GLCb2020
Environmental
threats and security
Agenda
• How is environment linked to
conflict?
– Environment→ war
– War → environment
Environment→ conflict
Argument: Poor environmental conditions cause conflict.
Population growth becomes a problem
Securitization of overpopulation
• Hardin and the lifeboat ethics
–How does scarcity shape our moral thinking?
• Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
Resource wars
• Oil crisis in the 70s, fears of
overpopulation
• Focus on states, interstate
violence
• Thomas Homer-Dixon
– Resource capture and ecological
marginalization
Resource scarcity→ conflict
Resource scarcity→ conflict
• Homer-Dixon
– Mauritania-Senegal
border war (the 80s)
• Robert Kaplan,
“The Coming Anarchy”
Environment→ war?
• Indirect empirical evidence
• Many other factors
• Resource scarcity→ cooperation?
• Disasters affect conflict in different ways