experts have been distracted by economic expansion in coastal areas and neglected the dangers posed by resource scarcities in the rest of China.
- The impact of environmental scarcity on state capacity deserves further research. Of particular concern is the decreasing capacity of the state to create markets and other institutions that promote adaptation.
