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Displacing the Conflict: Environmental Destruction in Bangladesh and Ethnic Conflict in India
Abstract and Figures
Recently, a substantial amount of research has been devoted to establishing that environmental destruction itself may be the cause of conflict. Conflicts may arise directly due to scarcity of resources caused by environmental destruction, and can also be the potential consequence of environmentally forced population migration. India and Bangladesh are in a long-standing dispute over the sharing of the waters of the River Ganges. Since 1975, India has been diverting most of the dry-season flow of the river to one of her internal rivers, before it reaches Bangladesh. At Farakka, this has affected agricultural and industrial production, disrupted domestic water supply, fishing and navigation, and changed the hydraulic character of the rivers and the ecology of the Delta in the down-stream areas. These trans-border human-inflicted environmental changes have resulted in the loss of the sources of living of a large population in the south-western part of Bangladesh and have necessitated their migration in the pursuit of survival. The absence of alternatives in the other parts of the country has left no other option for these Bangladeshis but to migrate into India. The large-scale migration, from the late 1970s, of these Muslim migrants into Hindu-dominated India has culminated in a number of native-migrant conflicts in the receiving society. The Indian state of Assam, which received a large proportion of these migrants, was the first to experience conflict. Conflicts between natives and migrants have now spread to other parts of India and have become a major issue for politically rising Hindu organizations. As this study determines, environmental destruction not only creates resource scarcity conflicts, it can also force the people to migrate, thus leading to native-migrant conflicts in the receiving society.
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... The additional water ensures that the port of Calcutta can remain open year round rather than suffer closures due to sedimentation. India has also built a small hydroelectric facility at the barrage and makes some of the stored water available for industrial and irrigation uses within West Bengal (Iyer 1997:4;Khan 1996;Swain 1996). Iyer (1997:4) notes that the primary purpose of the Farakka Barrage was the diversion of a part of the waters of Ganges to the Bhagirathi/Hooghly arm to arrest the deterioration of Calcutta Port. ...
... The government of India has also ignored the principles of the Ganges River Treaty by unilaterally promoting their National River Linking Project (NRLP) that involves massive water transfer from the Brahmaputra to the Ganges Basin to serve industrial growth in drought prone areas in India. The implementation of NRLP is likely to bring about ecological disasters in the rest of Bangladesh similar to those currently being encountered in the southwest (Bandyopadhyay and Ghosh 2009:54;Bhattarai 2009:4;Haftendorn 2000:64;Khalequzzaman 1994;Swain 1996). Despite the existence of the treaty, the basin flow continues to diminish in Bangladesh. ...
In this chapter, I describe the basin hydrological and ecological characteristics of the Ganges Dependent Area (GDA) in which Chapra is located, noting how government interventions such as the Farakka Barrage and the Flood Action Plan have undermined the ability of the GDA to provide essential ecosystem services to the majority of its residents. Traditional agricultural livelihoods in this region are well adapted to seasonal variations in rainfall and to regular episodes of borsha (wet) and khora (dry), which produce a variety of freely available ecological services. These services include river fisheries, the seasonal availability of wild foods, animal forage, soil replenishment through siltation and construction materials, such as wood and bamboo. The political culture and centralized political structure of Bangladesh allows elites at the local, national and international levels to establish development programs that give them control over natural resources that promote scientific and technological knowledge at the expense of local knowledge, and promote the privatization and commodi-fication of water and agricultural resources. Therefore, instead of a predictable and manageable variation of rainfall during each season, farmers now face more extreme and less predictable episodes of bonna (extreme flooding) and drought. The data I present in this chapter demonstrates that the current government approach is not sustainable when evaluated in relationship to the ecosystems and services on which the majority of households depend for their livelihoods.
... Indian hydro-domination in South Asia is thus increasing (Hossen 2012), with China as the only country in a position to challenge India's authority. The well documented effects of this particular approach to water management include loss of croplands, forest, fisheries, natural vegetation and habitat, due to increasing incidences of flooding, drought, river bank erosion, salinity and water stagnation (Bharati and Jayakody 2011;Hanchett 1997;Islam and Gnauck 2011;Islam and Karim 2005;Karim 2004;Mirza 1997;Mirza and Sarker 2004;Nilsson et al. 2005;Paul 1999;Potkin 2004;Swain 1996). The effects in Bangladesh are not caused only by the Farakka Barrage, but also by a series of other large barrages and structures that are capable of diverting 100,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs) from the Ganges flow before it reaches the Farakka point (Khan 1996). ...
