Environment, Scarcity, and Violence

Environment, Scarcity, and Violence By Thomas F. HomerDixon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999 253p. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.

Marian A. L. Miller, University of Akron

In Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, Thomas Homer-Dixon continues his examination of environmental scarcity. This exploration of the links between environmental scarcity and violent conflict captures much of the related complexity. He finds that scarcities of renewable resources, such as cropland, freshwater, and forests, can contribute to civil violence. As scarcities worsen, the incidence of this kind of violence is likely to increase. Although he acknowledges that environmental scarcity "by itself is neither a necessary nor sufficient cause" (p. 7) of violence, he argues that analysts should not underestimate its importance: Some conflicts cannot be clearly understood without an examination of the role of environmental scarcity. In this work, he offers "analysts and policymakers a tool kit of concepts and generalizations that they can use to analyze, explain, and sometimes predict connections between environmental scarcity and violence around the world" (p. 73).

He reviews the debate among analysts with neoMalthusian, economic optimist, and distributionist stances. They offer differing explanations for economic scarcity: NeoMalthusians emphasize physical causes, such as population size and growth; economic optimists focus on market failures and inappropriate policies and institutions; and distributionists stress social structures and political behavior. He suggests that the principal contribution of the book will be to synthesize these three perspectives.

Homer-Dixon focuses on renewable resources "that are both rivalrous and excludable" (p. 48). He sees them as being subject to three types of scarcity: supply-induced, demandinduced, and structural scarcities. These scarcities interact and reinforce one another, resulting...