Environmental Resource Scarcity and Conflict

Abstract

All humans depend on direct and market-mediated access to a diverse array of environmental resources for basic survival and quality of life. Consequently, increased demand, reduced supply, or deterioration of a resource threatens access and can therefore also threaten individuals and groups. Security extends beyond maintaining the status quo or the power of the state to protection of the “physical, social, and economic well-being” of human populations (Homer-Dixon 1991). Security in this sense is threatened when the institutional and economic resources to ameliorate the impact of scarcity are unavailable or extremely costly. Violence is a potential outcome when groups compete to ensure their security.

Environmental deficiencies engender conditions which render conflict all the more likely. These deficiencies can serve to determine the source of the conflict, they can act as multipliers that aggravate core causes of conflict, and they can help to shape the nature of the conflict

(Myers 1996, 23)