Environment, Scarcity, and Violence

ENVIRONMENT, SCARCITY, AND VIOLENCE

Thomas F. Homer-Dixon

Copyright 1999 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Chichester, West Sussex
All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Homer-Dixon, Thomas F.
Environment, scarcity, and violence / Thomas F. Homer-Dixon.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
eISBN 1-4008-0375-6
1. ViolenceEnvironmental aspectsDeveloping countries.
2. Social conflictDeveloping countries. 3. Environmental
degradationSocial aspectsDeveloping countries.
4. Renewable natural resourcesDeveloping countries.
5. ScarcitySocial aspects. 6. Developing countries
Environmental conditions. I. Title.
HN981.V5H65 1999
303.6dc21 98-34878 CIP

This book has been composed in Times Roman

Material in is similar to that in Thomas F.
Homer-Dixon, On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of
Acute Conflict, International Security 16, no. 2 (fall 1991): 76116.
Material in is similar to that in Thomas F. Homer-Dixon,
Environmental Scarcity, Mass Violence, and the Limits to Ingenuity,
Current History 95, no. 604 (November 1996): 35965. The material
in the text and appendixes of is similar to that in
Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, Strategies for Studying Causation in
Complex Ecological-Political Systems, Journal of Environment &
Development 5, no. 2 (June 1996): 13248; and idem, Environmental
Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases, International
Security 19, no. 1 (summer 1994): 540. is similar to material
in Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, The Ingenuity Gap: Can Poor Countries
Adapt to Resource Scarcity? Population and Development Review 21,
no. 3 (1995): 587612.

http://pup.princeton.edu

For Doug

AND IN MEMORY OF SHEBOU

The magnitude of the land problem can be summed up here, the Communist Party official said, gesturing around us toward the bare, rocky mountains where kaingeros (slash-and-burn farmers) were losing their fight to scrape a living from the tired soil. Look at these people, trying to cultivate this rocky hillside. They have no other place to go.

We were sitting in an NPA [New Peoples Army] camp in the Cordillera Mountains of Nueva Vizcaya province in 1988 with a birds-eye view of the desperate plight of Filipino peasants in this rugged corner of the northern Philippines. In all directions, the mountains had been almost entirely stripped of trees by logging companies owned by powerful politicians. Erosion was cutting deep grooves into the severe slopes and carrying away the thin remaining layer of precious topsoil. By night, the mountainsides twinkled with the orange glow of fires set by kaingeros as they prepared plots wrested from the hardscrabble for June planting. By day, an acrid pall of smoke and haze hung above the treeless hills, which shimmered like a desert mirage in the baking tropical sun.

(Gregg Jones, Red Revolution: Inside the Philippine Guerrilla Movement)

THIS BOOK would not have been possible without the extraordinary help of countless people over the last ten years. I have synthesized and built upon material that I have published, sometimes with coauthors, in journals, books, and monographs since 1990 (for a partial list, see the items under Homer-Dixon in General Readings on Environmental Security). The previously published material and this book present the results of several large international research projects on the links between environmental stress and violence in developing countries. In total, these projects involved about one hundred researchers and advisors from fifteen countries on four continents.

I am particularly grateful to Jeffrey Boutwell of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, who worked with me as codirector of two of these research projects. George Rathjens, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also played a key role in the early stages of this work. Both Jeffrey and George have been the finest colleagues I could have wished for in these endeavors. At the University of Toronto, Peter Gizewski, Philip Howard, Kimberley Kelly, and Valerie Percival made up a team of tremendously dedicated researchers. (Material that I coauthored with these researchers has been incorporated into the book at various points, as indicated in those chapters endnotes.) Valerie Percival and Philip Howard, in particular, helped keep multiple projects moving at the same time, sometimes under very difficult circumstances. Jane Willms gathered key materials and set up our extremely useful computerized database (which is accessible via the World Wide Web). Jessica Blitt worked closely with me to complete the book manuscript; she was responsible for all fact checking, figures, and diagrams. Michele Rizoli provided vital administrative support in Toronto as did Annette Mann Bourne (who also edited and prepared many of our occasional papers) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To Jane, Jessica, Michele, and Annette: thank you so much for your superb work.

Key researchers and advisors outside the University of Toronto included Charles Barber, Edward Barbier, Janet Welsh Brown, Elizabeth Economy, Sergio Diaz-Briquets, Peter Gleick, Jack Goldstone, Fen Hampson, John Harris, Shaukat Hassan, Sanjoy Hazarika, Emmy Hafild, John Holdren, Michael Horowitz, Jad Issac, Calestous Juma, Zhao Junlin, Atul Kohli, Ashok Khosla, Diana Liverman, Miriam Lowi, William Moomaw, Tom Naff, Bernard Nietschmann, Charles Okidi, Nancy Peluso, Celso Roque, Lester Ross, David Runnalls, Thayer Scudder, Jonathan Schwartz, Blair Seaborn, Vaclav Smil, Astri Suhrke, Shibley Telhami, and Myron Weiner.

Others who contributed valuable help and ideas were Hayward Alker, Tahir Amin, Jesse Ausubel, John Bongaarts, James Boyce, Wallace Broecker, David Brooks, Tony Campbell, Peter Cebon, Robert Chen, Nazli Choucri, Richard Cincotta, William Clark, Joel Cohen, Robert Couchman, Paul Craig, Geoffrey Dabelko, Ning Datong, Paul Diehl, Paul Demeny, David Dessler, Daniel Deudney, David Dewitt, Paul Diesing, Tanja Ellingsen, Robert Engleman, John Evans, Darya Farha, Anne Florini, Claire Fortier, Joshua Foster, Madhav Gadgil, Shen Ganqing, Susan Gibbs, Michael Glantz, Nils Petter Gleditsch, Gary Goertz, Leela Gulati, Ernst Haas, Allen Hammond, Arthur Hanson, Wenche Hauge, George Haynal, Ramaswamy Iyer, Robert Jervis, Colin Kahl, Daniel Kammen, Robert Kaplan, Stephen Kellert, Michael Klare, Shmitu Kothari, Mary Kritz, John Last, Jill Lazenby, Ned Lebow, Shin-Wha Lee, Marc Levy, Stephan Libiszewski, Eugene Linden, Ronnie Lipschutz, Steve Lonergan, Thomas Lovejoy, Sean Lynn-Jones, James MacNeill, Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Richard Matthew, Geoffrey McNicoll, Steven Miller, Ted Moran, Fraser Mustard, Ashis Nandy, James Nickum, Vicki Norberg-Bohm, William Overholt, Ted Parson, Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Dennis Pirages, Peter Poole, Zhang Qishun, Laura Reed, David Rejeski, Judith Reppy, James Risbey, Richard Rockwell, Paul Romer, Michael Ross, Kartikeya Sarabhai, Thomas Schelling, Susan Sechler, Sara Seims, Deng Shoupeng, Seth Shulman, Steven Sinding, Alan Simmons, P. J. Simmons, Eugene Skolnikoff, Brian Smith, Dan Smith, Martha Snodgrass, Marvin Soroos, Kurt Spillman, Janice Stein, William Stevens, Ashok Swain, Urs Thomas, Monica Toft, Barbara Boyle Torrey, Winxie Tse, Hugh Vernon-Jackson, David Victor, Peter Wallensteen, Tom Wander, Arthur Westing, Jennifer Seymour Whitaker, Anne Whyte, Mark Zacher, and Lyuba Zarsky.