Reviews of New Publications in ECSP Report 11

ECSP REPORT • ISSUE 11 • 2005

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From Ultrasound to Insurgency

Although this review will challenge the authors’predictions, Bare Branches: The SecurityImplications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population isan impressively researched work: it is provoca-tive, path-breaking, and deserving of a place inthe personal library of all those who considerdemographic security issues relevant to contem-porary society. Throughout the book, politicalscientists Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boerdo an admirable job of digging through vital sta-tistics to show the nature and extent of imbal-anced sex ratios at birth, assembling historicaland contemporary evidence, and making thecase that we should take seriously the reports—particularly from China and northern India—ofgenerations approaching marriageable age withan uncommonly large proportion of men.

The authors’ thesis is clear from the outset. Alarge demographic dominance of males, theycontend, could directly unsettle Asia’s politicalenvironment. These women-short generationsare destined to cast off millions of “bare branch-es”—a pre-revolutionary Chinese expression thatdisdainfully describes young men who do not

marry and build a family. In the past, Chineseofficials looked upon bare branches with suspi-cion, portraying these young men as shiftlesstroublemakers. Because their behavior was notconstrained by familial responsibilities and socialobligations, bare branches could be easily recruit-ed by dangerous political malcontents and anti-social subcultures, and then cultivated into a mil-itary force. On this point, Hudson and den Boerare unwavering: high sex ratios were dangerousin 19th century China, and they still are today.

I am not so certain. Within the authors’neatly forged chain between thesis and valida-tion, I find two weak links. First, they assumethat sex ratios at birth—and sometimes sexratios of entire populations—represent the sexratio that young marriageable men encounter. Icontend that these ratios are not representative,which matters immensely. Second, Hudson andden Boer sift through history to identify thesecurity dimension of these surplus bachelors.But I do not believe that in this case, the his-toric past is relevant to China or India’s future.

Which Sex Ratio?

In Bare Branches, Hudson and den Boer con-vincingly link increases in the sex ratio1 at birthin China and India (and several other coun-tries) to son preference, expressed in the differ-ences in male and female infant mortality, and

Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’sSurplus Male Population Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. 400 pages.

Reviewed by RICHARD P. CINCOTTA

Richard P. Cincotta is a senior research

associate at Population Action

International in Washington, D.C.

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to the increasing practice of sex-selective abor-tion, which is facilitated by the spread of ultra-sound technology. All nationwide surveys inChina and India show some regional impact ofson preference. A one-percent survey—whilenot the source of China’s official population sta-tistics—estimated the 1995 sex ratio at birth tobe nearly 116 males per 100 females (ChinaState Statistical Bureau, 1997). These data sug-gested an upward trend since 1980 across muchof China, particularly in the southern provinces(the sex ratio in Hubei was recorded at 130,Jiangsu at 123, and Fujian at 122). While the2001 census showed that India’s countrywidesex ratio for children under age six had risen toonly about 108, it also revealed that the north-western states of Haryana and Punjab hadreached ratios of 122 and 126, respectively.

Hudson and den Boer then connect high sexratios at birth to the future number of mar-riageable women available for marriageablemen. But is the sex ratio of same-age adults aproper estimate of the supply of mates? In manysocieties, men delay marriage to obtain skillsand accumulate wealth, often wedding womenmore than five years their junior, whichexpands the available pool of marriage-agewomen. Because population has grown throughmost of history, each female age cohort is largerthan the preceding male age cohort—and thatmakes the available pool of potential femalemates exceedingly large.

Using a methodology similar to that used byDaniel Goodkind (2003), I estimate the sexratio encountered by men preparing for mar-riage by assuming that it is equal to the numberof males, ages 25 to 29, divided by the numberof females, ages 20 to 24. I compare this mar-riage sex ratio to the apparent sex ratio, which iscalculated as the number of males, ages 20 to29, divided by the number of females in thesame age group. The results of this comparativeanalysis (Chart 1) show that China’s marriagesex ratio (an effect of age structure) has swungbetween extreme highs and lows over the pasthalf-century. Although consistently higher thanthe expected sex ratio for that age group, theamplitude of China’s apparent sex ratio has

been overshadowed, so far, by these swings,which can be traced to episodes of high mortal-ity (the first two swings) and to declines in fer-tility (the last swing). In fact, the marriage sexratio hit low points (representing an abundanceof marriage-age women) during the CulturalRevolution (1966-1976) and just before the1989 Tiananmen Square protests. This suggeststhat China’s “marriage market” is not as inflexi-ble as the authors assert, and that the securityeffects of a male-skewed sex ratio, at the levelcurrently observed among children (111,according to UN estimates), are insignificant incontemporary Chinese society.

The authors use prior studies of Indian dis-tricts that show a correlation between high sexratios in the entire population and the murderrate. But these population sex ratios, I argue,reflect fertility and age structure (which arelinked) as much as the sex ratio at marriageableage. Males typically outnumber females inchildhood and adolescence; women tend to dieprematurely in high-fertility societies, whilewomen in older, low-fertility populations out-live men by about eight years. Analysis of 2005data from the UN Population Division showsthat median age and population sex ratio arecorrelated, as are the adult population’s propor-tion of young adults (15-29 years) and popula-tion sex ratio.2 These correlations are consistentwith studies that have found that increased vio-

60

80

100

120

140

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

SRm

SRa

Sex

Ratio

(ma l

espe

r100

fem

ales

)

Chart 1: Sex Ratios at Marriage in China, 1950–2004

Note: Variation in rates ofchild survival and birth inChina have caused the sexratio of marriage-age men(ages 25-29 years) to mar-riage-age women (20-24),SRm (or the “marriage sexratio”), to swing widely whilethe “apparent sex ratio” ofthat age group (20-29 years),SRa, has changed relativelyslowly. This suggests that, inrecent years, the relativesupply of females at mar-riage age has been moresensitive to age structurethan to sex ratios at birth.And, it calls into questionexpectations of violencefrom contemporary “barebranches.” Source: United NationsPopulation Division (2005).


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lent crime often can be statistically explained byan increase in the proportion of young men inthe population (Daly & Wilson, 1988).

Is History an Honest Guide?

The authors’ presentation of evidence from con-temporary comparative psychological and crimi-nal behavior research is fairly strong.Psychological studies have generally found youngmen to be more aggressive under conditions ofsustained sexual isolation, while parallel researchhas shown that men with mates and familialresponsibilities are less likely to be involved incriminal behavior (see Laub et al., 1998).

Hudson and den Boer turn to history forfurther validation, but it yields as much ambi-guity as it does proof. Each historical case isconfounded by other factors that may boost therisk of conflict: the instabilities occur in volatileyouthful populations (Moller, 1967/68;Mesquida & Wiener, 1999; Fuller, 1995;Goldstone, 1999; Cincotta et al., 2003); therebels are members of large families and oftenhigh birth-order sons (Goldstone, 1991); theyoung men are landless or otherwise unem-ployed (Homer-Dixon & Blitt, 1998; Ohlsson,2000); or there is a state power vacuum, as isoften the case in frontier settlements and decay-ing empires.

No single case demonstrates that a high sexratio, on its own, is enough to substantiallylower the costs of recruiting men for risky coali-

tional violence. But this is exactly what theauthors must show. In China—with whichHudson and den Boer are most concerned—nearly all of the destabilizing demographic,social, and economic conditions that accompa-nied high sex ratios in the historical case studieshave since been systematically peeled away.

Most notably, China’s age structure hasmatured. While the country’s median age waslikely younger than 18 throughout most of the19th century, today the median age is 32 yearsold (United Nations Population Division,2005). The proportion of young adults ages 15to 29 years—a measure that has been shown tobe positively related to a state’s risk of civil con-flict (Cincotta et al., 2003)—peaked in themid-1980s at more than 43 percent. Today, it is30 percent and falling. Job growth, which hasbeen driven by the past decade’s 8 percentannual increase in real GDP, surely outpaces theslowing growth of its working-age population(now at 1.3 percent annually).

Nor are young Chinese men and women stillcircumscribed by the sexual constraints andoccupational limitations of pre-revolutionChina. Increased rates of divorce and remar-riage, the removal of social stigma constrainingwidows and older women from marriage,declining social restrictions on premarital sexualactivity, weakening class structure, bustlingurban job markets, and the migration of youngChinese for education and work—all of theseare likely to reduce the perception and impactof a high sex ratio by reducing the number ofidle young men with low mobility or withoutfamilial or employment-related responsibilities.

Turning the Skew

From the first pages of Bare Branches, I was curi-ous to see how the authors would navigate thetense politics surrounding sex-selected abortion.But Hudson and den Boer steer clear of thisthorny debate. They point out that in China themost cost-effective solution is obvious: remov-ing the one-child policy should substantiallydepress the demand for sex-selected abortionand could reduce mortality among infant girls.

Hudson and den Boer turn to history forfurther validation, but it yields as much ambi-guity as it does proof. Each historical case isconfounded by other factors that may boostthe risk of conflict.

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Dismantling India’s ubiquitous and already out-lawed dowry system presents a more formidablepolicy challenge, however. The authors offer sev-eral recommendations, the most solid of whichadvises governments to improve the legal andsocial status of girls and women, which shouldreduce the costs of bearing girl children andincrease the returns on investments in theirhealth and education (even as technologies facil-itating fetal sex determination and selectiongrow more affordable and available).3

Despite my criticisms, I highly recommendBare Branches. Through their research and pub-lications (see also Hudson & den Boer, 2002;den Boer & Hudson, 2004) the authors havesparked a vibrant debate that will undoubtedlyclaim a significant place in the literature ondemographic security. Moreover, their workcontinues to draw much needed attention tothe extent and persistence of discriminationagainst women.

Notes

1. Demographers assess the degree of numericalbalance between human males and females using the“sex ratio,” which is calculated as the number of malesdivided by the number of females, multiplied by 100.For reasons that Hudson and den Boer admit are stillpoorly understood, the normal sex ratio at birth for alarge human population is typically around 105 (105males per 100 females).

2. I used a two-tailed hypothesis to test statisticalsignificance, where the critical value is F(DF= 184,184). Both correlations are significant at p<0.01. Sixoutliers, all of them Arabian Gulf countries, were omit-ted from the analysis because of the presence of anunusually large proportion of male workers in theirpopulations.

3. New technologies are likely to come online; theauthors note that companies in the developing worldare seeking to license a technology for separating spermcarrying X or Y chromosomes.

References

China State Statistical Bureau. (1997). China populationstatistical yearbook. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

Cincotta, Richard P., Robert Engelman, & DanieleAnastasion. (2003). The security demographic:Population and civil conflict after the Cold War.Washington, DC: Population Action International.

Daly, Martin, & Margo Wilson. (1998). Homicide.New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

den Boer, Andrea M., & Valerie M. Hudson. (2004).“The security threat of Asia’s sex ratios.” SAISReview 24(2), 27-43.

Fuller, Gary. (1995). “The demographic backdrop toethnic conflict: A geographic overview.” In Thechallenge of ethnic conflict to national and interna-tional order in the 1990s: Geographic perspectives(pages 151–154). Washington, DC: CentralIntelligence Agency.

Goldstone, Jack A. (1991). Revolution and rebellion inthe early modern world. Berkeley: Univ. ofCalifornia Press.

Goldstone, Jack A. (1999). “Population and the pivotalstates.” In Robert Chase, Emily Hill, & PaulKennedy (Eds.), Pivotal states: A new framework forU.S. policy in the developing world (pages 247-269).New York: W.W. Norton.

Goodkind, Daniel. (2003). China’s demographic des-tiny: Aging, social security, and gender imbalance.Unpublished manuscript.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas F., & Jessica Blitt. (1998).Ecoviolence: Links among environment, populationand security. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Hudson, Valerie M., & Andrea M. den Boer. (2002).“A surplus of men, a deficit of peace.” InternationalSecurity 26(4), 5-38.

India Registrar General. (2001). Census of India, 2001,Series 1: India, Paper of 2001: Provisional populationtotals. New Delhi, India: Office of the RegistrarGeneral.

Laub, John H., Daniel S. Nagin, & Robert J. Sampson.(1998). “Trajectories of change in criminal offend-ing: Good marriages and the desistance process.”American Sociological Review 63(2), 225-38.

Mesquida, Christian G., & Neil I. Wiener. (1999).“Male age composition and the severity of con-flicts.” Politics in the Life Sciences 18(2), 181-189.

