Can developing countries respond to environmental problems effectively enough to avert these negative social effects? The aggregate data on world food production might give us reason for optimism. Between 1965 and 1986, many developing regions suffered serious environmental problems, including erosion, salinization, and loss of land to urbanization. Yet global cereal production increased at 3 percent a year, meat and milk output increased 2 percent annually, while the rate for oil crops, vegetables, and pulses was 2.5 percent.⁶⁷ At the regional level, increased food production kept ahead of population growth, except in Africa, and local shortfalls were alleviated by exports from developed countries with huge surpluses. We might therefore conclude that developing countries have sufficient capacity, with intermittent assistance from Northern grain exporters, to respond to environmental problems.

But aggregate figures hide significant disparities in food availability among and within developing countries.⁶⁸ Moreover, these figures are becoming less promising than they once were: many developing countries have already reaped most of the green revolution's potential benefit, and the rate of increase in global cereal production has declined by over 40 percent since the 1960s.⁶⁹ For three successive years--from 1987 through 1989--estimated global cereal consumption exceeded production.⁷⁰ Bumper grain crops were again harvested in 1990, but carry-over stocks can be depleted rapidly, and we remain within one or two years of a global food crisis.

Over the long term, the capacity of developing countries to respond effectively to the consequences of environmental change on agriculture will depend on the complex interactions within each society of the factors indicated in Figure 1. Of particular importance are the society's prevailing land-use practices, land distribution, and market mechanisms within the agricultural sector.⁷¹ Market factors are especially relevant today as numerous developing countries are relinquishing state control over the marketplace, reducing government spending, and removing impediments to foreign investment. Economists often contend that--in a market economy with an efficient price mechanism--environmentally induced scarcity will encourage conservation, technological innovation, and resource substitution. Julian Simon, in particular, displays an unwavering faith in the capacity of human ingenuity to overcome scarcity when spurred by self-interest.⁷² Many economists point to the success of the green revolution, which was often driven by market forces; it involved both new technologies and the substitution of petroleum resources (in the form of fertilizer) for inadequate or degraded nutrients in the soil. This argument supports the policies for market liberalization and "structural adjustment" currently promoted by international financial and lending institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Below, however, I suggest why these policies will not be an effective response to environmental scarcity in the future.

Cornucopians and Neo-Malthusians

Experts in environmental studies now commonly use the labels "cornucopian" for optimists like Simon and "neo-Malthusian" for pessimists like Paul and Anne Ehrlich.⁷³ Cornucopians do not worry much about protecting the stock of any single resource, because of their faith that market-driven human ingenuity can always be tapped to allow the substitution of more abundant resources to produce the same end-use service. Simon, for example, writes: "There is no physical or economic reason why human resourcefulness and enterprise cannot forever continue to respond to impending shortages and existing problems with new expedients that, after an adjustment period, leave us better off than before the problem arose."⁷⁴ Neo-Malthusians are much more cautious. For renewable resources, they often distinguish between resource "capital" and its "income": the capital is the resource stock that generates a flow (the income) that can be tapped for human consumption and well-being. A "sustainable" economy, using this terminology, is one that leaves the capital intact and undamaged so that future generations can enjoy an undiminished income stream.⁷⁵

Historically, cornucopians have been right to criticize the idea that resource scarcity places fixed limits on human activity. Time and time again, human beings have circumvented scarcities, and neo-Malthusians have often been justly accused of "crying wolf." But in assuming that this experience pertains to the future, cornucopians overlook seven factors.

First, whereas serious scarcities of critical resources in the past usually appeared singly, now we face multiple scarcities that exhibit powerful interactive, feedback, and threshold effects. An agricultural region may, for example, be simultaneously affected by degraded water and soil, greenhouse-induced precipitation changes, and increased ultraviolet radiation. This makes the future highly uncertain for policymakers and economic actors; tomorrow will be full of extreme events and surprises. Furthermore, as numerous resources become scarce simultaneously, it will be harder to identify substitution possibilities that produce the same end-use services at costs that prevailed when scarcity was less severe. Second, in the past the scarcity of a given resource usually increased slowly, allowing time for social, economic, and technological adjustment. But human populations are much larger and activities of individuals are, on a global average, much more resource-intensive than before. This means that debilitating scarcities often develop much more quickly: whole countries may be deforested in a few decades; most of a region's topsoil can disappear in a generation; and critical ozone depletion may occur in as little as twenty years. Third, today's consumption has far greater momentum than in the past, because of the size of the consuming population, the sheer quantity of material consumed by this population, and the density of its interwoven fabric of consumption activities. The countless individual and corporate economic actors making up human society are heavily committed to certain patterns of resource use; and the ability of our markets to adapt may be sharply constrained by these entrenched interests.