... Development is a well-planned process for positive change from traditional to modern society for the goal of social, economic and political well-being (Gardner and Lewis 1996:3-5). This process is described as the top-down development approach that, by depriving marginalized communities, exploits institutional systems in formulating some specific programs and policies to gain greater control over local natural resources like fisheries, crops and water (Adger et al. 2005;Cleaver 1972:184;De Janvry 1975;Kottak 1999:29-30;Swain 1996;Van Ufford 1993:136-137). Gardner and Lewis (1996:7) argue that this management approach depicts unequal power relations between the North and the South. ...
Bangladesh is a delta country dominated by an agrarian society. Two of the largest rivers in Asia, the Ganges and Brahmaputra, meet in Bangladesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The Ganges River and its major distributaries dominate the southwest region of the country, where this study has done. Rural communities in this region produce agricultural crops on a year round basis, following seasonal patterns and the variable flow of water in the Ganges River. However, this eco-agricultural system is now undergoing major disruptions due to a number of factors including regional hydropolitics, neoliberal and highly centralized approaches to water resource management that follow the principles of “ecocracy” as that term has been used by Escobar (1996) and Sachs (1992). The central governments of both India and Bangladesh follow much the same principles as they seek to manage natural resources like river water through a combination of engineering projects, bureaucratization and the application of economic liberalization policies. But, unfortunately for Bangladesh, India holds the upper hand when it comes sometimes to their competing interests over water resources. The central government in India, for instance, constructed the Farakka Barrage unilaterally on the Ganges River, very near the Bangladesh border, reducing flows to agricultural communities in Bangladesh at critical times in their cropping cycles. The barrage was built to divert water to Kolkata, to enhance navigation and shipping and to provide the city with fresh water. The central government in Bangladesh has been unable to restore this flow to a sufficient level and subsequently has intensified its own top-down water man- agement approaches. The ethnographic fieldwork from 2011 to 2012 finds out effects of these approaches at Chapra in Bangladesh. The fieldwork data evince that these approaches fail to recognize the full range of ecosystem services on which most people rely and they encounter multiple survival challenges. To elaborate this argument, it is important at first to describe ecological character- istics of the Ganges Basin flow along with hydropolitics and theoretical approach.
... Thus, politico-economic aspects of water resource management create negative ecological outcomes (Peterson 2000). The Farakka Barrage is an example of this which had established in 1975 and has had spatial and temporal effects in the Ganges Dependent Area in Bangladesh (Bharati and Jayakody 2011;Sarker 2004;Swain 1996). This paper focuses on the effects of this barrage which creates major ecosystem failures and survival challenges in Chapra. ...
... In the meantime, the barrage was ready for operation and the government in Bangladesh was disappointed by this unilateral action. Because of Indian hydropolitical domination, the Bangladesh Government agreed to operate the Farakka Barrage for a forty day trial period in 1975 (Swain 1996). After this trial period, India continued to divert water unilaterally (Nakayama 1997). ...
This paper explores the ecological effects of the top-down Ganges Basin water management systems in Chapra, Bangladesh, based on my ethnographic fieldwork a data collected in 2011-12. An example of this top-down system is the Farakka Barrage in India that causes major ecological system failures and challenges to community livelihoods. The reduction in Ganges Basin water flow in Bangladesh based on the pre and post Farakka comparison is helpful in understanding these failures and their effects on community livelihoods. My argument is that basin communities are capable of becoming empowered by Ganges Basin water management and failures in the management create major challenges to the livelihood of these communities. In this context, I analyze the current Ganges Basin management practices, focusing specifically on the Joint River Commission and the 1996 Ganges Treaty between India and Bangladesh, and their effects on the basin communities in Chapra. My fieldwork data point out that the current shortcomings in basin management can be overcome with an improved management system. Water governance based on a multilateral approach is a way to restore the basin's ecological systems and promote community empowerment. Based on this empowerment argument, this paper is divided into the following major sections: importance of the basin ecosystems for protecting community livelihoods, limitations of current basin management practices and community survival challenges, and proposed water governance for community empowerment.
... A line of evidence has established the changing scenario of the social-ecological determinants because of the construction of the Farakka water diversion project in India. For instance, Swain [80] estimated that about 35 million inhabitants in the Padma basin faced misery and severe hardship because of the diversion project. The river basin encompasses about one-third of the country's land area and has been affected socio-economically by the dam. ...