Moller, Herbert. (1967/68). “Youth as a force in themodern world.” Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 10, 237-260.

Ohlsson, Leif. (2000). Livelihood conflicts: Linkingpoverty and environment as causes of conflict.Stockholm: SIDA.

United Nations Population Division. (2005). Worldpopulation prospects: 2004 revision. New York:United Nations.


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“This is the way the world ends / Not with a bangbut a whimper.”—T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,Jared Diamond’s hefty and challenging book,demonstrates that while popular history isreplete with stories of conquered empires thatended with a bang, a number of civilizationscollapsed under the weight of their own actions(or inactions) regarding their environment, andthus ended (perhaps literally) with T.S. Eliot’swhimper. Diamond argues that the failures ofthe past provide lessons for today’s societies;global prosperity and well-being require that weact on these lessons, so that the past does notbecome prologue.

Collapse has been widely reviewed in thepress—even more widely discussed in the blo-gosphere—and Diamond has given a numberof well-publicized speeches and interviews onits themes (including one published in lastyear’s ECSP Report; see Diamond, 2004). Soinstead of offering a general review of the book,

I will focus on some of the implications ofDiamond’s theses for today’s policymakers andthe informed public.

But first, a few comments on the book itself.Reading Diamond is always a pleasure, evenwhen he is not writing about pleasant events.He writes well and entertainingly, and theamount of knowledge he can deploy to supporthis arguments is impressive, interesting, andoften convincing. For example, instead of rely-ing solely on academic studies for his chapterson the demise of the Easter Islanders and theNorse of Greenland, he visited the sites him-self, which helps bring to life these long-pastcivilizations and the problems that causedthem to fail.

While I enjoyed the book and admire whatDiamond has accomplished, on balance he hasprobably done too much. At more than 500pages, Collapse is a long read, even for the mostcommitted. In chapter after chapter, Diamondmakes his case and then piles on additionalmaterial that reconfirms an argument alreadywell made. Less information might have beenmore convincing—in part because more peoplewould have time to read the whole book.

Most valuable is Diamond’s ability to makethe past accessible and understandable, andthen demonstrate its relevance to the presentand future. Many of Collapse’s critics argue thatDiamond focuses on past civilizations that wereuniquely vulnerable because they were island-based, or otherwise remote and resource-con-strained. Therefore, according to these critics,these past experiences are irrelevant to today’sworld, which has the technology, science, andcapital to deal with its problems. Some accuseDiamond of espousing “environmental deter-minism,” a charge he rejects (page 302).

But these critics discount Diamond’s open-ing chapter on the challenges facing today’s

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or SucceedJared DiamondNew York: Viking Penguin, 2004. 592 pages.

Reviewed by KENNETH C. BRILL

Kenneth C. Brill is the director of the

National Counterproliferation Center

and the counterproliferation mission

manager for the Office of the Director of

National Intelligence (DNI). He has previ-

ously served as the U.S. ambassador to

Cyprus, the U.S. governor on the Board

of Governors of the International Atomic

Energy Agency, the U.S. permanent rep-

resentative to the United Nations Office

in Vienna, and the acting assistant secre-

tary of state for oceans, environment,

and science.

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Montana. Diamond uses Montana’s situationto illustrate that vulnerability is not unique toislands or drought-prone regions; even aseemingly prosperous state in the most afflu-ent and technologically advanced nation inhuman history suffers from some of the sameproblems that undermined earlier civiliza-tions. His review of four contemporary cases(Rwanda, the island of Hispaniola, China,and Australia) vividly demonstrates that theseeds of past “collapses” are very much presentin today’s world—and not only in the devel-oping countries.

In the final chapter, Diamond declares thatsocieties, in essence, choose to fail or succeed,and concludes that there is reason to be “cau-tiously optimistic.” This optimism rests on hisexpectation that the seeds of collapse will not gocompletely unattended and that we will takesustainable steps to deal with them.

Lessons From Collapse

In the post-9/11 world, some in political andpolicy circles argue that security and terrorismmust be our overriding concerns, making allother issues secondary. Diamond suggests thatglobalization and the interconnectedness ofglobal systems require policymakers to take abroader view. To that end, policymakersshould consider the following lessons drawnfrom Collapse.

Human impacts on the environment andother global systems have real-world conse-quences in the near term (e.g., for the war onterrorism). Failed states breed instability andinsecurity well beyond their borders.Deforestation, one of the issues highlighted inCollapse, can affect state health and regional sta-bility by undermining local livelihoods and cre-ating conditions for long-term economicdecline. For example, Charles Taylor’s rape ofLiberia’s forests sustained several destabilizinginsurgencies in West Africa and created condi-tions for continued instability in Liberia—andbeyond. Had a forest certification scheme beenin place, it would have been more difficult forAsian and European timber buyers to fund

Taylor at the outset. Therefore, internationaland regional agreements on such issues asforests, fisheries, and water pollution are notjust “nice” things to do for the environment,they are required for development, prosperity,stability and, ultimately, security.

Environmental problems need to regain theattention and priority they enjoyed in develop-ment aid programs of the 1990s. Collapse makesa strong case that environmental and humanimpact issues played a role in Rwanda’s geno-cide, and Diamond is not the first to identifythe political, security, and human consequencesof Haiti’s devastated environment. Other coun-tries, such as Afghanistan, Uganda, andNamibia, support the argument that the envi-ronment must be a key component of any sus-tainable development program. In addition, thegrowing body of evidence on the impacts of cli-mate change, the pressure on fresh water sup-plies, and the steady destruction of forests bylegal and illegal logging, to name only a few,show that aid programs must make the environ-ment a priority if we are to meet developmentgoals—and promote regional stability and glob-al security in the process (see MillenniumEcosystem Assessment, 2005).

In Chapter 14, Diamond notes that societiescan make bad decisions and fail for a variety ofreasons, such as not anticipating or perceivingproblems. Clearly, in a globalized world, policy-makers need long-term analyses of environmen-tal and human “megatrends” to help them bothanticipate and identify problems. It is, there-fore, distressing that while the NationalIntelligence Council’s (NIC) 2000 report,Global Trends 2015, addressed some issues relat-ed to human impacts on the environment, therecently released Mapping the Global Future:Project 2020 (NIC, 2004) essentially does not.The NIC and other security bodies should reg-ularly examine the impact of environmentalproblems on development and stability in keycountries and regions.

Having information is only part of the bat-tle. Collapse also argues in Chapter 14 that soci-eties can fail if they do not respond rationally asa problem develops. The depletion of fisheries

International andregional agree-ments on suchissues as forests,fisheries, andwater pollutionare not just“nice” things todo for theenvironment,they are requiredfor development,prosperity,stability and, ulti-mately, security.


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and the spread of persistent organic pollutants,for example, are known problems addressed byinternational and regional agreements. Climatechange, on the other hand, is a known problemto which states have only partially responded.Not only has policy failed, but the public hasalso failed to insist that such known problemsbe addressed, not avoided.

The spread of democracy and the rule of laware essential to sustainably confront the humanimpact issues Diamond discusses (despite theunique example presented by the formerDominican dictator and environmentalistJoaquin Balaguer). Corruption is antithetical—and good governance is vital—to sustainableresource management and the regulation ofhuman impacts on global environmental sys-tems. But, as we have seen repeatedly, corrup-tion is sure to occur when economic interestsseek to exploit limited resources in the absenceof transparency and strong legal systems.

Democracies tend to be both transparentand supportive of the rule of law. The UnitedStates has led the way in promoting the rule oflaw as an essential part of sustainable develop-ment, despite some developing countries’ insis-tence that such issues are “political” and haveno place in development discussions. However,developing countries’ support for a global anti-corruption convention in 2003 indicates thatthe link between the rule of law and sustainabledevelopment is becoming more widely accept-ed. But more needs to be done, and in thisregard, the Bush administration’s broad effortsto promote international democratic reformcould benefit the environment and help, inDiamond’s words, societies choose to succeed.

Finally, the most fundamental step is one weall can take: individuals concerned about humanimpacts on the global environmental systemsthat sustain us must work steadily to increase thenumber of people who share those concerns. Wemust make the environment an important issueacross the political and ideological spectra, bybuilding inclusive coalitions, and, as Diamondpoints out in Chapter 15, working with—not

against—businesses and other economic inter-ests. For example, the Marine StewardshipCouncil, an NGO-industry collaboration thatpromotes sustainable fisheries and sustainablefishing practices, is constructively contributingto both the economy and the environment.Broad-based support is essential, if politiciansand policymakers are to overcome the daily pres-sure to provide only short-term responses to anyproblem—and if we are to avoid perpetuating“the tragedy of the commons.”

Collapse is a big book, and not just in its size.It raises important issues, suggests some waysforward, and should increase our understandingof why we must sustainably address humanimpacts on the environment and other globalsystems, at all levels—local, national, and inter-national. In Collapse, Diamond describes howpast civilizations have ended with a whimper,not a bang. Let us hope that we can learn from,and act on, these lessons from the past, so thatunlike in “The Hollow Men,” no shadow willfall “Between the idea / And the reality.”

Author’s Note: the views expressed are solely thoseof the author and do not reflect in any way theviews of the U.S. government.

References

Diamond, Jared. (2004). “Environment, population,and health: Strategies for a more secure world.”Environmental Change and Security Project Report10, 8-11.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. (2005, March).Millennium Ecosystem Assessment synthesis report(pre-publication final draft approved by MA Boardon March 23, 2005). Retrieved April 10, 2005,from http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx

National Intelligence Council (NIC). (2000,December). Global trends 2015: A dialogue aboutthe future with nongovernment experts (NIC 2000-02). Retrieved April 10, 2005, fromhttp://www.cia.gov/nic/PDF_GIF_global/global-trend2015.pdf

NIC. (2004, December). Mapping the global future:Project 2020 (NIC 2004-13). Retrieved April 10,2005, from http://www.foia.cia.gov/2020/2020.pdf

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In December 2001, the United NationsEnvironment Programme (UNEP) announcedthe formation of a major new activity, the Post-Conflict Assessment Unit (PCAU), based inGeneva. Building on the earlier success ofUNEP’s assessments in the Balkans, PCAU wasestablished to investigate the environmentalimpacts of conflict and pre-existing chronicenvironmental problems in war-torn regions,integrate environmental considerations intopost-conflict recovery and reconstruction, rec-ommend strategic priorities for post-conflictcleanup and remediation, and catalyze andmobilize international support for post-conflictenvironmental projects.

UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, atan October 2004 Wilson Center EnvironmentalChange and Security Program event, describedPCAU as the first—and most visible—ofUNEP’s three pillars of environment and conflictwork.1 UNEP considers post-conflict environ-mental assessments vital tools for determiningthe environmental impacts of conflict and forproviding clear recommendations for remedia-tion. PCAU therefore seeks to demonstrate thelinkages connecting environmental degradation,public health, and sustainable development toidentify environmental risks and promote sus-tainable resource use.2

PCAU’s 38 reports cover Afghanistan,Albania, Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia, Iraq,Liberia, the Occupied Palestinian Territories,

and the effects of depleted uranium (in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro, and Kosovo).Exclusively descriptive and reportorial in tone,these reports follow no common format but areall clearly written, well-edited, and ably supple-mented by photos and maps that add to theirreadability.3 The reports reviewed here—onSerbia-Montenegro and Liberia—typify boththe variety and the quality of PCAU’s writtenproducts.

Pekka Haavisto (2005), the former head ofPCAU, draws three general conclusions fromthe post-conflict assessments conducted to date.First, a military conflict always has negativeconsequences for the environment that must beaddressed as soon as the situation allows.Second, environmental concerns are not stand-alone issues, but should be fully integrated intoboth short-term humanitarian work and long-term reconstruction and development. Third,post-conflict environmental work can buildconfidence and peace, bilaterally and regionally;

From Conflict to Sustainable Development:Assessment and Clean-up in Serbia andMontenegro (Final Report)United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)Switzerland: UNEP, April 2004. 55 pages.

Desk Study on the Environment in LiberiaUNEPSwitzerland: UNEP, February 2004. 116 pages.

Reviewed by GREGORY D. FOSTER

Gregory D. Foster is a professor at the

Industrial College of the Armed Forces,

National Defense University,

Washington, D.C., where he previously

served as George C. Marshall Professor

and J. Carlton Ward Distinguished

Professor and Director of Research.


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where other topics are too sensitive to discuss,the environment can often serve as an icebreaker.