These first three factors may soon combine to produce a daunting syndrome of environmentally induced scarcity: humankind will face multiple resource shortages that are interacting and unpredictable, that grow to crisis proportions rapidly, and that will be hard to address because of powerful commitments to certain consumption patterns.

The fourth reason that cornucopian arguments may not apply in the future is that the free-market price mechanism is a bad gauge of scarcity, especially for resources held in common, such as a benign climate and productive seas. In the past, many such resources seemed endlessly abundant; now they are being degraded and depleted, and we are learning that their increased scarcity often has tremendous bearing on a society's well-being. Yet this scarcity is at best reflected only indirectly in market prices. In addition, people often cannot participate in market transactions in which they have an interest, either because they lack the resources or because they are distant from the transaction process in time or space; in these cases the true scarcity of the resource is not reflected by its price.

The fifth reason is an extension of a point made earlier: market-driven adaptation to resource scarcity is most likely to succeed in wealthy societies, where abundant reserves of capital, knowledge, and talent help economic actors invent new technologies, identify conservation possibilities, and make the transition to new production and consumption patterns. Yet many of the societies facing the most serious environmental problems in the coming decades will be poor; even if they have efficient markets, lack of capital and know-how will hinder their response to these problems.

Sixth, cornucopians have an anachronistic faith in humankind's ability to unravel and manage the myriad processes of nature. There is no a priori reason to expect that human scientific and technical ingenuity can always surmount all types of scarcity. Human beings may not have the mental capacity to understand adequately the complexities of environmental-social systems. Or it may simply be impossible, given the physical, biological, and social laws governing these systems, to reduce all scarcity or repair all environmental damage. Moreover, the chaotic nature of these systems may keep us from fully anticipating the consequences of various adaptation and intervention strategies.⁷⁶ Perhaps most important, scientific and technical knowledge must be built incrementally--layer upon layer--and its diffusion to the broader society often takes decades. Any technical solutions to environmental scarcity may arrive too late to prevent catastrophe.

Seventh and finally, future environmental problems, rather than inspiring the wave of ingenuity predicted by cornucopians, may instead reduce the supply of ingenuity available in a society. The success of market mechanisms depends on an intricate and stable system of institutions, social relations, and shared understandings (the ideational factors in Figure 1). Cornucopians often overlook the role of social ingenuity in producing the complex legal and economic climate in which technical ingenuity can flourish. Policymakers must be clever "social engineers" to design and implement effective market mechanisms.⁷⁷ Unfortunately, however, the syndrome of multiple, interacting, unpredictable, and rapidly changing environmental problems will increase the complexity and pressure of the policymaking setting. It will also generate increased "social friction" as elites and interest groups struggle to protect their prerogatives. The ability of policymakers to be good social engineers is likely to go down, not up, as these stresses increase.

Population size and growth are key variables producing the syndrome of environmental scarcity I have described. While sometimes population growth does not damage the environment, often this growth--in combination with prevailing social structures, technologies, and consumption patterns--makes environmental degradation worse. During the 1970s and early 1980s, family size dropped dramatically in many countries from six or seven children to three or four. But family planners have discovered that it is much more difficult to convince parents to forgo a further one or two children to bring family size down to replacement rate. As a result, the growth rates of some of the world's most populous countries--including India and China--are hardly declining at all.⁷⁸ India's rate has leveled off at around 2.1 percent (17.9 million people) per year, China's at around 1.3 percent (14.8 million) per year. These developments have recently led the United Nations to increase its mid-range estimate of the globe's population when it stabilizes (predicted to occur towards the end of the twenty-first century) from 10.2 to 11 billion, which is over twice the size of the planet's current population.⁷⁹

Consequently, many countries will have to keep boosting their agricultural production by 2 to 4 percent per year well into the next century to avoid huge food imports.⁸⁰ But, for the seven reasons discussed above, the social and technical engineers in these countries might not be able to supply the ever-increasing ingenuity required over this extended period. In particular, in many developing countries the effects of land scarcity and degradation are likely to become much more evident as the potential gains from green revolution technologies are fully realized. Unfortunately, there is no new generation of agricultural technologies waiting in the wings to keep productivity rising. Genetic engineering may eventually help scientists develop nitrogen-fixing, salinity-resistant, and drought-resistant grains, but their widespread use in the developing world is undoubtedly decades in the future.

