Demographic change, natural resources and violence' the current debate.

• Author: Kahl, Colin

"[T]he end of the Cold War raised the salience of and deepened the debate over, non-traditional security issues, including the potentially destabilizing effects of dramatic demographic and environmental change."

In 1998, Naris Sadik, former executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, wrote:

Many features of today's or very recent conflicts--whether in the Balkans, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Rwanda, Somalia, Zaire, or elsewhere--are all too familiar ... namely ethnic, religious, and economic. However, there are other features and signs which are much less familiar ... Most alarming among these is the rapid growth of the world's human population and the implications this may have for global stability and security.... Social and environmental change ... is taking place on a scale that has never been witnessed before ... To cope with these changes, governments need resources and capabilities which, in all too many cases, fall seriously short of what are available ... If support for the most disadvantaged developing countries (and there are many in or near that position) is not forthcoming in the years ahead, it seems likely that instability and disorder will be experienced on a much larger scale than they have even today. (1) Comments such as this illustrate a growing concern that rapid population growth and mounting natural resource pressures represent significant threats to the political stability of developing countries. These concerns are not new; Reverend Thomas Malthus first voiced them more than two hundred years ago, and dire predictions of exploding human numbers, impending environmental crises and a future plagued by endless resource wars have been popular for decades. Nevertheless, the end of the Cold War raised the salience of, and deepened the debate over, non-traditional security issues, including the potentially destabilizing effects of dramatic demographic and environmental change. (2)

This article surveys one aspect of this debate, specifically the relationship between violent intrastate conflict and demographic and environmental stress (DES)--a combination of pressures including population growth and the degradation, depletion and maldistribution of natural resources. (3) While neo-Malthusians argue that population growth and resource scarcity have been, and will continue to be, important contributors to political crises and conflict in developing countries, neo-classical economists are more optimistic about the prospects for social adaptation. Indeed, recent neo-classical work on the environmental sources of civil wars actually inverts the neo-Malthusian position, arguing that an abundance of natural resources, rather than scarcity, is more likely to produce armed conflict. The following sections describe these arguments in greater detail. I conclude that both neo-Malthusians and their neo-classical rivals would profit from greater theoretical specificity, especially as it relates to critical intervening factors and processes, the varied conflict potential of renewable vs. non-renewable resources and the different time frames assumed by each approach.

NEO-MALTHUSIAN ARGUMENTS

Neo-Malthusian conflict hypotheses start with the contention that DES can place severe strains on both societies and states, thereby making countries subject to instability and civil strife.

Pressures on Societies

According to neo-Malthusians, DES produces three interrelated strains on societies: renewable resource scarcity (4), economic marginalization and demographic shifts. DES can lead to a scarcity of renewable resources in countries lacking the institutions and the technological, social and political ingenuity to adapt. Population growth can bring about scarcity by increasing the demand for resources, while environmental degradation can generate it by decreasing resource supply. Meanwhile, a skewed distribution of resources can produce a condition of structural scarcity for large segments of a country's population by concentrating a resource "in the hands of a few and subject[ing] the rest to greater scarcity." (5)

In countries with stagnant or slowly growing economies, DES can also contribute to economic marginalization. Labor-intensive sectors of the economy remain much larger than capital-intensive ones in many developing countries. Individuals engaged in labor-intensive activities, especially agriculture and other natural resource sectors, are particularly vulnerable to demographically and environmentally induced marginalization. In rural areas of the developing world, population growth, environmental degradation and maldistributions of critical resources often work in tandem to produce chronic poverty, landlessness and income inequality. (6) Economic marginalization stemming from DES can be further aggravated by state and societal elites who capitalize on scarcities of cropland, timber or other resources to enrich themselves at the expense of others. (7)

Finally, population growth and environmental pressures frequently lead to important shifts in the demographic composition of countries, including changes in age structure and levels of urbanization. Countries with constant high rates of population growth experience youth bulges as each generation produces, in absolute numbers, more children than the previous generation. DES can also increase rates of urbanization. Population growth in urban areas can contribute directly to the natural growth of cities. Urbanization is also fostered by rural-to-urban migration, which appears to account for 40 percent to 60 percent of annual city growth in developing countries. Incentives, including greater perceived opportunities for education, employment, health care and other social services in urban areas, pull rural residents into the city, while other forces, such as increasing poverty, reduced agricultural employment and degradation and maldistributions of land and water resources, push people to leave rural areas in search of a better life. (8)

Pressures on States

In addition to the challenges population and environmental pressures pose for societies, a number of strains on states in developing countries may emerge as well. First, neo-Malthusians contend that as population and environmental challenges mount, so will the demands placed on the state from suffering segments of the economy and marginalized individuals. Demands may include calls for costly development projects, such as hydroelectric dams, canals and irrigation systems, subsidies for fertilizer and other agricultural inputs and urban demands for employment, housing, schools, sanitation, energy and lower food prices. By requiring budgetary trade-offs, these demands increase fiscal strains and thus erode a state's administrative capacity. The state's legitimacy may also be compromised if individuals and groups come to blame the government for their plight. (9)

Second, DES can undermine overall economic productivity, thereby reducing the revenue available to local and central governments at the very time that rising demands require greater expenditures. (10) Neo-Malthusians do not argue that population growth is universally detrimental to the economy. Nevertheless, significant population growth can undermine economic productivity in countries with stagnant economies, scarce or costly natural resources, poorly defined property rights, dysfunctional markets incapable of efficiently allocating critical natural resources and government policies biased against labor (the most abundant factor of production in most developing countries). (11) Population growth tends to lower the ratio of capital to labor. The resulting capital shallowing can reduce the per capita economic productivity of a society. (12) Rapid population expansion tends to increase dependency ratios and make it more difficult for households to educate and pass on capital to children. With large numbers of young people who cannot be educated or productively employed, a country cannot reach its full potential and therefore suffers in the global economy. (13) Higher dependency ratios, in addition to other forms of economic marginalization stemming from demographic and environmental pressures, also force households to shift a greater proportion of financial resources toward basic consumption, limiting their ability to save. In the aggregate, lower domestic savings rates can undermine investments necessary for long-term economic growth or force public and private actors to borrow from abroad, thereby increasing foreign debt. (14)

Environmental stresses, including the loss of valuable agricultural land and reductions in crop yields due to soil erosion or pollution, the loss of timber and fuel wood due to unsustainable forestry practices and the loss of hydroelectric power and transportation due to the siltation of rivers and reservoirs, can also lead to economic decline and reduce the flow of revenue to the state. (15)

Third, DES can undermine a state's coercive power. Obviously, revenue shortfalls can limit the funds available for police and armed forces. Population growth and internal migration can also reduce a state's relative coercive power by creating large concentrations of individuals in urban areas or outlying rural areas that are increasingly costly to control. (16) Moreover, renewable resource scarcities sometimes contribute to growing concentrations of wealth and power among non-state elites capable of capturing the profits from the increased value of a scarce resource. As local and regional warlords increase their wealth and power, they may create competing loci of authority, reducing the state's relative coercive capacity and legitimacy over sub-national units. (17)

The Deprivation Hypothesis

The deprivation hypothesis posits that demographically and environmentally induced pressures on the poor can lead to a sense of absolute or relative deprivation among disadvantaged segments of a country's population. Absolute...