Modeling Environmental Conflict

Abstract

Scientific consideration of the topic of ‘environment and security’ is part of the renewed discussion of the concept of security towards the beginning of the third millennium. Academic research faces a dual question: Is it scientifically fruitful to expand the concept of international security, which was originally restricted to research into the causes of wars, and to what extent is the environmental dimension of security policy suitable for practical policy-making? Answering the second question ideally presupposes a fruitful discussion of the results of scientific research, although policymakers expect answers in this field from science which is just evaluating the first generation of its research programs — and many questions are necessarily subject to a debate about content and methodology. This paper takes up this challenge by presenting a methodological critique of some empirical-qualitative research programs that are important for politics and political science (Section 2), and briefly compares some advantages of empirical-quantitative research methods (Section 3). Subsequently, it will be shown how environmental thresholds can be conceived of as a sufficient condition for the outbreak of violent conflict and how research on environmental thresholds can be incorporated in an empirical-quantitative research design on environmental problems and the outbreak of violent conflict (Section 4).