Although we must be careful not to slip into environmental determinism, when it comes to the poorest countries on this planet we should not invest too much faith in the potential of human ingenuity to respond to multiple, interacting, and rapidly changing environmental problems once they have become severe. The most important of the seven factors above is the last: growing population, consumption, and environmental stresses will increase social friction. This will reduce the capacity of policymakers in developing countries to intervene as good social engineers in order to chart a sustainable development path and prevent further social disruption. Neo-Malthusians may underestimate human adaptability in today's environmental-social system, but as time passes their analysis may become ever more compelling.⁸¹

It seems likely that first-stage policy interventions will not be fully successful in preventing the four principal social effects posited above. We therefore turn to the second part of the "how" question: if agricultural production drops, if developing societies slide further into poverty, if large numbers of people are forced from their homelands, and if institutions and social relations are disrupted, what kinds of conflict are likely to develop? At present, we can bring only limited empirical evidence to bear on this question. This may be partly because environmental and population pressures have not yet passed a critical threshold of severity in many developing countries; also, there has been little case-study research on environment-conflict linkages. In what follows, therefore, I propose some further hypotheses for testing.

Three Theoretical Perspectives on Conflict

Three types of theory on the nature and etiology of social conflict--one each at the individual, group, and systemic levels of analysis--are particularly important in light of the four general social effects identified.

Frustration-aggression theories use individual psychology to explain civil strife, including strikes, riots, coups, revolutions, and guerrilla wars. They suggest that individuals become aggressive when they feel frustrated by something or someone they believe is blocking them from fulfilling a strong desire. An important subset of these theories suggests that this frustration and aggression can be caused by relative deprivation, when people perceive a widening gap between the level of satisfaction they have achieved (often defined in economic terms) and the level they believe they deserve.⁸²

Group-identity theories use social psychology to help explain conflicts involving nationalism, ethnicity, and religion. The focus is on the way groups reinforce their identities and the "we-they" cleavages that often result. Individuals may have a need for a sense of camaraderie or "we-ness" that can be satisfied in a group when it discriminates against or attacks another group; similarly, a person's sense of self-worth may be strengthened when his or her group's status is enhanced relative to that of other groups. By attacking outside groups, leaders may try to exploit these needs in order to increase their political power within their own groups, but this behavior makes divisions between groups deeper and more acrimonious.⁸³

Structural theories, which are often grounded in the assumptions of microeconomics and game theory, explain conflicts that arise from the rational calculations of actors in the face of perceived external constraints. The structure of an actor's social situation is the perceived set of possible interactions with other actors and the perceived likely outcomes of these interactions. This structure is determined by physical factors such as number of actors, resource limits, and barriers to movement or communication; by social factors such as shared beliefs and understandings, rules of social interaction, and the set of power relations between actors; and by psychological factors such as the beliefs and preferences of other actors.⁸⁴

General structural theories suggest that external constraints can encourage or even compel actors to engage in conflict.⁸⁵ Domestic structural theories hold that civil strife will be more likely if there are well-organized groups within a society that can quickly articulate, channel, and coordinate discontent. These theories suggest that insurgency is a function of the "opportunity structure" that confronts groups challenging the authority of elites. This opportunity structure depends on the relative power and resources of challenger and elite groups, on the power of groups that might ally themselves with challenger or elite groups, and on the costs and benefits that groups believe they will accrue through different kinds of collective action in support of or in opposition to elite groups.⁸⁶

Drawing on these theories, I hypothesize that severe environmental degradation will produce three principal types of conflict. These should be considered ideal types: they will rarely, if ever, be found in pure form in the real world.

Simple Scarcity Conflicts. Simple scarcity conflicts are explained and predicted by general structural theories. They are the conflicts we would expect when state actors rationally calculate their interests in a zero-sum or negative-sum situation such as might arise from resource scarcity.⁸⁷ We have seen such conflicts often in the past; they are easily understood within the realist paradigm of international relations theory, and they therefore are likely to receive undue attention from current security scholars. In Figure 4, I propose that simple scarcity conflicts may arise over three types of resource in particular: river water, fish, and agriculturally productive land. These renewable resources seem particularly likely to spark conflict because their scarcity is increasing rapidly in some regions, they are often essential for human survival, and they can be physically seized or controlled. There may be a positive feedback relationship between conflict and reduced agricultural production: for example, lower food supplies caused by environmental change may lead countries to fight over irrigable land, and this fighting could further reduce food supplies.