Serbia-Montenegro

From March to June of 1999, following the fail-ure of the Rambouillet peace process, NATOconducted air strikes within the then-FederalRepublic of Yugoslavia (FRY). The intensity ofthe air strikes—particularly those targetingindustrial and military facilities—fueled claimsthat the conflict had produced massive air, land,and water pollution, leading to an environmen-tal disaster.

UNEP and the UN Centre for HumanSettlements initiated a neutral, independent,scientific assessment of the environmental situ-ation in the FRY, sending four expert missionsto the area between July and October 1999.4

Based on the missions’ fieldwork, UNEP con-cluded that the conflict had not produced ageneralized environmental catastrophe, but thatmore localized impacts—combined in somecases with a long-term legacy of poor environ-mental management—gave cause for concern.In particular, the environmental situation atfour “hot spots” in Serbia was so severe that thereport urged their cleanup on humanitariangrounds, recommending the following steps:

• Clean the wastewater canal to the DanubeRiver and remove mercury from the groundin Pancevo;

• Decontaminate dioxin and polychlorinatedbiphenyl hot spots in Kragujevac;

• Protect drinking water wells in Novi Sad; and • Reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from the

copper mine in Bor.5

UNEP identified 27 cleanup projects forthese 4 hot spots at a total estimated cost of $20million, and eventually generated $12.5 millionin contributions from 10 donor countries tosupport 22 of them. UNEP awarded nearly 400contracts to perform this work, some 300 ofwhich went to local companies or institutions,thereby building local capacity and generatinglocal income and employment.

Before handing over responsibility for thecleanup program to environmental authoritiesin Serbia-Montenegro, UNEP and the localauthorities jointly assessed the four original hotspots, along with environmental conditions atthree additional industrial sites. The finalassessment found that:6

• The clean-up program was a notable success,especially in light of limited funding andtime constraints, and significantly reducedconflict-related impacts at the four hot spots:– At Pancevo, where more than half of

available funds were spent, conflict-relat-ed concerns were significantly reduced,though important environmental prob-lems remain;

– At Novi Sad, the risk of serious contami-nation affecting drinking-water supplieswas substantially reduced and conflict-related environmental impacts systemati-cally monitored;

– At Kragujevac, the environmental im-pacts of the conflict (high PCB concen-trations at various sites throughout theZastava industrial complex) were success-fully mitigated; and

– At Bor, conflict-related environmentaleffects were largely mitigated (PCB con-tamination at the mining and smeltingcomplex’s transformer station), but wereminor compared to the wider, pre-existingenvironmental problems affecting the area.

• The clean-up program generally strength-ened environmental management institu-tions and helped resume and strengtheninternational and regional environmentalcooperation;

• Conflict-related impacts represented onlysome of the environmental and health chal-lenges at most locations—several sites still suf-fered considerable environmental problems;

• Strengthening national and local environ-mental management capacities will requirecontinuing efforts to integrate the environ-ment into the national development agendaand to promote preventive and precaution-ary environmental management;

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• Partnerships with donors, the wider interna-tional community, the UN system, and localcounterparts and experts were fundamentalto the program’s success; and

• A faster start—with more immediate finan-cial resources—would have produced evengreater environmental benefits.

Liberia

Two missions to the Liberian capital ofMonrovia met with stakeholders and collecteddata for UNEP’s desk study following the AccraPeace Agreement of August 2003. As PekkaHaavisto points out in the report’s introduc-tion, the desk study is not a comprehensiveenvironmental survey, but rather a rapid strate-gic assessment aimed at identifying the mosturgent environmental issues for Liberia’s post-conflict reconstruction.7

The report presents a disturbing litany ofenvironmental stresses growing out of and con-tributing to Liberia’s 14 years of civil war,including:

• The water supply systems in 10 urban areasoutside Monrovia have completely col-lapsed, and only 26 percent of the popula-tion has access to safe drinking water;

• The sewage treatment plant in the capital,designed to treat waste water from 130,000people, now treats waste water from800,000;

• An estimated half a million people are livingin temporary housing or refugee camps,often without adequate sanitation facilities;

• Household and commercial waste collectionservices in major towns and cities have most-ly collapsed, and rubbish trucks, transfer sta-tions, depots, and equipment have beenlooted, heavily damaged, or destroyed;

• The conflict left power plants, electricitysubstations, and transmission lines damagedand vandalized;

• Leaking oil storage facilities, alongside leak-ing pipelines and transformer fluids, threat-en rivers and groundwater;

• As many as 99 percent of Liberians may now

be dependent on charcoal and fuel wood forcooking and heating, further depleting thecountry’s rich forest cover, which hasdeclined to approximately 31 percent, a 7percent decrease since 1990;

• Warring factions exploited and exported thecountry’s rich timber resources to pay forarms and armies, which sharply increased thenumber of logging roads, thus acceleratingthe fragmentation of forest habitat, providingeasier access for hunters and poachers, andincreasing slash-and-burn agriculture; and

• Artisanal gold and diamond miners havecleared and excavated large areas of forestand river beds, as well as clogged and pollut-ed rivers with suspended solids and harmfulmetals and cyanide.

These and other serious instances of degra-dation prompt Klaus Toepfer to note in thereport’s foreword:

The misuse of natural resources has notonly been a source of conflict in Liberiaand the wider region, but has also sus-tained it. Effective and strong manage-ment to promote the sustainable use ofnatural resources is central to preventingadditional conflict in Liberia. For thelong-suffering people of Liberia, many ofwhom have been displaced and separatedfrom their families, this new era providesthem with a chance for a better future.(page 6)

The PCAU, via efforts like those described inthese reports, has already achieved consider-able success in making environmental concernsmore than a peacetime issue.


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To address these conditions, the report offers60 recommendations that could serve as a tem-plate for environmental rehabilitation in anycomparable situation. In addition to specific sec-toral recommendations, the report proposes anumber of more sweeping measures, including:

• Carry out comprehensive environmentalassessments;

• Integrate environmental considerations intothe reconstruction process;

• Create employment through the expansionof environmental protection;

• Improve environmental governance andinternational cooperation;

• Expand environmental information andawareness; and

• Develop and use creative financial mecha-nisms.

Conclusion

In a May 2004 address at the Wilson Center,Pekka Haavisto observed with frustration thatgovernments seeking to recover from conflictsand negotiate peace rarely prioritize environ-mental concerns.8 Yet the PCAU, via efforts likethose described in these reports, has alreadyachieved considerable success in making envi-ronmental concerns more than a peacetimeissue, while donor interest, funding, and sup-port have provided strong incentives for gov-ernments to undertake much-needed conserva-tion and clean-up measures. Underscoring theintrinsic strategic importance of the environ-ment, Haavisto emphasized that after a conflict,environmental conditions can either hinderrecovery and development or provide an arenafor negotiation and cooperation. “The post-conflict situation,” he said, “is a unique oppor-tunity to create something new.”

Indeed, one hopes that thoroughly and sys-tematically documenting the environmentalcosts of conflict may not only sensitize decision-makers to how environmental degradation mayprecipitate and nurture conflict, but also helpprevent them from regarding violence as a fruit-ful strategic option in the first place. As Klaus

Toepfer (n.d.) has argued: “Environmentalsecurity, both for reducing the threats of war,and in successfully rehabilitating a country fol-lowing conflict, must no longer be viewed as aluxury but… as a fundamental part of a longlasting peace policy.”

Notes

1. The second pillar of UNEP’s environment andconflict work is ENVSEC (the Environment andSecurity Initiative), the UNEP European regionaloffice’s partnership with the United NationsDevelopment Programme and the Organization forSecurity and Cooperation in Europe. The third pillar isthe Environment and Conflict Prevention Initiative ledby UNEP’s Division of Early Warning and Assessment.See event summary on ECSP’s website athttp://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1413&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=95111

2. For more information on PCAU’s methodology,please see http://postconflict.unep.ch/about.htm

3. All of these reports are available on the unit’s web-site, at http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications.htm

4. The first mission took soil, air, and groundwatersamples at industrial sites in 10 locations. A secondmission visited several sites along the Danube River,while the third investigated the conflict’s consequenceson biodiversity, especially in protected areas. Finally, anexpert team working in Kosovo studied municipaladministration, the regularization of housing andproperty rights, the development of a cadastral (landsurvey) information system, and environmental policyand institutions in the province.

5. These findings were complemented by subse-quent field research on the environmental risks arisingfrom the use of depleted uranium weapons during theconflict; see http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications.htm#du for more information.

6. A technical report (UNEP, 2004) supplementsthese findings with detailed assessments and appraisesthe institutional capacity at each of the seven sites.Additionally, it offers detailed recommendations forthe country’s industrial sector and local institutionalcapacities; see http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/assessment.pdf

7. Other recent desk studies have reported on Iraqand the Occupied Palestinian Territories; seehttp://postconflict.unep.ch/publications.htm

8. See event summary on ECSP’s website, athttp://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1413&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=68772.See also Airhart (2003).

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References

Airhart, Marc. (2003, September 15). “Cleaning upafter war.” Scientific American, 26-27.

Haavisto, Pekka. (2005). “Green helmets.” Our Planet15(4), 21-22. Available online at http://www.our-planet.com/imgversn/154/haavisto.html

Toepfer, Klaus. (n.d.). “In defence of the environment,putting poverty to the sword” (an editorial on war

and the environment). Available online athttp://www.unep.org/Documents.multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=288&ArticleID=3810

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).(2004, April). From conflict to sustainable develop-ment: Assessment of environmental hot spots, Serbia andMontenegro (Technical Report). Switzerland: UNEP.Available online at http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/assessment.pdf

Global Crises: UnfortunatelyUnrecognized and Unsolved

Global Crises, Global Solutions is an unfortunatebook. It begins with a good question: howshould $50 billion (or some other largeamount) of new foreign aid money be spentover the next four years to get the most “bangfor the buck”? However, the method chosen toanswer this question is fatally flawed, renderingthe results useless, if not dangerous.

The flaws are apparent in the first 8 pages ofthe introductory chapter, which is the only sec-tion of this 647-page book written by its editor,Bjørn Lomborg. The fair and important ques-tion of how to prioritize our global challengesand opportunities certainly needs more seriousattention. But Lomborg’s method is problematic.First, he generated a list of 32 “general challengesfacing humanity” by scouring UN publications(see Table 1). Even this initial step was not inclu-sive, because sustainability is not mentioned.The sustainability challenge is a core global prob-lem, long recognized by the United Nations (see,e.g., World Commission on Environment andDevelopment, 1987) so it is hard to imagine howa scan of UN publications missed it.

Another major flaw arises in the next step.Rather than circulating this list to a broad

range of stakeholders for comment and review(as Lomborg acknowledges he could havedone), he instead concluded that even thoughthis effort might produce more “buy-in,” itwould take too long. It is ludicrous that hecould not afford to devote another month oryear to a process whose recommendations forspending billions on global problems he hopedwould be taken seriously. Even a cursory glanceat the initial list of problems would have iden-tified the major omission mentioned above.Contrast this with the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (2001) process or theMillennium Ecosystem Assessment’s four-year,1,300-participant process of scientific consen-sus building.1

Lomborg narrowed the original list of 32challenges down to the 10 “found to hold themost promising opportunities” (page 4).

Global Crises, Global SolutionsBjørn Lomborg (Ed.)Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 647 pages.

Reviewed by ROBERT COSTANZA

Robert Costanza is the Gund Professor

of Ecological Economics and director of

the Gund Institute of Ecological

Economics at the Rubenstein School of

Environment and Natural Resources at

the University of Vermont. E-mail:

[email protected]


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Found by whom? Eight like-minded econo-mists who met for one week—hardly worthyof the name “Copenhagen consensus,” consid-ering the problems’ magnitude.2 The biasinherent in both of these initial winnowingsteps is huge but never acknowledged. Forexample, while the initial list of 32 includes 10environmental challenges, ranging from airpollution to deforestation, from lack of energyand water to climate change, the final listincludes only one environmental entry: cli-mate change.

Contrast this with Jared Diamond’s (2004)list of the 12 most serious environmentalproblems facing past and future societies—problems that more often than not have led tothe well-documented collapse of these histori-

cal societies:

• Loss of habitat and ecosystem services;• Overfishing;• Loss of biodiversity;• Soil erosion and degradation;• Energy limits;• Freshwater limits;• Photosynthetic capacity limits;• Toxic chemicals;• Alien species introductions;• Climate change;• Population growth; and• Human consumption levels.