Climate change and human interventions (e.g., massive barrages, dams, sand mining, and sluice gates) in the Ganga-Padma River (India and Bangladesh) have escalated in recent decades, disrupting the natural flow regime and habitat. This study employed innovative trend analysis (ITA), range of variability approach (RVA), and continuous wavelet analysis (CWA) to quantify the past to future hydrological change in the river because of the building of the Farakka Barrage (FB). We also forecast flow regimes using unique hybrid machine learning techniques based on particle swarm optimization (PSO). The ITA findings revealed that the average discharge trended substantially negatively throughout the dry season (January-May). However, the RVA analysis showed that average discharge was lower than environmental flows. The CWA indicated that the FB has a significant influence on the periodicity of the streamflow regime. PSO-Reduced Error Pruning Tree (REPTree) was the best fit for average discharge prediction (RMSE = 0.14), PSO-random forest (RF) was the best match for maximum discharge (RMSE = 0.3), and PSO-M5P (RMSE = 0.18) was better for the lowest discharge prediction. Furthermore, the basin's discharge has reduced over time, concerning the riparian environment. This research describes the measurement of hydrological change and forecasts the discharge for upcoming days, which might be valuable in developing sustainable water resource management plans in this location.
... The coastal areas of the country have already reported increased frequency, variability, and severity of weather and climate-related disasters [19][20][21]. As a consequence, many researchers [18,[22][23][24][25] claim that people in Bangladesh's coastal areas have either already started to migrate from their ancestral homes to inland places that are perceived as safer or may migrate in the near future [18,[22][23][24][25].Other researchers [26][27][28][29] question whether such migration really occurs. They argue that climate change and environmental pressure exert little to no effect on migration flows from coastal areas of Bangladesh. ...
Coastal residents of Bangladesh are now confronted with the increased incidence, variability, and severity of weather-related hazards and disasters due to climate change-induced sea level rise (SLR). Many researchers hold the view that as a consequence residents of such area have either already migrated to inland locations or intend to so in the near future. We examine the migration of households following a flash flood event that took place in August 2020 and address intentions for future migration in the Lower Meghna Estuary of coastal Bangladesh. The data obtained for this study include 310 household surveys, field observations, and informal discussions with respondents and local people. Based on the analysis of the field data, this empirical research found one household migrated to other district within one year after the event. When the respondents were asked about their future migration intensions, only a tiny proportion, namely 21 (6.77%) households, likely will leave the study area to settle in other districts while the remaining 289 households likely will stay in the Lakshmipur district. This finding challenges the existing narratives about vulnerability to environmentally induced migration. Moreover, it provides evidence of non-migration, which is a new as well as thriving area of investigation in relation to coastal Bangladesh.
... The social consequences of the loss of the fishery have been significant. The Farakka Barrage has been considered an important contributor to environmental migration of rural communities from Bangladesh into India and subsequent ethnic conflict (Swain, 1996a). ...
Key elements of tenure systems, rights and governance issues in the vast, diverse and complex inland fisheries of India are summarized. The objective is to highlight how inland fisheries have been changing
and the associated challenges for governance and tenure. The legal and policy contexts, within which fishing in rivers, wetlands and estuaries takes place, are described as well as the diversity of fishing
activities and practices in the different environments found in India, which include inland capture fisheries, culture-based fisheries and freshwater aquaculture systems. Multiple drivers of change that affect inland fisheries are discussed from within the fisheries sector and from wider social, economic and environmental contexts. The ways in which formal and informal institutional arrangements and customary access regimes interact with each other are highlighted. The potential outcomes of institutional change and emerging policies for ecological sustainability, economic equity and social justice are discussed, with a focus on capture fisheries within India’s inland fisheries.
... Uninterrupted and consistent movement of population is the result of natural porous boundaries. So, it is one of the most complicated borders in the world (Swain, 1996). ...