The current controversy over the Great Anatolia Project on the Euphrates River illustrates how simple scarcity conflicts can arise. By early in the next century, Turkey plans to build a huge complex of twenty dams and irrigation systems along the upper reaches of the Euphrates.⁸⁸ This $21 billion project, if fully funded and built, would reduce the average annual flow of the Euphrates within Syria from 32 billion cubic meters to 20 billion.⁸⁹ The water that passes through Turkey's irrigation systems and on to Syria will be laden with fertilizers, pesticides, and salts. Syria is already desperately short of water, with an annual water availability of only about 600 cubic meters per capita.⁹⁰ Much of the water for its towns, industries, and farms comes from the Euphrates, and the country has been chronically vulnerable to drought. Furthermore, Syria's population growth rate, at 3.7 percent per year, is one of the highest in the world, and this adds further to the country's demand for water.

Turkey and Syria have exchanged angry threats over this situation. Syria gives sanctuary to guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (the PKK), which has long been waging an insurgency against the Turkish government in eastern Anatolia. Turkey suspects that Syria might be using these separatists to gain leverage in bargaining over Euphrates River water. Thus in October, 1989, then Prime Minister Turgut Ozal suggested that Turkey might impound the river's water if Syria did not restrain the PKK. Although he later retracted the threat, the tensions have not been resolved, and there are currently no high-level talks on water sharing.⁹¹

Group-identity Conflicts. Group-identity conflicts are explained and predicted by group-identity theories. Such conflicts are likely to arise from the large-scale movements of populations brought about by environmental change. As different ethnic and cultural groups are propelled together under circumstances of deprivation and stress, we should expect intergroup hostility, in which a group would emphasize its own identity while denigrating, discriminating against, and attacking outsiders. The situation in the Bangladesh-Assam region may be a good example of this process; Assam's ethnic strife over the last decade has apparently been provoked by migration from Bangladesh.⁹²

As population and environmental stresses grow in developing countries, migration to the developed world is likely to surge. "The image of islands of affluence amidst a sea of poverty is not inaccurate."⁹³ People will seek to move from Latin America to the United States and Canada, from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe, and from South and Southeast Asia to Australia. This migration has already shifted the ethnic balance in many cities and regions of developed countries, and governments are struggling to contain a xenophobic backlash. Such racial strife will undoubtedly become much worse.

Relative-deprivation Conflicts. Relative-deprivation theories indicate that as developing societies produce less wealth because of environmental problems, their citizens will probably become increasingly discontented by the widening gap between their actual level of economic achievement and the level they feel they deserve. The rate of change is key: the faster the economic deterioration, it is hypothesized, the greater the discontent. Lower-status groups will be more frustrated than others because elites will use their power to maintain, as best they can, access to a constant standard of living despite a shrinking economic pie. At some point, the discontent and frustration of some groups may cross a critical threshold, and they will act violently against other groups perceived to be the agents of their economic misery or thought to be benefiting from a grossly unfair distribution of economic goods in the society.

Relative-deprivation theories are often contrasted with domestic structural theories of civil strife, but, as suggested by Figure 4, these points of view can be usefully combined. The emphasis of domestic structural theories on the "opportunity structure" that confronts potential challenger groups is important, because a principal social effect of environmental change in developing countries is likely to be the disruption of institutions and of regular and legitimized social relations. Thus, environmental problems may not only increase the frustration and anger within developing societies (by increasing relative deprivation), but by disrupting institutions and social relations, they may also open up structural opportunities for challenger groups to act on their grievances and overthrow existing authority. Doug McAdam contends that "any event or broad social process that serves to undermine the calculations and assumptions on which the political establishment is structured occasions a shift in political opportunities."⁹⁴

The relative-deprivation and domestic-structural perspectives together tell us that severe civil strife is likely when: 1) there are clearly defined and organized groups in a society; 2) some of these groups regard their level of economic achievement, and in turn the broader political and economic system, as wholly unfair; and 3) these same groups believe that all peaceful opportunities to effect change are blocked, yet regard the balance of power within the society as unstable; that is, they believe there are structural opportunities for overthrowing authority in the society.⁹⁵