While climate change is certainly a seriousproblem, and has contributed to several histori-

Table 1: Global Challenges in Global Crises, Global Solutions

The 32 Original Challenges FacingHumanity

The Final 10 Challenges Found to Holdthe Most Promising Opportunities

EnvironmentAir pollutionChemical pollution and

hazardous wasteClimate changeDeforestationDepletion of the ozone

layerDepletion of water

resourcesLack of energyLand degradationLoss of biodiversityVulnerability to natural

disasters

EconomyDigital divideFinancial instabilityLack of intellectual

property rightsMoney launderingSubsidies and trade

barriersTransport and infra-

structure

GovernanceArms proliferationConflictsCorruptionLack of educationTerrorism

Health andpopulationDrugsHIV/AIDSHuman settlementsLack of people of

working ageMalariaLiving conditions of

childrenLiving conditions of

womenNon-communicable

diseasesUndernutrition/hungerUnsafe water and lack

of sanitationVaccine-preventable

diseases

Climate changeCommunicable diseasesConflicts and arms proliferationAccess to educationFinancial instabilityGovernance and corruptionMalnutrition and hungerMigrationSanitation and access to clean waterSubsidies and trade barriers

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cal collapses—as Diamond and several others(Tainter, 1988; Yoffee & Cowgill, 1988;Ponting, 1991) have pointed out—the interplayof multiple factors is almost always more criticalthan a single one. Societies on the edge becomebrittle and lose resilience, making them moresusceptible to the impacts of climate change aswell as to other potential perturbations, such aspolitical corruption, war, terrorism, or theinability to adapt to new circumstances.

Lomborg commissioned a background paperon each of the 10 challenges from “renownedeconomics specialists within each field” (page5). These 10 papers, along with two “alternativeperspectives” on each challenge, form the bulkof the book. Unfortunately, while presenting aslightly broader perspective than that of theoriginal eight experts, these papers still drawfrom far too narrow a set. Despite this, most ofthe papers in the collection are well worth read-ing for what they are: statements of a particularposition, based on a particular worldview, on aparticular complex issue. Missing—for the pur-poses of this book’s stated aims—are truly alter-native positions. Perhaps most important, how-ever, is the lack of any appreciation of the inter-connectedness of the global challenges—a sys-tems perspective. The book assumes that thesechallenges are independently solvable and there-fore able to be ranked in a simple linear fashion.

The final chapter of Global Crises, GlobalSolutions presents the experts’ “consensus” rank-ing of the alternatives. This, again, is a misuseof the term: each expert ranked the alternativesindependently, and Lomborg presents the meanrankings as the consensus. Fortunately, thebook includes each expert’s individual rankingsand reasoning, so that the reader can recon-struct the (still limited) range of opinions andthe rationales behind the individual rankings.

What can we conclude about the originalquestion? Unfortunately, very little. We haveonly the opinions of eight economists, whosethinking on these topics was already well-knownbefore the exercise and changed very little afterone week in Copenhagen. We are left with themere illusion of scientific consensus, an illusionwhich the editor obviously intended.

But there is a deeper issue. This work demon-strates how worldview or vision can shape theresults of purportedly objective analysis.Lomborg and the contributing authors share aworldview that has been called “technologicaloptimism” (Costanza, 2000). Technologicaloptimists assume that technical progress willsolve all current and future social problems.Humans and their dominion over nature willcontinue to expand without limits. This world-view does not see population growth and over-consumption, among other sustainability issues,as problems.

As the work of Diamond (2004), Meadowset al. (2004), and literally thousands of otherauthors have shown, the problem of sustainabil-ity is today’s core global problem. Will ourcompletely interconnected global society fallinto the same traps that led to Easter Island’scollapse? I hope not, but we cannot assumethese problems will be addressed, as Lomborgand associates do, by simply believing in thepower of technology.

Unfortunately, even the title of Lomborg’sbook is a sad sham: the authors do not believethat there are any truly global crises, only chal-lenges that a few tens of billions of dollars cansolve. They have done the world a grave disserv-ice by holding on to their unquestioned valuesand assumptions about the feasibility of unlim-ited economic growth. As demonstrated by thefate of the Easter Islanders, the Maya, theGreenland Norse, and several other historicalsocieties, clinging to maladaptive values in theface of mounting evidence to the contrarycould lead to collapse (Diamond, 2004). If weare to create a sustainable and desirable globalhuman society in the 21st century, we must notrepeat the same mistakes. This real global crisisrequires global solutions, but instead Lomborg’sbook only perpetrates past myths.

Notes

1. See www.maweb.org for more information onthe Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

2. It is interesting to note that while Lomborg feelsthat a small group of like-minded economists are the

The bookassumes thatthese challengesare indepen-dently solvableand thereforeable to beranked in asimple linearfashion.


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appropriate “experts” to consult on the best way tosolve global problems, he has no trouble dismissing thebroad and overwhelming scientific consensus reachedby experts on the biophysical aspects of environmentalissues (Lomborg, 2001).

References

Costanza, Robert. (2000). “Visions of alternative(unpredictable) futures and their use in policyanalysis.” Conservation Ecology 4(1), 5. Availableonline at http://www.consecol.org/vol4/iss1/art5

Diamond, Jared. (2004). Collapse: How societies chooseto fail or succeed. New York: Viking Press.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).(2001). Summary for policymakers: A report ofWorking Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change. Available online at

http://www.ipcc.ch/Lomborg, Bjørn. (2001). The skeptical environmental-

ist: Measuring the real state of the world. Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press.

Meadows, Donella, Jørgen Randers, & DennisMeadows. (2004). Limits to growth: The 30-yearupdate. Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green.

Ponting, Clive. (1991). A green history of the world: Theenvironment and the collapse of great civilizations.London: Sinclair-Stevenson.

Tainter, Joseph A. (1988). The collapse of complex soci-eties. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

World Commission on Environment andDevelopment. (1987). Our common future. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

Yoffee, Norman, & George L. Cowgill (Eds). (1988).The collapse of ancient states and civilizations.Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

No one can accuse Paige Whaley Eager of beingoverly nuanced. Starting with the title of herbook, Global Population Policy: From PopulationControl to Reproductive Rights, she confronts the

reader with absolutes. There has never been, ofcourse, a “global population policy,” nor canhumankind’s complex and diverse response topopulation and reproduction be easily separat-ed into two camps, population control andreproductive rights.

For Eager, the evolution of population policyhas been a tectonic battle between evil (“popula-tion controllers”) and good (the “GlobalWomen’s Health and Rights Movement” orGWHRM). Population controllers are whitemen, mostly American, who are hell-bent onreducing the rate of population growth for eco-nomic, political, and national security reasons.Until the Reagan Administration, these powerfulmen made population control the centerpiece ofU.S. foreign policy. They encouraged “govern-mental use of coercive methods” to compelwomen to use “unsafe contraceptives” (page 6).

Eager outlines the population controllers’other transgressions, the most egregious of

Global Population Policy: From Population Controlto Reproductive Rights Paige Whaley EagerAldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004. 234 pages.

Reviewed by DUFF GILLESPIE

Duff Gillespie, PhD., is a senior scholar

at the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute

for Population and Reproductive Health

at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of

Public Health. He is also a visiting pro-

fessor in the Department of Population

and Family Health Sciences. Previously,

Duff Gillespie served as senior deputy

assistant administrator for the Global

Health Bureau at USAID. He has worked

in the population and health field for 33

years and was the director of USAID’s

Office of Population for 7 years.

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which is their disregard for women, who theyview as little more than instruments for lower-ing the population growth rate. While there isno doubt that government family planning pro-grams have perpetrated serious human rightsabuses, Eager spends little time documentingthem. If she had, she would have found suchabuses to be the exception, not the rule, and cer-tainly not as pervasive as her book implies.

Arrayed against this monolithic cabal of pop-ulation controllers is the GWHRM, a constructEager never really explains. She does describe insome detail how various women’s groups, most-ly from the North, altered the policy landscapein fundamental ways. Their labors were reward-ed at the 1994 International Conference onPopulation and Development in Cairo, whereessentially all countries endorsed a more com-prehensive view of population that encompassesthe concepts of sexual and reproductive healthand rights (SRHR). Surprisingly, Eager spendsvery little time explaining SRHR but dwellsextensively on what it is not: population control.

Quite rightly, Eager states that such terms as“population control” have been largely ban-ished from official lexicons throughout theworld. This excision is more than symbolic;policies and government officials are generallymore sensitive to the rights and needs ofwomen. Indeed, Eager could make a strongercase for the GWHRM by documenting the sig-nificant policy changes since Cairo throughoutthe developing world, such as raising the age ofmarriage, liberalizing abortion and divorcelaws, and criminalizing or discouraging femalegenital cutting.

When polemists dichotomize complex sub-jects, their simplifications often distort reality.Eager is no exception: she gets many things—far too many to cover here—just plain wrong.One of her most egregious errors is her disdainfor the underlying rationale of “population con-trollers”: that rapid population growth impedessocio-economic development. Her derision isbased on her personal philosophy; she makes noattempt to refute this assumption analyticallyand appears unaware of the extensive literatureon population and development. If Eager had

consulted the masterful volume edited byBirdsall, Kelley, and Sinding (2001), she wouldhave learned that the importance of populationdynamics to development has never been aswell-documented as it is today. Most of whatthe “population controllers” have been sayingover the last three decades is actually true.

Eager’s biggest mistake is grossly overstatingthe influence of the United States in convincingthe developing world to decrease fertility rates.She is not only wrong, but also insulting. First,Eager tries to make the case that decreasing fer-tility is a core component of U.S. foreign assis-tance policy, which has never been the case.Uncomfortable realities that would call intoquestion her assumptions about the UnitedStates’ priorities are not presented or, perhaps,not known by the author. Eager feels theUnited States was particularly influential in the1970s; yet, the annual budget for populationprograms ranged between $120 million to $250million, and the total staff never exceeded 200people. This modest level of commitment hard-ly reflects a high priority.

Unintentionally, Eager’s portrayal of U.S.population controllers convincing or hood-winking developing-country governments intomounting efforts to reduce their fertility isdemeaning and wrong. For example, if the

There has never been, of course, a “globalpopulation policy,” nor can humankind’s complex and diverse response to populationand reproduction be easily separated intotwo camps, population control and reproduc-tive rights.


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author had even cursorily examined the litera-ture she would have discovered that Asiancountries incorporated fertility reduction intheir development plans before the UnitedStates even had a population program. It neverseemed to occur to her that these countries, andjust about every developing country today,might institute such policies and programsbecause they meet the needs and desires of theircitizens when carried out in ways that respectthose needs and desires.

References

Birdsall, Nancy, Allen C. Kelley, & Steven W. Sinding(Eds.). (2001). Population matters: Demographicchange, economic growth, and poverty in the develop-ing world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jain, Anrudh (Ed.). (1998). Do population policies mat-ter? Fertility and politics in Egypt, India, and Mexico.New York: The Population Council.

Mason, Andrew (Ed.). (2001) Population change and eco-nomic development in East Asia: Challenges met, oppor-tunities seized. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Integrated Water Resource Management(IWRM) suffers from a paucity of new knowl-edge, particularly in theoretical approaches.Very little of the last decade’s avalanche ofIWRM literature is groundbreaking or deeplyinsightful. The new angle on an age-old prob-lem outlined in Ken Conca’s Governing Water:Contentious Transnational Politics and GlobalInstitution Building is therefore a breath offresh air.

Governing Water is a hefty piece of work—457 pages—but its sheer size does not over-whelm the exquisite intellectual thread Concaexpertly weaves. This sincere attempt to openthe “black box” obscuring the governance oftransboundary rivers describes efforts to con-

quer water resources through “violent” acts,such as dam building and aggressive engineer-ing, and the counter-offensives against theseacts.

A Funny Thing Happened

Conca introduces the problematique of IWRMgovernance with an elegant analysis of theopening ceremony of the Second World WaterForum at The Hague in 2000. The slick andglitzy event was cleverly hijacked by a nakedwoman and a number of athletic young men,who abseiled from the rafters above the keynotespeaker’s head, unfurling banners protesting theconstruction of a large dam in Spain. This cun-ningly planned protest action is deeply symbol-ic of the underlying tensions in the global questto manage water. “A funny thing happened onthe way to the World Water Forum,” Concaobserves wittily:

The official report on the forum and min-isterial conference made no mention of thedisruptive incident or any other expres-

Governing Water: Contentious TransnationalPolitics and Global Institution BuildingKen ConcaCambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 457 pages.

