Green giant or straw man?: environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961–99
Green giant or straw man?: environmental pressure and civil conflict, 1961–99
What is the relationship between a country’s ecological footprint and conflict?
This paper explores the relationship between environmental scarcity and conflict. It finds that there is little if any evidence for a connection between environmental scarcity and the onset of civil conflict. The paper argues that a country’s ecological footprint is positively correlated with peace.
The paper discusses:
- the literature on environmental scarcity, resource abundance and conflict
- various indicies used for the study, including the ecological footprint
- results of the statisical analysis
- the size of a country’s ecological footpring is negatively related to the onset of conflict, a result that is highly significant
- higher consumption of the earth’s resources per capita relative to the ability to sustain it is associated with peace
- bio-capacity is negatively related to conflict
- Genuine Savings are negatively correlated with conflict
- the ecological reserve shows a strong curvilinear effect, where the risk of conflict rises with increasing reserve and eventually drops off.
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