Figure 4 reflects these two theoretical perspectives: I hypothesize that decreased economic productivity and disrupted institutions will jointly contribute to relative-deprivation conflicts. I again suggest that positive feedbacks may operate: relative-deprivation conflicts may cause further economic decline and institutional dislocation. In addition, the figure reflects the idea that the arrival of refugees in an area, even if the event does not reduce total economic productivity, will probably result in a dilution of existing resources and aggravate a sense of deprivation in the indigenous population. This stress may also manifest itself as inter-ethnic tension. Thus causal arrows point from population displacement to relative-deprivation conflicts and from these conflicts to group-identity conflicts.⁹⁶

The probability of civil strife is also strongly influenced by whether challenger groups have the organizational and leadership capacity to provide themselves with adequate information and coordination. Leaders are important in causing the members of a challenger group to believe that the group's situation should and can be changed. McAdam calls this a group's "cognitive liberation." Leaders define the categories through which challenger groups see their situations and themselves. By developing and exploiting a particular view of the "social good," leaders can shift the preferences of the members of a challenger group so they come to view their situation as illegitimate and intolerable, thus increasing their sense of relative deprivation. In addition, by altering group members' self-perceptions, their understandings of the nature of power, and their assumptions about the possible means to achieve change, leaders can change the perceived opportunity structure.

This theoretical perspective on civil strife can be applied to the Filipino situation. The insurgency is motivated by the relative deprivation of the landless agricultural laborers and poor farmers displaced to the uplands where they try to eke out a living from the failing land; it exploits the structural opportunities provided by the crumbling of the central government's authority in the country's hinterland; and it is facilitated by the creative leadership of the cadres of the New People's Army (NPA) and the National Democratic Front (NDF). These revolutionary groups shape the peasants' understandings of their situation, focus their discontent, and assist them in extracting concessions from landlords. Gary Hawes points out that the rationality of Filipino peasants must be understood within their own world of meaning, which includes a strong commitment to family and community. The NDF has sought to build on this world of meaning to create "a national community linked not by kinship, but by something analogous, a commitment to a vision of a better future for all those who are exploited."⁹⁷

Assessing the prospect for civil strife arising from environmental degradation in a particular society requires a thorough understanding of the society's social relations and institutions; its class, ethnic, religious, and linguistic structure; the culture of leadership in these groups and in the society as a whole; and the beliefs about the social good that motivate challenger and elite groups.⁹⁸ Since analysis must be so specific to each case, we cannot hope for more than rough, probabilistic generalizations about the relationship between environmental degradation, economic decline, and civil strife.

Conflict Objectives and Scope

Table 1 compares some attributes of the principal types of acute conflict that I hypothesize may result from environmental change. The table lists the objectives sought by actors involved in these conflicts (which are, once again, ideal types). There is strong normative content to the motives of challenger groups involved in relative-deprivation conflicts: these groups believe the distribution of rewards is unfair. But such an "ought" does not necessarily drive simple-scarcity conflicts: one state may decide that it needs something another state has, and then try to seize it, without being motivated by a strong sense of unfairness or injustice.

Table 1 also shows that the scope of conflict can be expected to differ. Although relative-deprivation conflicts will tend to be domestic, we should not underestimate their potentially severe international repercussions. The correlation between civil strife and external conflict behavior is a function of the nature of the regime and of the kind of internal conflict it faces. For example, highly centralized dictatorships threatened by revolutionary actions, purges, and strikes are especially prone to engage in external war and belligerence. In comparison, less centralized dictatorships are prone to such behavior when threatened by guerrilla action and assassinations.⁹⁹ External aggression may also result after a new regime comes to power through civil strife: regimes borne of revolution, for example, are particularly good at mobilizing their citizens and resources for military preparation and war.¹⁰⁰

While environmental stresses and the conflicts they induce may encourage the rise of revolutionary regimes, other results are also plausible: these pressures might overwhelm the management capacity of institutions in developing countries, inducing praetorianism¹⁰¹ or widespread social disintegration. They may also weaken the control of governments over their territories, especially over the hinterland (as in the Philippines). The regimes that do gain power in the face of such disruption are likely to be extremist, authoritarian, and abusive of human rights.¹⁰² Moreover, the already short time horizons of policymakers in developing countries will be further shortened. These political factors could seriously undermine efforts to mitigate and adapt to environmental change. Soon to be the biggest contributors to global environmental problems, developing countries could become more belligerent, less willing to compromise with other states, and less capable of controlling their territories in order to implement measures to reduce environmental damage.

