Environmental Conflict an Introduction

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Environmental Conflict: An IntroductionAuthor(s): Paul F. DiehlSource: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 35, No. 3, Special Issue on Environmental Conflict(May, 1998), pp. 275-277Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/424936.

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Environmental Conflict: An Introduction*PAUL F. DIEHLDepartment of Political Science, University of Illinois

The diminution of some traditionalsecurity issues at the end of the Cold War and theemergenceof environmentalconcerns on the internationalagendahave mergedto create atopic of scholarly study called 'environmentalsecurity'(Mathews, 1989). Because a wholerangeof environmentalconcerns were collected under the rubricof environmentalsecurity,it is not alwaysclearwhatparameters xist for this field. Environmental ecuritystudies cameunder attack from scholarswho criticized the elasticityof the securityconcept as it was ap-plied beyond the traditionalmilitary realm (e.g. Deudney, 1990; Levy, 1995). In effect,much of the controversyoverenvironmental ecuritywas fought on conceptual grounds,al-though one cannot dismiss the politicalmotives of those who wished to elevate or preventthe elevation of- environmentalconcernsto the same status asmilitaryones.The authors in this specialissue do not necessarilydismiss these debatesas unimportant.Rather,we believe that it is now necessary and possible- to translate he key issues in en-vironmentalsecurityinto empiricallytestablequestions. We focus on the relationshipbe-tween environmental factors and the most traditional indicators of insecurity: violentconflict and the outbreakof war. Insteadof the polemicaldebatesthat so far haveseemed todominate the environmentalsecurityfield, the articles n this specialissue attemptto deter-mine the effects of environmentalfactors on violent conflict, as well as analyzethe ways inwhich such effects might be mitigated.Thus, we all share the view that in the finalanalysisthe legitimacyof environmentalsecuritystudiesrestson whetherempiricalassociationscanbe discerned between the environment and conflict. It is on these grounds that we believethe battles should be fought, rather than on increasinglyabstractdebatesover the scope ofthe field.The first three articles in the special issue test the hypothesized linkages between en-vironmental conditions and violence. The Project on Environment, Population, andSecurityat the University of Toronto is one of the most prominent and controversialn thisarea. Led by Thomas Homer-Dixon, this project has been at the forefront of developingmodels of how environmental factors induce conflict (Homer-Dixon, 1991, 1994). Yet,many publications from the project have produced largely abstractconceptions of the en-$Several of the articles in this special issue were first presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop onConflictand the Environment' in Bolkesjo, Norway, 11-16 June 1996. Other papers from that workshop have een publishedin Gleditsch (1997). This special issue has enefited by grants from the NATO Scientific and Environmental AffairsDivision and the Norwcigan Foreign Ministry in support of the Bolkesjo workshop. Editorial work in Oslo on this specialissue was also supported y a grant to PRIO frorn the United States Institute of Peace. I am especially grateful to NilsPetter Gleditsch for all his assistance in assembling this special issue and to the many xternal reviewers for all the papersconsidered for this colletiots.

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276 journal of PEACE RESEARCHvironment-conflict nexus, with actual cases presented only as anecdotal evidence or as illus-trative examples. The article by Percival & Homer-Dixon here attempts an empirical test ofthose theoretical models, as the authors trace changes in South Africa during the laterapartheid period and beyond; they argue that many of the violent conflicts in that countryduring those times have roots in the scarcity of renewable resources. Hauge & Ellingsen carryatest of the Homer-Dixon framework one step further. They conduct one of the first large-N,multivariate studies of environmental degradation and civil conflict. They are able to notonly confirm some of Homer-Dixon's hypotheses across a variety of countries, but also per-haps more importantly assess the relative importance (or 'substantive significance') of en-vironmental factors, as opposed to other variables, in civil conflict. Finally, Tir & Diehl shiftthe focus from internal conflict to interstate conflict.1 They assess whether population press-ures, an alleged driving force behind resource scarcity and environmental degradation, is as-sociated with international conflict involvement, initiation, and escalation for all states in theinternational system for the period 1930-89. Collectively, these three articles offer some ofthe clearest, albeit preliminary, evidence for the degree and direction of the effects that en-vironmental factors have on violent conflict, both internal and external to the state.

Among the weaknesses of the study of conflict in general is an ignorance of the factorsthat are associated with its reduction; thus, studies on the causes of war far outnumber thoseon conflict management or resolution. Two articles in this issue seek to alter that balance.Underlying both is the assumption that environmental concerns are indeed associated withgreater conflict, although each article has important things to say concerning the environ-ment and how it is managed regardless of the existence or strength of the environment-con-flict connection. A great deal of work has been published (Chan, 1997) on the democraticpeace. A key corollary explored by Midlarsky is the extent to which democratic states aremore successful in protecting the environment and therefore in limiting the violence-gener-ating conditions from environment degradation. Looking at several indicators of environ-mental degradation for a large number of countries, Midlarsky reaches some surprisingconclusions concerning the limitations of democracy as an instrument of environmental pro-tection, and he may have uncovered an indirect, but significant, caveat to the application ofthe democratic peace to internal conflict. Environmental management is not solely theprovince of states, as international regimes and organizations are playing an increasinglyprominent role. Payne explores whether one institution, the Global Environment Facility(GEF) of the World Bank, can play a valuable regulatory role. In particular, Payne evaluateswhether GEF can meet the financial, strategic, and political concerns that must be addressedby any supranational effort in the environmental area.

The five previous articles illustrate what we hope are the standards of evidence and direc-tions that will characterize future research on environmental security. Nevertheless, this isstill largely an emerging field, without the strong theoretical and empirical bases on whichto cumulate and integrate knowledge. Compare this with the frameworks and evidence avail-able, for example, on the association between power distributions and the outbreak of war.In the concluding article, Gleditsch uncovers the characteristics of this immaturity, notingnine major flaws in the conduct of environmental security research. In doing so, he not only

The articles by the editor of/PR and the guest editor of the special issue, like the other articles in this special issue, wentthrough normal, peer review procedures and neither editor was involved in the selection of referees for his own article.

volume 5 / number Imay1998



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Paul F. Diehl ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICT: AN INTRODUCTIONoffers important cautionary notes about extant findings, but also provides standards to guidefuture research on environmental conflict.ReferencesChan, Steve, 1997. 'In Searchof Democratic Peace:Problemsand Promise',Mershon nternationalStudiesReview41 (1): 59-91.Deudney, Daniel, 1990. 'The CaseAgainstLinkingEnvironmentalDegradationand National Secur-ity', Millennium19(3): 461-476.Gleditsch, Nils Petter,ed., 1997. Conflictand the Environment.Dordrecht: Kluwer.Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 1991. iOn the Threshold: EnvironmentalChangesas Causes of Acute Con-flict', InternationalSecurrity6(2): 76-116.Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 1994. 'EnvironmentalScarcitiesandViolent Conflict: EvidencefromCases',InternationalSecurity19(1): 5-40Levy, MarcA. 1995. 'Is the Environment a National SecurityIssue?',InternationalSecurity20(2):35-62.Mathews,JessicaTuchman, 1989. 'RedefiningSecurity',ForeignAffairs68(2): 162-177.

PAUL F. DIEHL, b. 1958, PhD in Political Science (University of Michigan, 1983); Professor,Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;authoror editor of ten books and over sixty articleson internationalconflict, most recent book: The Dynamicsof EnduringRivalries UniversityofIllinois Press, 1998).

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Environmental Conflict an Introduction