Population Resources And Conflict

In coming decades, population shifts and resource pressures are more likely to exacerbate existing political conflicts rather than to directly trigger them. The balance between population, resources, and the environment is likely to improve in the next 20 years as a result of decreasing population growth rates and increasing attention to environmentally sustainable development. Tensions will persist, particularly over transborder resources such as rivers that flow between countries. One issue likely to involve the U.S. military more and more is mass movements of refugees.

In coming decades, population shifts and resource pressures are more likely to exacerbate existing political conflicts rather than to directly trigger them. The balance between population, resources, and the environment is likely to improve in the next 20 years as a result of decreasing population growth rates and increasing attention to environmentally sustainable development. Tensions will persist, particularly over transborder resources such as rivers that flow between countries. One issue likely to involve the U.S. military more and more is mass movements of refugees.

Compelling essays, informative sidebars, and detailed maps help readers to explore the range of current and impending challenges that the planet faces as a result of global warming. Readers will explore population, resources, and conflict from a variety of expert perspectives. Readers will study the link between population dynamics and resources. They will assess the population's impact on climate change. Vulnerable populations are explained. The last chapter conveys the essential goal, which is how we should reduce the harmful human imprint on the natural world.

Ecoviolence explores links between environmental scarcities of key renewable resources_such as cropland, fresh water, and forests_and violent rebellions, insurgencies, and ethnic clashes in developing countries. Detailed contemporary studies of civil violence in Chiapas, Gaza, South Africa, Pakistan, and Rwanda show how environmental scarcity has played a limited to significant role in causing social instability in each of these contexts. Drawing upon theory and key findings from the case studies, the authors suggest that environmental scarcity will worsen in many poor countries in coming decades and will become an increasingly important cause of major civil violence.

The Earth's human population is expected to pass eight billion by the year 2025, while rapid growth in the global economy will spur ever increasing demands for natural resources. The world will consequently face growing scarcities of such vital renewable resources as cropland, fresh water, and forests. Thomas Homer-Dixon argues in this sobering book that these environmental scarcities will have profound social consequences--contributing to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest, and other forms of civil violence, especially in the developing world. Homer-Dixon synthesizes work from a wide range of international research projects to develop a detailed model of the sources of environmental scarcity. He refers to water shortages in China, population growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and land distribution in Mexico, for example, to show that scarcities stem from the degradation and depletion of renewable resources, the increased demand for these resources, and/or their unequal distribution. He shows that these scarcities can lead to deepened poverty, large-scale migrations, sharpened social cleavages, and weakened institutions. And he describes the kinds of violence that can result from these social effects, arguing that conflicts in Chiapas, Mexico and ongoing turmoil in many African and Asian countries, for instance, are already partly a consequence of scarcity. Homer-Dixon is careful to point out that the effects of environmental scarcity are indirect and act in combination with other social, political, and economic stresses. He also acknowledges that human ingenuity can reduce the likelihood of conflict, particularly in countries with efficient markets, capable states, and an educated populace. But he argues that the violent consequences of scarcity should not be underestimated--especially when about half the world's population depends directly on local renewables for their day-to-day well-being. In the next decades, he writes, growing scarcities will affect billions of people with unprecedented severity and at an unparalleled scale and pace. Clearly written and forcefully argued, this book will become the standard work on the complex relationship between environmental scarcities and human violence.

Modernization and Industrialization have presented the human race with many problems, inflicting deprivation, poverty, war and premature death on millions of people. Until recently, however, solutions were achievable. Drawn from the much-acclaimed Coming Age of Scarcity and adapted here for general classroom use, this work will be an ideal introduction to courses in population, environment and resources, genocide studies, and social conflict. As we enter the twenty-first century, several components converge, namely population, land for cultivation, energy resources, and environmental carrying capacity. Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann establish a realistic projection of the disastrous future that awaits humankind as surplus populations collide with dwindling resources. Scholars from a variety of disciplines investigate the problems and suggest ways to maximize individual and collective survival, discussing cause-and-effect scenarios concerning industrialization, biophysical limits, exponential population growth, and genocide.