Ecoviolence? Links between population growth, environmental scarcity and violent conflict in Thomas Homer-Dixon's work (1).

"Qualitative degradation or quantitative depletion reduces the total size of the pie. A growing number of people sharing the pie implies that each share of the pie shrinks. And finally, if the pie is distributed in pieces of unequal sizes, some may be too small for people to survive on."

Thomas Homer-Dixon has published extensively on population, environment and conflict. His theoretical framework first appeared in several seminal articles in the early to mid-1990s, (2) and research by Homer-Dixon and his colleagues on the relationship between population, environment and violent conflict has been influential in the field of political science. (3) In view of the widespread nature of human conflict (4) and the prevailing pessimism about population growth and environmental destruction, this linkage is clearly both important and policy-relevant. In addition to outlining what he believes to be the main causal mechanisms, Homer-Dixon has also examined a number of cases in detail.

Homer-Dixon's work is far removed from the simplifications of some of the popular literature on the theme of population, environment and conflict. There is little if any of the sensationalism of Robert D. Kaplan (5) or the doomsday predictions of Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. (6) Homer-Dixon never asserts that population pressure and environmental degradation are the sole source of violent conflict. On the contrary, he emphasizes again and again the close interrelationship between demographic/environmental, social and political factors in the generation of violent conflict.

In the following, the basic theoretical scheme of Thomas Homer-Dixon's work on population, environment and violent conflict is presented, and then some of the main criticisms of his work are explored and summarized in five points. These criticisms relate both to his theoretical model and to his empirical studies. Lastly, a brief introduction to some of the recent comparative empirical studies aimed at testing Homer-Dixon's hypotheses more broadly is given.

THE LINKS BETWEEN POPULATION, ENVIRONMENT AND CONFLICT

Like other neo-Malthusian scholars, Homer-Dixon focuses on population variables. (7) He views population pressure as ...

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