The issue of convergence in the literature of growth is mainly in
terms of GDP. GDP is considered as a metric of measurement of
economic performance and standard of living and is highly significant for
cross-country comparisons. But it does not include economic costs of
pollution damages and natural resource depletion and thus it does not
adequately include the human and social welfare. In this chapter, we
adjust GDP with the economic costs of pollution damages and natural
resource depletion and construct Green GDP and test the conditional and
unconditional β and σ convergence of South Asian countries in terms of
per capita Green GDP for over a period of 1990-2016. The conditioning
variables that proxy for the steady-state of the economies are population, economic openness, the age dependency ratio, average years of total
schooling and total emissions. We also evaluate the relative position of
each South Asian country in terms of per capita Green GDP and also try
to find out the factors that would affect the initial per capita Green GDP
and its growth rate. In this chapter, we also use a fixed effect panel
regression to evaluate conditional β convergence in per capita Green
GDP. We find evidence of unconditional σ divergence and cannot draw
any significant conclusion about the conditional σ convergence. We also
find no significant result in case of absolute β convergence in per capita
Green GDP. The regression of our analysis shows evidence of conditional
β convergence. However, our panel regression shows evidence of
conditional β divergence which suggest that when countries are
interdependent in their policymaking that would affect the growth rate of
per capita Green GDP then no poor country would be able to catch up
with rich counterparts.
... Disasters like drought, flood and river erosion has become more frequent in this region. The cumulative economic losses has been assessed nearly USD 3 billion since 1976 to1993 due to environmental disasters brought by Farakka Barrage on agriculture, fisheries, forestry, industry, public health, river navigation, dredging and irrigation projects in Bangladesh (Swain, 1996). Not only Bangladesh, but also Indian riparian part is facing similar environmental, socio-economic hazards due Farakka Barrage (Mukherjee, 2011). ...
Being the most riparian country in South-Asia, Bangladesh is highly dependent on cross-border rivers. Initially, the paper gives an overview of this riverine context of Bangladesh along with its neighbors. It projects further on the country's societal and economic subjugation due to blockading the natural flow of those rivers in the upstream by hydraulic or hydroelectric projects. The paper further associates Bangladesh's challenges of attaining SGDs due to deterioration of its nature. In contrast with the miseries, the study discovers the BRI intervention as an alternative mechanism for enhancing connectivity between and among communities. Envisioned towards mitigating water-sharing crisis of cross-border rivers, the study also explores the scopes for the regional community through triangulation of water, electricity and BRI. Again it unpacks the challenges from Bangladesh's context for integrating BRI with sustainable development. Finally, the study proposes an integrated policy framework for building a sustainable community in this region.
... Subsequently, Bangladesh has been losing a lot of farming and industrial manufacture, human health, fishing and so on, due to India diverting a major portion of water in his own reveries. Bangladesh put his big problem the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 (Swain, 1996). ...
In this paper, we examine the neighborhood especially Indian strategies for the region. The political philosophies and regional strategies related to developing economies in the region need synergy and strategically positive and constructive in nature. Their philosophy to rule and their foreign policy is different from all the other leadership. Indian Current Ruling Party seems involved in different terrorist activities, such Gujarat attack on Muslims and the incident of the Samjhota express. Indian Current Ruling Partys begins wrongdoing on the innocent Kashmiri, its forces also use pellet guns on Kashmiri Muslims. Indian economic strategy is to invest on Chahbahar Port and wish to side stop the economic mega project of CPEC. Indian influence increased in Afghanistan against Pakistan with the boycott of SAARC conference scheduled in Pakistan. The international community has found that Indian current political leadership is as one of the most influential negative political personality among the world leaders.
Investigations of changing the flow regime and flow prediction are of vital societal and hydro-ecological importance in a transboundary river like Punarbhaba river between India and Bangladesh. The present paper investigated flow regime though advance periodicity models (Morlet’s wavelet transformation) at the seasonal scale. Flow prediction using advanced machine learning techniques like Support vector machine (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Hybrid wavelet ANN (W-ANN), Random forest(RF) capturing the periodicity, duration, cyclic or semi-cyclic nature of flow wave or wavelet from the historical time series data (1978–2017) is very crucial for environmental flow management and estimating present and future states of environmental flow. Flow alteration modeling (using heat map) and estimation of environmental flow (using duration curve shifting and RVA methods) are another vital objectives of this work to know the present and future hydro-ecological state. The result of periodicity clearly identified two distinct flow regimes before and after 1992-93 triggered by damming over there in 1992. All the prediction models identified the declining trend of flow in all the seasons, however hybrid wavelet ANN model could be treated as the best suited because of its very high-performance level. The degree of hydrological alteration is identified very high in the post-hydrological alteration (PHA) (post-1992) period and it is likely to be intensified predicted period. The estimated environmental flow state in PHA falls under moderate to critically modified states but if alteration goes on in this way ecological deficit will be the obvious result. For the survival of the river estimated environmental flow could be released primarily.