Reviewed by ANTHONY R. TURTON

Anthony R. Turton holds the Gibb-SERA

Chair in Integrated Water Resource

Management at the Council for Scientific

and Industrial Research and the

University of Pretoria, South Africa.

E-mail: [email protected]

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sions of dissent throughout the meet-ing.…One motive for writing this book isto examine the stark disconnect betweenthe forum’s blueprint for forging a globalwater regime and the contentious politicssurrounding water all around the world.(page 2)

Conca lists a series of vexing questions.Whose water is it? Who should have the legiti-mate power to decide? What does it mean todescribe governments as sovereign and legitimatewhile also calling for private sector investment?What are the relationships among authority inthe watershed, boardroom, and nation-state? Isthere hope for a cooperative and broadly legiti-mate approach to water governance?

Shifting Focus

Having laid the foundation, Conca focuses onthe politics of global institution buildingaround local ecosystems, which he claims playthree fundamental roles:

• They transcend elements of scale; • They sustain local livelihoods and engender

vibrant cultures that become unique identi-fying labels in a globalized world; and

• Increasingly, they are subjects of the globaleconomic market, either as basic naturalresources or ecotourism goods and services.1

Conca seeks to understand the inadequacyof negotiated international agreements or“regimes,” which too often die on the negotiat-ing table or prove ineffective. In light of thisinadequacy, he shifts the focus from the regimeparadigm in two new directions:

• Away from the environmental problems thatneatly fit the regime solution towards thehidden, creeping, and cumulative impacts ofthe “assault on the global environment”; and

• Away from the substantive content of globalenvironmental cooperation towards the pro-cedural elements of environmental conflict.

Together, these new foci enable the reader tocritically examine the way we establish rulesthat “channel deeply divisive, contentiousdebates when a broad consensus on substancemay be unattainable” (page 6).

Pushing Rivers Around

Governing Water’s first seven chapters eachaddress an element of water governance, fol-lowed by two country case studies (Brazil andSouth Africa). Chapter 2 questions mainstreaminternational relations (IR) scholarship, whichdoes not seem to challenge the inherent flaws inchoosing regimes to regulate interstate inter-course. Although regimes are assumed to beproduced by bargaining, Conca argues thatthey actually take the form desired by the dom-inant coalition.2

Chapter 3, “Pushing Rivers Around,”describes the impact of a century of dam build-ing on southern Africa’s culture and ecosystems.Rivers mean different things to different actorsor stakeholders; they are spatial and temporallinks that cross a range of issues and scales fromthe local to the international. Recognizing this,Conca provides critical but sensitive insightsinto the complexity of river basin management.He plumbs society’s “hydraulic mission,” iden-tifying an emerging transnational network oftechnical experts who construct dams and relat-ed hydraulic infrastructure for multinationalfirms and global financial institutions. Concamakes a forceful case for shifting the focus ofour scholarly attention to the cumulativeimpact of these individual acts of ecosystemmodification.

Hydropolitical Theory

Chapter 4 provides excellent empirical insightsinto the emergence of a global regime on waterresource management, starting with three star-tling new facts, discovered largely by AaronWolf ’s Transboundary Freshwater DisputeDatabase (TFDD) team at Oregon StateUniversity:3


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• The number of international rivers hasincreased as more rivers are “international-ized” by changes in political geography afterthe Cold War;

• International river basins cover almost halfof the planet’s land area; and

• A part of almost all sovereign states is locatedin an international river basin.

This is compelling stuff, because the lack ofa theory of hydropolitics is IR’s black hole—ahole that Governing Water may begin to plug.While many intuitively believe that water is adriver of conflict, as asserted by the now largelydiscredited “water wars” literature (e.g., Irani,1991; Starr, 1991; Bulloch & Darwish, 1993;Gleick, 1994; de Villiers, 1999), Jesse Hamnerand Aaron Wolf (1997) have shown that waterresource management is more likely to catalyzecooperation than conflict between nation-states. According to their work, 145 interna-tional treaties on shared river basins have beengenerated since 1814 (Wolf et al., 2003). This islikely a gross underestimate, further strengthen-ing Conca’s argument (see, e.g., Turton et al.,2004, pages 387-389; Ashton et al., 2005).4

Significantly, Conca finds that the contentof basin-level accords has escaped seriousnotice, noting that “even if most of the world’sshared basins remain uncovered by internation-al accords, those for which accords are in placecould be converging on a set of norms forshared governance” (page 106). Empirical evi-dence tentatively shows convergence aroundsome core concepts—mostly procedural issues,such as sharing data and building confidence—but these are still framed in the polarizing lan-guage of sovereignty. Consequently, there is lit-tle evidence of a common normative structure.

Water Is a Social and an EconomicResource

Chapter 5 analyzes the emergence of a globalcommunity under the banner of IWRM.Caught in the tension between planning andmarketization, this global network is ambiva-lent toward the most fundamentally contested

issues in the water sector—the basic questionsConca poses (noted above)—leading to thenear-hegemony of the core logic of IWRM.However, challenges to this hegemony includethe nascent WISER (“Water Is a Social and anEconomic Resource”) discourse that seeks toelevate the social values of water (see Allan,2000, page 27).

Another challenge starting to raise its head(but not listed in Governing Water) disputes theassumption that the river basin is the naturalunit of management. The four most economi-cally developed countries in southern Africa—South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, andZimbabwe—are all reaching the limits of theirreadily available water and thus may face con-straints on their economic growth. However,this constraint is being effectively managed by acombined policy that uses interbasin transfersand moves water out of agriculture to theindustrial and services sectors, a softer approachheavily dependent on the existence of effectivegovernance structures.

The Real Water Wars

Chapter 6 unpacks the complex dynamics ofthe anti-dam lobby and the democratization ofwatershed management. Conca builds a case forthe real water wars—not between sovereignstates, but between sub-national groups. Anarray of state entities and other beneficiaries oflarge engineering projects are pitted againstopponents from the affected communities,aligned with sympathetic environmental andhuman rights NGOs. These disputes often flyunder the radar of international river diploma-cy, rendering the international regime a “bluntand limited instrument for responding to thistype of complex, multilayered struggle, for allthe reasons discussed in Chapter 2” (page 169).

Defining a bounded, finite, fixed “sovereign”territory is problematic when dealing with riversthat are fluid, dynamic, and complex. Concausefully notes that one way out of this corehydropolitical conundrum is to draw distinc-tions among transnational advocacy groups(grounded in information-based framing poli-

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tics), transnational coalitions (grounded in coor-dinated campaigns), and transnational socialmovements (grounded in joint mobilization),thus shifting the focus to assess norms evolvingaround notions of watershed democracy.

At the Second World Water Forum, IsmailSerageldin (then vice president of the WorldBank) asserted that two controversies stood inthe way of global progress towards a more sus-tainable water future: the debate over largedams, and a complex set of economic issuesrelating to property rights, privatization, waterexports, water pricing, and foreign investmentand ownership in the water sector. Whileunraveling this set of issues in Chapter 7,Conca discusses the implications for the sub-national water sector of the General Agreementon Trade in Services (GATS), which seeks toliberalize trade in services and ferret out regula-tions that restrain it. GATS thus opens upwater and sanitation services as possible targets,and consequently potential entry points, forforeign actors in a traditionally national sphere.This whole new arena for hydropolitical inter-action is mostly unknown to water resourcemanagers and professionals, particularly in thedeveloping world.

Brazil and South Africa: CaseStudies

Brazil and South Africa are central players inthe global debate surrounding water and rivers;both countries have important transboundaryriver basins and strong social movementsprotesting large dams and the privatization ofwater. Much of the water in Brazil, which is asignatory to 15 international water agreements,is the subject of active and violent dispute. Yet,despite these enduring conflicts, governance ofwater and aquatic ecosystems in Brazil isincreasingly institutionalized around a sharedunderstanding of roles and rules.

The complex case of South Africa is seldomfully understood by foreign writers. Conca doesan exceptionally good job, however, of tracingthe golden thread of water and political contes-tation in the country. Post-apartheid South

African water law, policy, and practice is moretechnocratic and less participatory than Brazil’s.In addition, South Africa’s desire to be a goodriparian neighbor has shaped water governance.Water marketization and associated issues aremore controversial in South Africa, but Brazilhas witnessed greater resistance to water infra-structure projects. These conclusions demon-strate the great value that serious empiricalstudies can offer to the discipline of hydropoli-tics and IR theory.

Conclusion

Four important forces—international law, neo-liberal structural adjustment, elite networkingamong water resource professionals, andtransnational activism for the rights of localcommunities—are pushing and pulling water-related policies, laws, and practices in differentdirections. Each force is thoroughly transna-tional and sufficiently embedded in interna-tional intercourse to govern and influence glob-al practice, but none has yet generated a domi-nant framework for governing watershed prac-tices at the local level. Therefore, if watershedgovernance is being normalized across nationalboundaries, it is taking place at the intersectionof these various forces. Consequently, weshould not assume that international environ-

Four important forces—international law, neo-liberal structural adjustment, elite networkingamong water resource professionals, andtransnational activism for the rights of localcommunities—are pushing and pulling water-related policies, laws, and practices in differentdirections.


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mental agreements are the best—or indeed theonly—ways to govern rivers and aquatic ecosys-tems that cross international political borders.

In conclusion, Conca’s well-written andthought-provoking Governing Water: ContentiousTransnational Politics and Global InstitutionBuilding is a serious book. It fills major gapsin IR theory, IWRM literature, and the disci-pline of environmental security, and itinforms water resource managers of the impli-cations of GATS. It demonstrates the realvalue of empirical research, taking its placealongside the paradigm-busting work led byAaron Wolf at Oregon State University, PeterAshton at the Council for Scientific andIndustrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa,Tony Allan at the Water Issues Group inLondon, and Nils Petter Gleditsch at theInternational Peace Research Institute inOslo. Conca’s work should be read by univer-sity students, water sector professionals, andIR scholars alike, and I sincerely believe that itwill play a substantial role in placing the disci-pline of hydropolitics firmly on the IRresearch agenda.

Notes

1. These three roles resonate with a current initia-tive by the Universities Partnership forTransboundary Waters (UPTW) to understand gov-ernance of water and aquatic ecosystems as the mani-festation of a “trialogue,” which is a specialized formof dialogue among government, science, and society.In conjunction with Group on Development Issues(EGDI) at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs,the Swedish Water House, and UNESCO, UPTWhosted a special session at the Stockholm WorldWater Week 2005. Following a second workshop inOctober 2005, the trialogue governance model willbe published in a textbook and a special edited vol-ume of Water Policy, the scientific journal of theWorld Water Council.

2. This echoes research by Tony Allan and his teamof graduate students at the School of Oriental andAfrican Studies and Kings College London into what

they are calling “hydro-hegemony.”3. For more information, see http://www.trans-

boundarywaters.orst.edu/4. Table 9.1 in Turton et al. (2004) identifies 30

international water agreements to which South Africais a signatory, 20 of which are not listed in the Atlas ofInternational Freshwater Agreements (United NationsEnvironment Programme, 2002). Ashton et al. (2005)has identified 59, but not all of these are limited toriver basin management.

References

Allan, J.A. (2000). The Middle East water question:Hydropolitics and the global economy. London: I.B.Tauris.

Ashton, P.J., Anton Earle, D. Malzbender, B. Moloi,M.J. Patrick, & Anthony R. Turton. (2005).Compilation of all the international freshwater agree-ments entered into by South Africa with other states(Final Water Research Commission Report forProject No. K5/1515). Pretoria, South Africa:Water Research Commission (WRC).

Bulloch, John, & Adel Darwish. (Eds.). (1993). Waterwars: Coming conflicts in the Middle East. London:Victor Gollancz.

de Villiers, Marq. (1999). Water wars: Is the world’swater running out? London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Gleick, Peter. (1994). “Water wars and peace in theMiddle East.” Policy Analysis 36 (4).

Hamner, Jesse, & Wolf, Aaron T. (1997). “Patterns ininternational water resource treaties: TheTransboundary Freshwater Dispute Database.”Colorado Journal of International EnvironmentalLaw and Policy (1997 Yearbook).

Irani, Rustom. (1991). “Water wars.” New Statesman& Society 4(149), 24-25.

Starr, Joyce R. (1991). “Water wars.” Foreign Policy 82,17-36.

