Environmental Change and Violent Conflict

Abstract

Within the next 50 years, the human population is likely to exceed nine billion, and global economic output may quintuple. Largely as a result of these two trends, scarcities of renewable resources may increase sharply. The total area of highly productive agricultural land will drop, as will the extent of forests and the number of species they sustain. Future generations will also experience the ongoing depletion and degradation of aquifers, rivers and other bodies of water, the decline of fisheries, further stratospheric ozone loss and, perhaps, significant climatic change.

THOMAS F. HOMER-DIXON, JEFFREY H. BOUTWELL and GEORGE W. RATHJENS are co-directors of the project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict, which is jointly sponsored by the University of Toronto and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Homer-Dixon received his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989 and is now coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Toronto. Boutwell, who also received his Ph.D. from M.I.T., is associate executive officer and program director of International Security Studies at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rathjens earned his doctorate in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently professor of political science at M.I.T.