The links between water, energy, food, climate, and other challenging global and regional issues are increasingly clear. What is less clear is how those links can possibly be evaluated and explored in an integrated way that will permit effective responses to existing and future water-related threats. While the need for interdisciplinary and international cooperation is apparent, societies (and scientists) are notoriously bad at conducting this kind of research and implementing these kinds of solutions. A wide range of future water scenarios have been constructed over the past 20 years by different organizations, with different tools and intents. In some cases, these scenarios are meant to project existing trends into the future; in others they are ways of exploring the influence of alternative policy and technology options; sometimes they are meant to described preferred "positive futures." Rarely, however, have the complex relationships among drivers of different water scenarios been explored. This presentation will describe a recent international and interdisciplinary research effort to evaluate both the complex drivers of future water scenarios and to investigate the challenges of influencing or altering those drivers with effective policies. Some of these policies are traditional "water sector" policies, but others include efforts normally considered outside of water discussions, including energy, economic, agricultural, and demographic factors.
Thomas F. Homer-Dixon is an Assistant Professor at University College, University of Toronto, and Coordinator of the College's Peace and Conflict Studies Program. He is co-director of an international research project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict sponsored jointly by his Program and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This article is an abridged version of a paper prepared for the Global Environmental Change Committee of the Social Science Research Council and for a conference on "Emerging Trends in Global Security" convened by York University in October, 1990. The full paper is available from the author. Portions have appeared in "Environmental Change and Economic Decline in Developing Countries," International Studies Notes, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Winter 1991), pp. 18-23; "Environmental Change and Human Security," Behind the Headlines, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Toronto: Canadian Institute for International Affairs, 1991); and "Environmental Change and Violent Conflict," American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Occasional Paper No. 4 (June 1990). For their helpful comments, the author is grateful to Peter Cebon, William Clark, Daniel Deudney, Darya Farha, Peter Gleick, Ernst Haas, Fen Hampson, Roger Karapin, Jill Lazenby, Vicki Norberg-Bohm, Ted Parson, George Rathjens, James Risbey, Richard Rockwell, Thomas Schelling, Eugene Skolnikoff, Martha Snodgrass, Janice Stein, Urs Thomas, Myron Weiner, and Jane Willms. Financial support for research and writing was received from The Royal Society of Canada, the Donner Canadian Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
1. See, for example, Janet Welsh Brown, ed., In the U.S. Interest: Resources, Growth, and Security in the Developing World (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1990); Neville Brown, "Climate, Ecology and International Security," Survival, Vol. 31, No. 6 (November/December 1989), pp. 519-532; Peter Gleick, "Climate Change and International Politics: Problems Facing Developing Countries," Ambio, Vol. 18, No. 6 (1989), pp. 333-339; Gleick, "The Implications of Global Climatic Changes for International Security," Climatic Change, Vol. 15, No. 1/2 (October 1989), pp. 309-325; Ronnie Lipschutz and John Holdren, "Crossing Borders: Resource Flows, the Global Environment, and International Security," Bulletin of Peace Proposals, Vol. 21, No. 2 (June 1990), pp. 121-33; Jessica Tuchman Mathews, "Redefining Security," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Spring 1989), pp. 162-177; Norman Myers, "Environment and Security," Foreign Policy, No. 74 (Spring 1989), pp. 23-41; Michael Renner, National Security: The Economic and Environmental Dimensions, Worldwatch Paper No. 89 (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1989); and Arthur Westing, ed., Global Resources and International Conflict: Environmental Factors in Strategic Policy and Action (Oxford: New York, 1986). For a skeptical perspective, see Daniel Deudney, "The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation and National Security," Millennium, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1990), pp. 461-476.
2. Readers interested in a careful argument for an expanded notion of security that includes environmental threats to national well-being should see Richard Ullman, "Redefining Security," International Security, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Summer 1983), esp. pp. 133 and 143.
3. For example, see David Wirth, "Climate Chaos," Foreign Policy, No. 74 (Spring 1989), p. 10.
4. Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: Norton, 1980), pp. 39 and 95; William Ophuls, Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity: A Prologue to a Political Theory of the Steady State (San Francisco: Freeman, 1977), pp. 214-217.
5. Fen Hampson, "The Climate for War," Peace and Security, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn 1988), p. 9.
6. Jodi Jacobson, Environmental Refugees: A Yardstick of Habitability, Worldwatch Paper No. 86 (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1988).
7. Peter Gleick, "Climate Change," p. 336; Malin Falkenmark, "Fresh Waters as a Factor in Strategic Policy and Action," in Westing, Global Resources, pp. 85-113.