Turton, Anthony R., R. Meissner, P.M. Mampane, &O. Seremo. (2004). A hydropolitical history of SouthAfrica’s international river basins (Report No.1220/1/04). Pretoria, South Africa: WRC.

United Nations Environment Programme (withOregon State University & the Food andAgriculture Organization). (2002). Atlas of interna-tional freshwater agreements. Nairobi: UnitedNations Environment Program.

Wolf, Aaron T., Shira B. Yoffe, & Marc Giordano.(2003). “International waters: Identifying basins atrisk.” Water Policy 5(1), 29-60.

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Since 2000, the international policymakingcommunity has discussed HIV/AIDS in thecontext of national and international security.HIV and National Security: Where Are the Links?by Laurie Garrett of the Council on ForeignRelations summarizes the state of the argumentand examines the research linking HIV/AIDSto security.1

Garrett treads familiar ground, detailing therisks posed by high HIV prevalence in mili-taries, infection rates among UN peacekeepers,the impact of AIDS orphans, demographictrends such as “youth bulges” and urbanization,and the connections to economic security.Despite the lack of groundbreaking informa-tion, Garrett is careful to outline the real chal-lenges facing assessments of AIDS’ threat tonational and international security. One inter-esting chapter calls for more funding toimprove tracking of virus types and mutations,outlining the real benefits to the internationalcommunity. Policy reports rarely delve into thescience of the disease, and Garrett’s argumentfor improved tracking is convincing.

Interestingly, Garrett chooses to begin thebody of the report by comparing HIV/AIDSto another great killer, the Black Plague,which ravaged Europe in the 13th, 14th, and15th centuries, wiping out two-thirds of thepopulation and bringing sweeping social,political, and economic changes in its wake.Though the case of the Black Plague illus-trates the way a disease can engender wide-spread social change, it is unclear exactly whatpolicymakers should take away from this les-son. Most historians would argue that thelong-term impacts of the Black Plague led tothe end of feudalism and the eventual rise ofdemocracy in Europe. Garrett could have bet-

ter spent the space by citing specific examplesof successful initiatives or projects—interna-tional, national, and local—that could miti-gate the impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Despite this one problem, Garrett endsstrongly with six key recommendations for pol-icymakers, including:

• Develop strategies for preventing the emer-gence of drug-resistant HIV strains;

• Develop HIV-prevention programs aimedspecifically at uniformed personnel;

• Use viral genetic fingerprinting to track thespread of HIV;

• Fund long-term longitudinal studies onpopulation cohorts to study the social, polit-ical, and economic impact of the AIDS epi-demic;

• Develop an HIV vaccine; and• Develop strategies to provide HIV treatment

for all sufferers, not only the elite.

HIV and National Security is most useful forthose interested in a review of the current litera-ture linking AIDS to security issues. It is a con-cise, well-written, and useful addition to the lit-erature on this important connection.

Notes

1. A pdf copy of the report can be downloadedfrom the Council on Foreign Relations website, athttp://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attach-ments/HIV_National_Security.pdf

HIV and National Security: Where Are the Links?Laurie GarrettNew York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2005. 67 pages.

Reviewed by JENNIFER WISNEWSKI KACZOR

Jennifer Wisnewski Kaczor is a program

associate for the Environmental Change

and Security Program.


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Fresh water—its availability, distribution, andcontrol—has been woven into the fabric ofhuman settlement and development at leastsince the Neolithic Revolution. Not only neces-sary for daily survival, water is an essential partof our economy, society, and ecology. But thismuch-needed resource is distributed acrossspace and time in a highly dispersed and vari-able pattern. Not only do large parts of theglobe contend with general water scarcity, theyalso suffer fluctuations in supply.

In reaction to this natural climatic variability,people have tried to secure their water supplies

in dry times, storing water in reservoirs or trans-ferring it from water-rich areas. The path towardhydro-security invariably crosses the tracks ofpower—be it political, economic, or military.Powerful countries can appropriate a greatershare of water resources, while powerful groupswithin countries can mobilize resources in theirfavor. Large-scale infrastructure developmentcan provide many benefits, but the costs affectdifferent groups in unequal measures. On aninternational scale, these power inequalities havesparked debate about the likelihood of “waterwars.” Especially in the world’s arid zones, suchas the Middle East and southern Africa, somepredict that the wars of the future will be foughtto secure scarce water resources for growing pop-ulations—although none have to date (Wolf etal., 2003). On a local level increased waterdemand, especially due to urbanization andindustrialization, pits rural communitiesdependent on agriculture against the supportersof large dam-building projects.

Dams and Development

In Dams and Development: TransnationalStruggles for Water and Power, Sanjeev Khagramdescribes the rising opposition to large-scaledam-building projects in the developing world.According to Khagram, the traditional model ofdevelopment seeks mainly to enlarge GDPthrough large-scale, top-down technocratic

Dams and Development: Transnational Strugglesfor Water and Power By Sanjeev KhagramIthaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. 270 pages.

Identity, Conflict and Cooperation in InternationalRiver Systems By Jack KalpakianAldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004. 213 pages.

Reviewed by ANTON EARLE

Anton Earle is the deputy head of the

African Water Issues Research Unit,

based at the University of Pretoria,

South Africa. He conducts applied

research into southern African water

management issues, with a specific

focus on transboundary water manage-

ment. As a member of the Regional

Technical Committee of the Global

Water Partnership-Southern Africa, he

facilitates research and capacity-building

initiatives on transboundary water man-

agement issues in the Okavango,

Limpopo, Orange-Senqu, and Incomati

river basins.

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methods of exploiting natural resources. Thealternative vision of development is based on“bottom-up participatory processes directedtowards socially just and ecologically sustain-able outcomes,” which is gaining more interna-tional acceptance (page 4). He contends thatthe conflicts associated with competitionbetween these two modes of development havebeen most vividly displayed in the transnationalopposition to large-dam projects.

Khagram identifies three important prereq-uisites for ensuring effective opposition tolarge-dam projects:

• Global norms and principles regardinghuman rights, indigenous peoples, and theenvironment, among others, must convergein international anti-dam pressure groups;

• Local opposition to large-dam projects mustlink up with international pressure groups tobe effective; and

• The political environment must be open anddemocratic, upholding civil liberties such asfreedom of the press, equality before the law,and freedom of association.

Khagram investigates case studies from sixdeveloping countries with different degrees oflocal opposition to large dams—India, Brazil,Indonesia, South Africa, Lesotho, and China—but half the book is devoted to India’s NarmadaRiver project. Initial local resistance efforts inthe 1950s were unsuccessful; only after localgroups began working with internationalgroups did they stop the largest components ofthe project. By making international donors,such as the World Bank, aware of the project’snegative social and environmental impacts, theopposition swung opinion their way.Intuitively, one would expect this nonviolentapproach to be more successful in the land ofMahatma Gandhi than in Indonesia or China.

Surprisingly, social resistance to large damsmanaged to flourish in Brazil, even during themilitary rule of 1964–1985. The WorldCommission on Dams (WCD), of whichKhagram was a member, ranks Brazil as one ofthe top 10 big-dam builders in the world

(WCD, 2000). Since the 1950s, successive gov-ernments developed plans for large-scale waterstorage, water transfer, and hydropowerschemes. By the mid-1980s, anti-dam groupshad managed to mobilize around issues such asnative rights, displacement processes, compen-sation packages, and environmental concerns,in conjunction with international movements.Most of the projects were abandoned as costsspiraled, driven by the social and environmentalprovisions required for construction and opera-tion. Brazil’s debt crisis in the 1980s reducedpublic funding for big-dam projects, but theefforts of social opposition movements prevent-ed the country from borrowing money from theWorld Bank and other donors to fill the gap.

A rapidly industrializing arid country, SouthAfrica is also ranked among the top 10 large-dam builders by the WCD. Khagram hypothe-sizes that the Lesotho Highlands Water Project,which sought to transfer water from SouthAfrica’s neighbor, moved ahead in 1986 andcompleted its first phase in 2002 due to a lackof domestic social resistance to the project.Khagram does not tell us, however, whether

The cases show that countries’ actions aremore likely to be informed by nationalidentity issues than by hydrologic realities.Thus, Sudan chooses to side with Egypt inthe management of the Nile River, eventhough it could gain more by siding withother riparians. The common culture andreligion shared by the countries’ ruling elitesexert greater influence than hydrology.


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people in the region supported the project orwhether resistance faded in the face of politicalturbulence in the early 1990s. Certainly, therate of big-dam building in South Africa hasdropped markedly over the past decade, but isthis due to social mobilization against dams orbecause all the prime sites are in use? This ques-tion could also be posed about Brazil and India.

While Dams and Development provides awealth of detailed information on internationalopposition to big-dam building in the develop-ing world, it focuses too much on India’sNarmada Valley. The reader is caught up in theminutiae of protest marches, meetings, and courtcases. Coupled with the large number ofacronyms and mixture of metric and imperialmeasurement units (e.g., acre-feet coexist withcubic meters), the book is cumbersome to read.However, these problems should not detractfrom its solid contribution to the scientific litera-ture—they just require the reader’s perseverance.

Identity, Conflict and Cooperationin International River Systems

In Identity, Conflict and Cooperation inInternational River Systems, Jack Kalpakian setsout to correct the emphasis on water conflict ininternational relations literature. For a bookthat grew out of a Ph.D. dissertation, it readssurprisingly well, reviewing literature on inter-national river management and using three casestudies to illustrate the de-coupling of water as adirect driver of conflict. The author disprovesthe hypothesis that water disputes lead to seri-ous conflicts between states, but he fails to con-vince us when he refers to this as “a completelyunforeseen result” (page 2).

Kalpakian’s literature review focuses on theRealist and post-Realist schools of internationalrelations, with an emphasis on writers such asThomas Homer-Dixon (1995a, 1995b),Thomas Naff (1993), and Nurit Kliot (1994),all broadly in the “water wars” camp. Althoughhe notes that water disputes do not cause inter-state conflicts—instead, he says they are “sec-ondary fora for conflicts rooted in nationalidentity questions” (page 7)—he does not men-

tion the research conducted by Aaron Wolf(1998; Wolf et al., 2003), Anthony Allan(1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2000, 2002), andAnthony Turton (2003; Turton & Earle, 2005),which promotes this alternative school ofthought. In other words, issues of nationalidentity and views of co-riparian states are morelikely sources of conflict than water. The omis-sion of the work by Wolf, Allan, and Turton onthis view detracts from the book and is a sur-prising oversight.

The strength of Identity, Conflict andCooperation lies in its comprehensively researchedcase studies of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, andIndus rivers, which include a wealth of data onhydrology, water use, and socio-economic condi-tions in the basin states. In all three cases, data arecontested—the basin states do not agree on evenbasic facts such as the extent and size of catch-ments. The cases show that countries’ actions aremore likely to be informed by national identityissues than by hydrologic realities. Thus, Sudanchooses to side with Egypt in the management ofthe Nile River, even though it could gain more bysiding with other riparians. The common cultureand religion shared by the countries’ ruling elitesexert greater influence than hydrology.Consequently, the state “is becoming less and lessof an independent actor in InternationalRelations” (page 84).

Disputes over the allocation of water fromthe Tigris-Euphrates will only end once theunderlying identity clash is resolved, whichdates to World War I and the animositybetween Turkey and its Arab neighbors arisingfrom the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Syria’sintermittent support of Kurdish separatistmovements in Turkey also destabilizes the rela-tionship. “Identity tends to be both the organiz-ing criteria and cause of conflict. It is rooted inthe language of exclusion and inclusion ofgroups into or out of the respective nationalgoverning communities of the states involved”(page 140).

The 1960 agreement between Indian PrimeMinister Jawaharlal Nehru and PakistaniPresident Field Marshall Ayub Khan resolvedissues of water allocation, financing, and adju-

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dication on the Indus River. Unfortunately,this functional cooperation—even at a politi-cal level—has not spilled over into generalrelations between the two countries. Threewars (1947, 1965, and 1971) have been foughtbetween the states, the first two over Kashmirand the last on the partitioning of Bangladesh.Much of the rest of the basin (e.g., Afghanistanand Nepal) also lacks peace and stability. Thusthe hydrologic interdependence between Indiaand Pakistan, although leading to cooperationover water resources, has not led to peace inthe region. The reader is left to wonder if agreater degree of water stress would contributeto the hostility between the states—a signifi-cant omission from an otherwise illuminatingcase study.

