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Environment, Scarcity, and Violence
The Earth's human population is expected to pass eight billion by the year 2025, while rapid growth in the global economy will spur ever increasing demands for natural resources. The world will consequently face growing scarcities of such vital renewable resources as cropland, fresh water, and forests. Thomas Homer-Dixon argues in this sobering book that these environmental scarcities will have profound social consequences--contributing to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest, and other forms of civil violence, especially in the developing world. Homer-Dixon synthesizes work from a wide range of international research projects to develop a detailed model of the sources of environmenta...
The Upside of Down
Environmental disasters. Terrorist wars. Energy scarcity. Economic failure. Is this the world's inevitable fate, a downward spiral that ultimately spells the collapse of societies? Perhaps, says acclaimed author Thomas Homer-Dixon - or perhaps these crises can actually lead to renewal for ourselves and planet earth. The Upside of Down takes the reader on a mind-stretching tour of societies' management, or mismanagement, of disasters over time. From the demise of ancient Rome to contemporary climate change, this spellbinding book analyzes what happens when multiple crises compound to cause what the author calls "synchronous failure." But, crisis doesn't have to mean total global calamity. Thr...
Ecoviolence
Ecoviolence explores links between environmental scarcities of key renewable resources_such as cropland, fresh water, and forests_and violent rebellions, insurgencies, and ethnic clashes in developing countries. Detailed contemporary studies of civil violence in Chiapas, Gaza, South Africa, Pakistan, and Rwanda show how environmental scarcity has played a limited to significant role in causing social instability in each of these contexts. Drawing upon theory and key findings from the case studies, the authors suggest that environmental scarcity will worsen in many poor countries in coming decades and will become an increasingly important cause of major civil violence.
The Ingenuity Gap
Is our world becoming too complex and too fast-paced to manage? The challenges facing human societies - from international financial crises and global climate change to pandemics of tuberculosis and AIDS - converge, intertwine, and often remain largely beyond our ken. Most of us suspect that the 'experts' don't really know what's going on and that as a species we have released forces that are neither managed nor manageable. This is the 'ingenuity gap' - the term coined by Thomas Homer-Dixon - the critical gap between our need for practical and innovative ideas to solve complex problems and our actual supply of those ideas. Homer-Dixon shows us how, in our complex world, while poor countries are particularly vulnerable to ingenuity gaps, our own rich countries are no longer immune. When the gap widens political disintegration and violent upheaval can result, reaching into our own economies and daily lives in subtle, unforeseen ways.
Contested Grounds
Presents diverse views on the relationship between environmental politics and international security.
Ecoviolence
Ecoviolence explores links between environmental scarcities of key renewable resources_such as cropland, fresh water, and forests_and violent rebellions, insurgencies, and ethnic clashes in developing countries. Detailed contemporary studies of civil violence in Chiapas, Gaza, South Africa, Pakistan, and Rwanda show how environmental scarcity has played a limited to significant role in causing social instability in each of these contexts. Drawing upon theory and key findings from the case studies, the authors suggest that environmental scarcity will worsen in many poor countries in coming decades and will become an increasingly important cause of major civil violence.
Global Dangers
Analyses some of the new issues that are raising the temperature of contemporary world politics. Environmental scarcity, international migration and nationalism.
Conflict and the Environment
The end of the Cold War has opened up the arena for increased attention to other lines of conflict, both in Europe and globally. Environmental disruption - by no means a new phenomenon - is a chief beneficiary of the shift in priorities in the public debate. The Scientific and Environmental Affairs Division of NATO has moved with the times and has defined environmental security as one of the priority areas for its cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union. Research on these issues is now thus very much a collaborative effort across former lines of division in Europe. The Introduction by Sverre Stub sets the tone: Our Future - Common, or None at All. The book reveals the very real risks associated with environmental degradation, whether of the land, waters or the oceans, and charts out previous disputes and points to the very real danger of violent conflict associated with the drying up of natural resources. The book ends with a section on Responses, which seeks to provide answers to the threats discussed in the preceding sections.
Warfare Ecology
The purpose of this book is specific and ambitious: to outline the distinctive elements, scope, and usefulness of a new and emerging field of applied ecology named warfare ecology. Based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, the book provides both a theoretical overview of this new field and case studies that range from mercury contamination during World War I in Slovenia to the ecosystem impacts of the Palestinian occupation, and from the bombing of coral reefs of Vieques to biodiversity loss due to violent conflicts in Africa. Warfare Ecology also includes reprints of several classical papers that set the stage for the new synthesis described by the authors. Written for environmental scientists, military and humanitarian relief professionals, conservation managers, and graduate students in a wide range of fields, Warfare Ecology is a major step forward in understanding the relationship between war and ecological systems.
