Environmental Conflict: An Introduction

Author(s): Paul F. Diehl

Source: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 35, No. 3, Special Issue on Environmental Conflict
(May, 1998), pp. 275-277
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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Environmental Conflict: An Introduction*
PAUL F. DIEHL
Department
of Political Science, University of
Illinois
The diminution of some traditional
security
issues at the end of the Cold War and the
emergence
of environmental concerns on the international
agenda
have
merged
to create a
topic
of
scholarly study
called 'environmental
security' (Mathews, 1989). Because a whole
range
of environmental concerns were collected under the rubric of environmental
security,
it is not
always
clear what
parameters
exist for this field. Environmental
security
studies came
under attack from scholars who criticized the
elasticity
of the
security concept
as it was
ap-
plied beyond
the traditional
military
realm
(e.g. Deudney, 1990; Levy, 1995). In effect,
much of the
controversy
over environmental
security
was
fought
on
conceptual grounds,
al-
though
one cannot dismiss the
political
motives of those who wished to elevate - or
prevent
the elevation of- environmental concerns to the same status as
military
ones.
The authors in this
special
issue do not
necessarily
dismiss these debates as
unimportant.
Rather, we believe that it is now
necessary
-
and
possible
-
to translate the
key
issues in en-
vironmental
security
into
empirically
testable
questions.
We focus on the
relationship
be-
tween environmental factors and the most traditional indicators of
insecurity:
violent
conflict and the outbreak of war. Instead of the
polemical
debates that so far have seemed to
dominate the environmental
security field,
the articles in this
special
issue
attempt
to deter-
mine the effects of environmental factors on violent conflict, as well as
analyze
the
ways
in
which such effects
might
be
mitigated.
Thus, we all share the view that in the final
analysis
the
legitimacy
of environmental
security
studies rests on whether
empirical
associations can
be discerned between the environment and conflict. It is on these grounds that we believe
the battles should be
fought,
rather than on
increasingly
abstract debates over the
scope
of
the field.
The first three articles in the special issue test the hypothesized linkages between en-
vironmental conditions and violence. The Project on Environment, Population, and
Security at the University of Toronto is one of the most prominent and controversial in this
area. Led by Thomas Homer-Dixon, this project has been at the forefront of developing
models of how environmental factors induce conflict
(Homer-Dixon, 1991, 1994). Yet,
many publications from the project have produced largely abstract conceptions of the en-
$
Several of the articles in this special issue were first presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on 'Conflict
and the Environment' in Bolkesjo, Norway, 11-16 June 1996. Other papers from that workshop have been published
in Gleditsch (1997). This special issue has benefited by grants from the NATO Scientific and Environmental Affairs
Division and the Norwcigan Foreign Ministry in support of the Bolkesjo workshop. Editorial work in Oslo on this special
issue was also supported by a grant to PRIO frorn the United States Institute of Peace. I am especially grateful to Nils
Petter Gleditsch for all his assistance in assembling this special issue and to the many external reviewers for all the papers
considered for this colletiots.
275
WraISRSR^S
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
276
journal
of
PEACE RESEARCH
vironment-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 of
those theoretical models, as the authors trace
changes
in South Africa
during
the later
apartheid period
and
beyond; they argue
that
many
of the violent conflicts in that
country
during
those times have roots in the
scarcity
of renewable resources.
Hauge
&
Ellingsen carry
a
test 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 not
only
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 shift
the 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 the
international
system
for the
period
1930-89.
Collectively,
these three articles offer some of
the 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 factors
that are associated with its reduction; thus, studies on the causes of war far outnumber those
on 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 with
greater
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 democratic
peace. A key corollary explored by Midlarsky is the extent to which democratic states are
more 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 surprising
conclusions 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 of
the democratic peace to internal conflict. Environmental management is not solely the
province of states, as international regimes and organizations are playing an increasingly
prominent role. Payne explores whether one institution, the Global Environment Facility
(GEF) of the World Bank, can play a valuable regulatory role. In particular, Payne evaluates
whether GEF can meet the financial, strategic, and political concerns that must be addressed
by 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 is
still largely an emerging field, without the strong theoretical and empirical bases on which
to 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, noting
nine 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, went
through normal, peer
review
procedures
and neither editor was involved in the selection of referees for his own article.
volume 35 / number
3
I
may
1998
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Paul F. Diehl ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICT: AN INTRODUCTION
offers
important cautionary
notes about extant
findings,
but also
provides
standards to
guide
future research on environmental conflict.
References
Chan, Steve, 1997. 'In Search of Democratic Peace: Problems and Promise', Mershon International
Studies Review 41 (1): 59-91.
Deudney, Daniel, 1990. 'The Case
Against Linking
Environmental
Degradation
and National Secur-
ity',
Millennium 19(3): 461-476.
Gleditsch, Nils
Petter, ed., 1997.
Conflict
and the Environment. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 1991.
iOn
the Threshold: Environmental
Changes
as Causes of Acute Con-
flict', International
Securrity 16(2): 76-116.
Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 1994. 'Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases',
International
Security 19(1): 5-40
Levy,
Marc A. 1995. 'Is the Environment a National
Security Issue?', International
Security 20(2):
35-62.
Mathews, Jessica Tuchman, 1989.
'Redefining Security', Foreign
Affairs
68(2): 162-177.
PAUL F. DIEHL, b. 1958, PhD in Political Science
(University
of
Michigan, 1983); Professor,
University
of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign;
author or editor of ten books and over
sixty
articles
on international conflict, most recent book: The
Dynamics of
Enduring Rivalries
(University
of
Illinois Press, 1998).
277
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