Dams and Development and Identity, Conflictand Cooperation are solid contributions to ourunderstanding of the nexus of water, power,and conflict, at the interstate as well as domesticlevel. Both books have their limitations—suchas a lack of maps illustrating the case studies—and could have used a good editor to improvethe readability of the first and correct the sec-ond’s many spelling and grammatical errors.But these problems do not detract from thebooks’ overall usefulness to the study of waterconflict and cooperation.

References

Allan, J.A. (1998a). “‘Virtual water’: An essential ele-ment in stabilizing the political economies of theMiddle East.” Yale University Forestry &Environmental Studies Bulletin 103, 141-149.

Allan, J.A. (1998b). “Virtual water: A strategicresource: Global solutions to regional deficits.”Ground Water 36(4), 545-546.

Allan, J.A. (1999). “Avoiding war over naturalresources.” In S. Fleming (Ed.), War and water.Geneva: ICRC Publication Division.

Allan, J.A. (2000). The Middle East water question:

Hydropolitics and the global economy. London: IBTauris.

Allan, J.A. (2002). “Water resources in semi-aridregions: Real deficits and economically invisibleand politically silent solutions.” In Anthony R.Turton & Roland Henwood (Eds.), Hydropolitics inthe developing world: A Southern African perspective(pages 23-36). Pretoria, South Africa: AfricanWater Issues Research Unit (AWIRU).

Homer-Dixon, Thomas. (1995a). “Environmentalscarcities and violent conflict.” In Sean Lynn-Jones& Steven E. Miller (Eds.), Global dangers (pages144-182). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas. (1995b). “On the threshold.”In Sean Lynn-Jones & Steven E. Miller (Eds.),Global dangers (pages 43-83). Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.

Kliot, Nurit. (1994). Water resources and conflict in theMiddle East. New York: Routledge.

Naff, Thomas. (1993). “Conflict and water use in theMiddle East.” In Peter Rogers & Peter Lydon(Eds.), Water in the Arab world: Perspectives andprognosis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Turton, Anthony R. (2003). “The hydropoliticaldynamics of cooperation in Southern Africa: Astrategic perspective on institutional developmentin international river basins.” In Anthony R.Turton, Peter Ashton, & T.E. Cloete (Eds.),Transboundary rivers, sovereignty, and development:Hydropolitical drivers in the Okavango River Basin(pages 83-103). Pretoria & Geneva: AWIRU &Green Cross International.

Turton, Anthony R., & Anton Earle. (2005). “Post-apartheid institutional development in selectedSouthern African international river basins.” In C.Gopalakrishnan, C. Tortajada, & A.K. Biswas(Eds.), Water resources management - Structure, evo-lution and performance of water institutions (pages154-168). Heidelberg: Springer.

World Commission on Dams (WCD). (2000). Damsand development: A new framework for decision-making. London: Earthscan.

Wolf, Aaron T. (1998). “Conflict and cooperationalong international waterways.” Water Policy 1(2),51–65.

Wolf, Aaron T., Shira B. Yoffe, & Marc Giordano.(2003). “International waters: Identifying basins atrisk.” Water Policy 5, 29–60.


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The Journal of Peace Research (JPR) can alwaysbe relied upon to deliver an interesting, rele-vant, high-quality product. This special issue,tackling the relationship between demographyand conflict, lives up to JPR’s reputation.1

In recent years, the prominence of conflictand demography has grown. In the aftermath ofthe Cold War, international wars have almostdisappeared. Domestic strife has also waned. Allforms of civil war—e.g., ideological, revolu-tionary—have declined, save one: ethnopoliti-cal conflict. The vast majority of civil conflictsnow involve issues of language, culture, andespecially religion. Since 3,000 of the world’sestimated 5,000 ethnic groups are located inAsia and another 1,800 in Africa, it is no sur-prise that these two continents have emerged asthe world’s main internecine flashpoints.

These two continents are also of particularinterest to demographers. On no continent isthe population expected to burgeon in the 21stcentury as in Africa. AIDS notwithstanding (70percent of those infected with the virus live inAfrica), the continent’s population is projected

to grow 50 percent by 2050. Similarly, manyAsian states, especially the arc of Muslim coun-tries stretching from Egypt through Indonesia,will continue to be subject to considerable—albeit differentiated—pressures owing to theirgrowing populations.

Demographic composition and demograph-ic change are never a cause of conflict or vio-lence, per se. Researchers tends to ask questionsabout contingency instead: what impact, if any,might a population’s composition have onpolitical stability? To what extent does relativedeprivation factor into the relationship betweendemographic change and conflict? Is the com-petition for scarce natural resources, such aswater, a growing problem? And how doesmigration affect population dynamics withinand between population groups?

Two of the JPR articles address relative dep-rivation. Marie Besançon examines the relation-ship between economic inequality and politicalconflict. Using aggregate regression-type statis-tical analysis with data from the State FailureTask Force,2 she arrives at the counterintuitive(and thus all the more important) conclusionthat economic inequality is not a predictor ofgenocide. Her analysis also finds ethnic conflictto be more likely when groups are economicallyequal; improving a group’s economic staturewithout also addressing political and socialgrievances actually increases the propensity forconflict. Unfortunately, Besançon’s investiga-tion does not tell us whether political and socialgrievances are occasioned by improved econom-ic conditions, nor whether the potential forconflict can be mitigated if political and socialgrievances are addressed without improving theequality of condition.

Journal of Peace Research: Special Issue on theDemography of Conflict and ViolenceHenrik Urdal and Helge Brunborg (Eds.)Volume 42, No. 4, July 2005.

Reviewed by CHRISTIAN LEUPRECHT

Christian Leuprecht is assistant professor

of political science at the Royal Military

College of Canada. He is cross-appoint-

ed to the Department of Political Studies

at Queen’s University, a research associ-

ate at the Institute of Intergovernmental

Relations in the School of Policy Studies

at Queen’s University, and a fellow of the

Queen’s Centre for International

Relations.

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Helen Ware compares the determinants ofconflict in Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia.The article is worth reading for the wealth ofexperience she brings as a long-time Australiandiplomat. In her conclusion, she negates theneo-Malthusian claim that population pres-sures on land and natural resources precipitateconflict. The second part of the conclusion,however, unfortunately posits, as an alternativeexplanation, the popular myth that “idle handsmake work for the devil.” Of course, there aremany peaceful places in the world with aplethora of unemployed young men.Therefore, what other variables intervene inthe particular case of Oceania? Had theauthor’s research addressed this question, thearticle’s contribution to the literature wouldhave been considerably more germane.

Henrik Urdal—who co-edited this specialissue with statistician Helge Brunborg—alsoquestions the neo-Malthusian proposition. Hisstatistical contribution finds that populationpressure on natural resources is not a determi-nant of a state’s security or its political stability.Countries with rapidly growing populations,high rates of urbanization, or large refugee pop-ulations do not face a disproportionate risk ofcivil war.

Urdal’s finding, however, contrasts to somedegree with Manus Midlarsky’s analysis ofgenocide. Comparing pogroms committedagainst European Jews, Midlarsky infers thatgenocide is more likely when loss of territory iscompounded by an influx of refugees. Still,Urdal’s and Midlarsky’s findings are commensu-rate insofar as they suggest that the environ-mental pressures and competition that mightensue from less land and more people are not toblame for any conflict that might arise.

Also on the topic of refugees, StephenLubkemann’s ethnographic research inMozambique leads him to caution against gen-eralizing about the cause of forced migration ina given conflict. His research confirms otherfindings (e.g., Sambanis, 2001) that show thatthe same macro-conflict may have different log-ics of violence at the local level. It follows thataddressing the problem of displaced persons

during a conflict necessitates a multipronged,micro-approach to conflict resolution.

John Landers asks whether the advent offirearms had a measurable demographicimpact on warfare in Europe. From his com-parative historical analysis, he concludes thatthe demographic impact was a function of thestrategies adopted by rulers rather than of thegrowing scale and cost of warfare. His carefulresearch contrasts starkly with the banality ofQuan Li and Ming Wen’s behavioralist preten-sions. Under the positivist guise of substitut-ing sophisticated mathematical techniques forsubstantive depth, they arrive at the perfectlyintuitive conclusion that more severe conflictslead to greater loss of life. Their article’sredeeming qualities, such as its focus on thegender differences in mortality rates in theimmediate and long-term aftermath of violentconflict, are compromised by its blind faith inweak mathematical relationships. Had Li andWen struck a better balance between pedestri-an use of statistical methods and understand-ing the literature, they would have realizedthat the relationship between degree of con-flict and loss of life has already been amplydocumented and is thus hardly novel.

In the grand scheme of things, however, theresearch in this special issue makes several ger-mane contributions to the literature on thedemography of conflict and violence. First, itcomplements a body of research that challengesneo-Malthusians to advance more nuancedclaims. Second, violent causes and conse-quences of migration warrant our attention ifwe are to resolve or avert future conflict. Third,the mass destruction of human life is due less toadvanced weaponry than light arms under thecontrol of instrumentalist elites. Fourth, weshould pay more attention to political andsocial grievances and put less emphasis onimproving socio-economic well-being. Thus,environmental sustainability and relative-depri-vation policies are more likely to reduce the riskof conflict and violence if they are linked tosocio-political improvement.

The seven articles in this edition of JPR pro-vide a good overview of many of the key

Environmentalsustainability andrelative-depriva-tion policies aremore likely toreduce the risk ofconflict andviolence if theyare linked tosocio-politicalimprovement.


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debates on the relationship between demogra-phy and conflict. The edition is refreshinglyinterdisciplinary, spanning political science, his-tory, anthropology, statistics, international rela-tions, and foreign policy. The methodologicalpluralism is notable: quantitative and statisticalwork is balanced by qualitative and comparativeapproaches, as well as an impressive ethno-graphic case study. Senior scholars are joined bysome very talented young scholars. The heavilygendered field of conflict studies notwithstand-ing, three of the seven articles are authored bywomen. The authors come from four conti-nents and the research and data cover just aboutevery corner of the globe. They hone in on dif-ferent eras and investigate diverse types of con-flict and violence. In other words, this even-handed volume unequivocally does justice tothe topic in every conceivable way. And finally,the journal tops it all off with an excellent criti-

cal review of the most recent literature on therelationship between demography and conflict.

Notes

1. The special issue emerged from a conference onthe demography of conflict and violence sponsored bythe International Union for Scientific Study ofPopulation and the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, heldin Norway in 2003. The European Journal of Population(2005, Volume 21, Issues 2-3) has published a set ofadditional articles emerging from the conference that willbe of greater interest to strict demographers.

2. Now known as the Political Instability TaskForce; see http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/

References

Sambanis, Nicholas. (2001, June). “Do ethnic andnon-ethnic civil wars have the same causes? A theo-retical and empirical inquiry (Part 1).” Journal ofConflict Resolution 45(3), 259-82.

As oil prices rise, turmoil in Iraq continues,and the United States, China, and others jock-ey for access to oil and gas resources, energyissues are once more climbing to the top of theglobal agenda. But if journalist and educatorRichard Heinberg is correct, these concerns are

only a foretaste of far more fundamentalupheavals to come.

According to Heinberg’s latest book, TheParty’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of IndustrialSocieties, industrial civilization as we know it—predicated on the consumption of cheap, butfinite, reserves of fossil fuels—is drawing to aclose, as oil production will soon peak and thenbegin a slow but inexorable decline. As it declines,competition for remaining energy resources willgrow, prices will rise, countries will undergowrenching economic and political changes, andthe global human carrying capacity will plummet.

Mainstream energy analysts project theworld’s demand for oil will grow endlessly—

The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate ofIndustrial SocietiesRichard HeinbergGabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2003. 274 pages.

Reviewed by Michael Renner

Michael Renner is a senior researcher at

the Worldwatch Institute, where he

directs the Global Security Project. His

main research interest concerns the

intersection between resources, environ-

ment, and peace and conflict issues.

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the typical scenario foresees a 50 percentexpansion in the next 20 years—but how willthat rising demand be satisfied? Heinbergpoints out that the rate of global oil discoveriespeaked in the 1960s and that consumption faroutpaces today’s new discoveries. Moreover, theamount of energy required to find additionaldeposits keeps increasing, as the easily-extract-ed deposits are drained, thus squeezing theamount of “net energy” available to society. Inthe United States, for instance, the amount ofenergy extracted relative to the energy expend-ed to find and extract oil fell from 28:1 in 1916to 2:1 in 1985, and continues to drop.