If many developing countries evolve in the direction of extremism, the interests of the North may be directly threatened. Of special concern here is the growing disparity between rich and poor nations that may be induced by environmental change. Robert Heilbroner notes that revolutionary regimes "are not likely to view the vast difference between first class and cattle class with the forgiving eyes of their predecessors." Furthermore, these nations may be heavily armed, as the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons and ballistic missiles continues. Such regimes, he asserts, could be tempted to use nuclear blackmail as a "means of inducing the developed world to transfer its wealth on an unprecedented scale to the underdeveloped world."¹⁰³ Richard Ullman, however, argues that this concern is overstated. Third world nations are unlikely to confront the North violently in the face of the "superior destructive capabilities of the rich."¹⁰⁴ In light of the discussion in this article, we might conclude that environmental stress and its attendant social disruption will so debilitate the economies of developing countries that they will be unable to amass sizeable armed forces, conventional or otherwise. But the North would surely be unwise to rely on impoverishment and disorder in the South for its security.

Second-stage Interventions

Many factors could break the causal links between the four main social effects of environmental change and the three types of conflict hypothesized above. Some of these factors could be open to intentional manipulation by policymakers. Focusing first on domestic conflict, it appears that regime repressiveness is a critical variable. For instance "semi-repressive" regimes may be more vulnerable to insurgency induced by income inequality than are either highly repressive or democratic regimes. In semi-repressive societies, dissident groups can develop relatively strong organizations, but opportunities to engage in effective and nonviolent forms of political action are blocked.¹⁰⁵

Another key variable is the perceived legitimacy of the regime, that is, its perceived fairness, appropriateness, and reasonableness. Seymour Martin Lipset shows that this variable mediates the relationship between economic crisis and political instability: economic crisis must first lead to a crisis of legitimacy before widespread civil strife can occur.¹⁰⁶ A perception that the political and economic system is legitimate will moderate a citizen's sense of relative deprivation and will hinder the mass mobilization of discontent. Through various techniques of persuasion and distraction, policymakers may be able to sustain a perception of legitimacy even in the face of environmentally induced economic decline.

Finally, we must not forget the role of politics in shaping a society's response to social stress. For example, analyzing variance in the effects of the depression on European societies in the 1930s, Ekkart Zimmermann and Thomas Saalfeld emphasize the explanatory power of coalitions between politically powerful groups such as agrarian classes, labor, the bourgeoisie/ business class, and the state. Whether stabilizing coalitions form, in spite of economic stress, is influenced by a host of factors, including political culture, the nature and extent of socioeconomic cleavage, the "channels and procedures" for political bargaining and, as emphasized above, political leadership.¹⁰⁷

Several variables might offer opportunities for second-stage policy intervention to prevent war. The spread of liberal democracy in the developing world might reduce the chance that environmental stress (and its social effects) will cause interstate conflict.¹⁰⁸ Similarly, increased trade between states could increase their economic interdependence and thereby strengthen disincentives to engage in conflict.¹⁰⁹ Also important are the nature and rate of change of power relations among states; these relations may be affected by environmental degradation, yet they may also be open to independent manipulation by political leaders. Numerous scholars of international affairs, especially those of the realist school, have claimed that shifting power relations can prompt war. Robert Gilpin and others suggest that war may be started by a dominant state suffering declining power, while A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler contend the initiator will usually be a weaker state gaining in power and challenging the hegemon.¹¹⁰ Whichever view is more accurate, these theories suggest that statesmen might hold in check the risk of interstate conflict despite the effects of environmental change, if they can keep power relations among states relatively stable.

This article sets out a research agenda for studying the links between environmental change and acute conflict. Given current theories and data, we probably cannot go much further than the preliminary analysis offered here. Case studies of specific societies focused on the "where" question--where are the different kinds of environmentally derived conflict most likely to occur?--will help us test our hypotheses about how environmental change might contribute to conflict.

Such research will also reveal important things about real societies in the real world. We must in particular look for intervening variables--including institutions, technologies, and market mechanisms--that humankind might influence in order to change the course of environmental-social systems. We may learn that there are real opportunities for intervention; hardship and strife are not preordained. But it seems likely that, as environmental degradation proceeds, the size of the potential social disruption will increase, while our capacity to intervene to prevent this disruption decreases. It is therefore not a reasonable policy response to assume we can intervene at a late stage, when the crisis is upon us. Developing countries, in concert with the North, should act now to address the forces behind environmental degradation.

These pages are maintained by the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. We welcome your comments.

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