8. Peter Wallensteen, "Food Crops as a Factor in Strategic Policy and Action," Westing, Global Resources, pp. 151-155.
9. Ibid., p. 146-151.
10. Ted Gurr, "On the Political Consequences of Scarcity and Economic Decline," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1 (March 1985), pp. 51-75.
11. "The disappearance of ecological abundance seems bound to make international politics even more tension ridden and potentially violent than it already is. Indeed, the pressures of ecological scarcity may embroil the world in hopeless strife...
Peter H. Gleick is director of the Global Environment Program at the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, in Oakland, California.
This article is modified and updated from Occasional Paper No. 1, "Water and Conflict," of the project "Environmental Change and Violent Conflict" of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts and the University of Toronto (September 1992). Helpful comments on earlier versions were provided by Jeffrey Boutwell, Fen Hampson, Haleh Hatami, John Holdren, Tad Homer-Dixon, Miriam Lowi, Irving Mintzer, Laura Reed, the late Roger Revelle, and Arthur Westing. Financial support for different portions of this work has been provided to the Pacific Institute by the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore, New-Land, and Compton Foundations, and by the Ploughshares and Rockefeller Brother Funds.
1. The earliest references to national "security" included concerns about economic issues, the strength of domestic industry, and the "proper correlation of all measures of foreign and domestic policy." For a brief history of definitions of national security, see Joseph J. Romm, "Defining National Security," Council on Foreign Relations Occasional Paper (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, forthcoming 1993). In their book, The Ecological Perspective on Human Affairs with Special Reference to International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), Harold and Margaret Sprout identified the environment as one factor that influences a nation's foreign policy. For discussion of the principal points in the on-going debate, see Peter H. Gleick, "Environment, Resources, and International Security and Politics," in Eric Arnett, ed., Science and International Security: Responding to a Changing World (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1990), pp. 501-523; Peter H. Gleick, "Environment and Security: Clear Connections," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 47, No. 3 (April 1991), pp. 17-21; Jessica Tuchman Mathews, "Redefining Security," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Spring 1989), pp. 162-177; Richard H. Ullman, "Redefining Security," International Security, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Summer 1983), pp. 129-153; Arthur H. Westing, ed., Global Resources and International Conflict: Environmental Factors in Strategic Policy and Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Definitional issues are discussed by Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, "On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict," International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991), pp. 76-116.
2. These issues are reviewed in far more depth by Gleick, "Environment, Resources and International Security and Politics"; Gleick, "Environment and Security: Clear Connections"; Homer-Dixon, "On the Threshold"; and Daniel Deudney, "Environment and Security: Muddled Thinking," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 47, No. 3 (April 1991), pp. 22-28.
3. "The Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, March 22, 1985," Final Act (Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Environment Programme [UNEP]); "The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, September 16, 1987"; Final Act (Nairobi, Kenya: UNEP); and the London Revisions to the Montreal Protocol, June 1990, whose text can be found in "Report of the Second Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer," UNEP/OzL. Pro. 2/3, June 29, 1990 (London: UNEP). The complete texts of all of these can be found together in Richard E. Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy, World Wildlife Fund and the Conservation Foundation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).
4. For example, see President Gorbachev's speech, "Reality and Guarantees for a Secure World," published in English in Moscow News, supplement to issue No. 39 (3287), 1987; the statement by Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d on January 30, 1989, New York Times, January 31, 1989, p. 1; and comments by Senators Sam Nunn, Albert Gore, and Timothy Wirth, Congressional Record, June 28, 1990, S8929-8943. Environmental security was also a central topic of discussion among military analysts at the National War College, National Defense University symposium, "From Globalism to Regionalism—New Perspectives on American Foreign and Defense Policies," November 14-15, 1991.
5. Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, "Environmental Change and Violent Conflict," Occasional Paper No. 4, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, Mass., and the University of Toronto (1990); Ronnie Lipschutz and John P. Holdren, "Crossing Borders: Resource Flows, the Global Environment, and International Security," Bulletin...
Within the next 50 years, the human population is likely to exceed nine billion, and global economic output may quintuple.
Largely as a result of these two trends, scarcities of renewable resources may increase sharply. The total area of highly
productive agricultural land will drop, as will the extent of forests and the number of species they sustain. Future generations
will also experience the ongoing depletion and degradation of aquifers, rivers and other bodies of water, the decline of fisheries,
further stratospheric ozone loss and, perhaps, significant climatic change.