Pioneered by petroleum geologist M. KingHubbert (1969), the concept of “peak oil” waslong derided or ignored. According to Hubbert,any given oil field will reach its production peakwhen roughly half of the total oil in the reser-voir has been extracted, followed by a steadydecline in output. In the 1950s, Hubbert cor-rectly predicted that U.S. oil production wouldpeak between 1966 and 1972; the actual peakoccurred in 1970.

While U.S. reserves have been largely deplet-ed, conventional wisdom suggests that suppliesfrom other regions of the world will remainabundant. But even in oil-rich Saudi Arabia keyfields may be past their prime, limiting thecountry’s ability to satisfy rising demand. TheSaudis angrily deny such assertions, but havenever refuted them with concrete evidence tothe contrary.

The literature on this previously near-taboosubject is growing fast, but not surprisingly,there is no consensus on when oil productionmight peak globally. The U.S. Department ofEnergy (1998) expects the peak to occur nearthe middle of this century; Heinberg contendsthat it will occur much earlier—some timebetween 2006 and 2015.

But pinpointing when the peak will happen isless important than understanding its likely con-sequences and preparing for the post-peak peri-od—and, ultimately, life after oil. Acknowledg-ing that forecasts are necessarily speculative,Heinberg offers a range of equally pessimisticand unpalatable predictions for the post-petrole-

um age—in his own words, a “century ofimpending famine, disease, economic collapse,despotism, and resource wars” (page 199).

The end of cheap and plentiful energy willcause the world economy to sputter, producingfewer goods and services, fewer jobs, and afinancial crisis. Fewer cars will be built, andonly the wealthy will be able to afford them.Road building will grind to a halt and existingroads will gradually disintegrate. Air travel willbecome prohibitively expensive. Withoutabundant transportation fuels, businesses willreturn to local production for local consump-tion—globalization in reverse. And agriculturewill support far smaller populations: “The agri-cultural miracle of the 20th century maybecome the agricultural apocalypse of the 21st”(page 177).

Of equal importance are the likely social andpolitical impacts, greatly exacerbating eventoday’s grotesque inequalities and triggeringmore intense struggles between empowered anddisempowered groups, as well as intergenera-tional conflict. Coming decades will likely seemore frequent and deadly conflicts over fadingenergy supplies. Heinberg predicts that thesescarcities and pressures “will likely place evergreater stress on the already battered democrat-ic ideals of industrial societies” (page 188). Heis skeptical that large nation-states as we knowthem will hold together under such conditions,and he foresees the emergence of regionalenclaves—which could be either democratic orauthoritarian—in their place.

The era of cheap oil may have been a prom-ised land for those—mostly the inhabitants ofWestern countries—who benefited from theflow of “black gold.” But for many others, par-ticularly the inhabitants of poor oil-producingcountries, oil is more aptly described as the“devil’s tears.” A growing literature has focusedon the downside of oil development. For exam-ple, in Oil: Politics, Poverty, and the Planet,Financial Times journalist Toby Shelley (2005)summarizes the social and economic distortionsthat have afflicted so many oil-producing coun-tries, including growing poverty and inequality,the inability to develop a vibrant economy out-

Environmentalsustainability andrelative-depriva-tion policies aremore likely toreduce the risk ofconflict andviolence if theyare linked tosocio-politicalimprovement.


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side the oil sector, massive corruption andpatronage, and civil conflict.

The oil-related wars of the past and presenthave been essentially fought to divide the spoils.In the future, conflicts are more likely to arise tosecure dwindling supplies, particularly as risingeconomic powers such as China and India joinEurope, North America, and Japan in theirvoracious appetite for energy.

What about alternatives to oil? Oil is a partic-ularly valuable commodity because it is easilytransported, energy-dense, and suitable formany types of uses—and thus difficult toreplace. Natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy areno saviors in Heinberg’s judgment. Each comeswith its own set of problems, including pollu-tion, vexing—and perhaps irresolvable—wastedisposal problems, dangers to human health,and declining net energy yield. These are validobservations, yet societies may pursue theseoptions anyway, because industries are addictedto endless growth, irrespective of the costs.

Heinberg also throws cold water on environ-mentalists’ sometimes cozy assumptions.Though he is in favor of pursuing wind andsolar power, he cautions that it will take decadesto fully develop them. Even then, electricitycannot easily provide the fuel needs of trans-portation and agriculture. “A Golden Age ofplentiful energy from renewable sources is sim-ply not in the cards,” he says (page 4).

Could fuel cells and a hydrogen economycome to the rescue? Heinberg agrees there arereasons to be hopeful, but he scorns boostersthat “occasionally exhibit a techno-utopianismof almost messianic intensity” (page 147). Hewarns that the transition to a hydrogen energyinfrastructure would require huge amounts oftime and money, and that hydrogen productionalways uses more energy than the resultinghydrogen will yield. And dwindling natural gassupplies will soon force decision-makers todecide whether the transition to a hydrogeneconomy or heating people’s homes shouldreceive priority.

Heinberg is careful to note that he is notarguing that we abandon the development of

such alternatives—quite the contrary. But heemphasizes that the transition to a new energysystem will entail an almost complete redesignof industrial societies and wrenching adjust-ments toward a “less mobile, more localized, andmore materially modest society.” He warns that“it is misleading to think that we can achievethat result easily or painlessly” (page 165).

The choice is not whether, but how toreduce energy use, and how to deliberately, sys-tematically simplify society’s structures: “grace-fully and peacefully… or petulantly and vio-lently” (page 230). Heinberg refers to this as a“managed collapse,” as opposed to a suddenand chaotic disintegration. He does not offer(or claim to offer) novel solutions. But hisprovocative book is a wake-up call rousing usfrom our abundance-induced complacency.One does not have to share all of the author’spessimistic prognostications to agree that weurgently need fundamental changes in policy.

The political obstacles are enormous, andHeinberg acknowledges that “the vast majorityof people will continue to prefer happy illu-sions to the stark truth,” voting for candidatesand parties that promise a rosy future (page200). He laments lost opportunities forlaunching a transition during the past threedecades. While it is now too late for a com-pletely painless transition, Heinberg arguesthat it is never too late to improve the future.In an otherwise pessimistic analysis, he is cau-tiously hopeful that these radical shifts canoccur if an informed citizenry dramaticallyincreases its involvement. The solution, then,lies not so much in alternative technologies,but in a revitalized political process.

References

Hubbert, M. King. (1969). Resources and man.Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciencesand National Research Council.

Shelley, Toby. (2005). Oil: Politics, poverty, and theplanet. London: Zed Books.

U.S. Department of Energy. (1998). Annual energyoutlook. Washington, DC: Energy InformationAdministration.

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In the 1970s the ecologist Garrett Hardinobserved that although long dead, ThomasMalthus continues to haunt each new genera-tion of scholars (Daly, 1977, page 43). In hisexcellent new book, The Return of Malthus:Environmentalism and Post-war Population-Resource Crises, Björn-Ola Linnér explains indetail why Malthusian concerns have beenraised intermittently over the past 50 years.

Malthus, one will recall, was an 18th cen-tury British economist and clergyman whosuggested that humanity was likely to outstripthe food supply. This prediction arose fromhis observation that population growthincreased exponentially while agriculturalproduction increased arithmetically (Malthus,1798). Left unchecked, human reproductionwould lead to famine, instability, and war.Since the end of World War II, according toLinnér, similar Malthusian fears have risenand fallen in three waves.

The first wave emerged immediately afterWorld War II, as hunger reigned in much ofEurope and Asia. Years of war had despoiledfarmland and depleted livestock; dilapidatedtransportation systems hindered food distri-bution. Parts of Europe experienced actualstarvation. However, massive provisions ofAmerican food and reconstruction aid avertedthe worst outcomes. Within a few years agri-cultural production—at least in WesternEurope—began to recover.

Paradoxically, even after this crisis had beenaverted, the fears continued. Linnér argues thatpolitical and economic factors account for thepersistence of Malthusian concerns. In particu-lar, he points to the transformation of the glob-al economy and the geopolitical interests of theUnited States. The new world economy that the

United States sought to construct after the wardepended on a steady flow of raw materials.Political and social unrest in countries provid-ing these materials—many of which happenedto be resource-scarce—would be detrimental tothis new interlinked economy.

In addition, American policymakers worriedthat resource scarcity in poor countries mightengender political unrest and leave them ripefor a communist takeover. Thus, the issue ofnatural resources became vital to U.S. nationalsecurity policy (page 33). Indeed, the resource-security nexus underlay Truman’s Point FourProgram, which specifically sought to aidunderdeveloped areas. Years later, U.S. efforts toprevent famine in India was arguably anothermanifestation of these concerns (page 153).

After a brief interregnum of optimism in the1950s, neo-Malthusianism returned with avengeance in the 1960s. This second wave ofMalthusian anxiety arose in part from historicalcircumstance: catastrophic famines in Asia andAfrica killed millions, lending credence to thewarnings of an impending population-resourcecrisis. Global food trading patterns also shifted;until World War II, many developing countrieswere net exporters of food. By the 1960s, theyimported 13 million tons annually—consistentwith the image of a looming crisis.

The Return of Malthus: Environmentalism and Post-war Population-Resource Crises Björn-Ola LinnérIsle of Harris, UK: White Horse Press, 2003. 303 pages.

Reviewed by TED GAULIN

Ted Gaulin is a doctoral candidate in

political science at the University of

California, Irvine. His work has appeared

in the Canadian Journal of Political

Science, Global Environmental Politics,

The Peace Review, and Issues in Science

and Technology.


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This wave of concern was also influenced bythe growing scientific recognition that humanbehavior was transforming the environment.This was a new twist in the Malthusian logic:not only were the differential rates of populationgrowth and agricultural production on a crashcourse, human beings were actually undermin-ing the productive capacity of the Earth throughpollution and despoliation. We were burningthe environmental candle at both ends, so tospeak. These developments led to an explosionof neo-Malthusian scholarship by thinkers likeWilliam Vogt, Fairfield Osborn, Julian Huxley,Garrett Hardin, and Paul Ehrlich—whoseprovocatively titled The Population Bomb (1968)became a national bestseller.

Throughout his narrative, Linnér returns toone particular neo-Malthusian thinker, theSwedish biologist Georg Borgström. Borgströmis most well-known for his 1965 book TheHungry Planet, but he began writing passionatelyabout population-resource issues in the early1950s. Linnér shows Borgström to be a particu-larly prescient scholar whose work should be bet-ter appreciated. For example, his concept of“ghost acreage”—the amount of additionalarable land a country would require in order tobe able to feed itself—anticipated by 30 years theterm “ecological footprint.” His efforts to trackfood and energy flows on a global scale anticipat-ed the full-cost accounting approach that envi-ronmental economists use today. His calls for“nutritional equalization” would be perfectly insync with the appeals of today’s environmental

justice movement. In addition, his 1960s esti-mates of future population levels have proved—in hindsight—to be particularly accurate.

Linnér does not simply wish to raiseBorgström’s historical profile; he is interested inBorgström as a “conveyer of ideas” on environ-mental issues. A conveyer serves as a mediatorbetween the scientific community, policymak-ers, and society at large. In tracing Borgström’scareer Linnér demonstrates how conveyers canbecome controversial, inciting both praise andresentment from the general public and withinthe scholarly community. More generally,Linnér is trying to show how Borgström’sideas—and the ideas of other neo-Malthusians—were vital to the development ofa coherent environmental ideology.

A third wave of Malthusian warningsemerged in the late 1990s. Linnér describes thismost recent cycle as the product of discursivearguments employed by large plant-breedingcorporations to promote their genetically modi-fied (GM) crops. In the author’s view, biotech-nology companies like Monsanto, Pioneer, andNovartis have revived Malthusian rhetoric inthe hope of gaining public support for GMcrops. For example, Monsanto’s public relationsliterature ominously warns: “World populationis soaring, yet the amount of arable land avail-able for food production is diminishing. Newagricultural technology has never been moreurgently needed” (page 203). This is an inter-esting argument, and Linnér should be creditedfor pointing out the duplicity of this rhetoric.He shows how the bulk of biotechnologyresearch has been, and continues to be, directedtowards crops for Western markets. Yet, for thelast decade the biotech industry’s primary argu-ments center on feeding the world’s poor.

Linnér’s focus on the discourse of thebiotech industry causes him to overlook a larg-er, more significant source of neo-Malthusianism in the 1990s; namely, the exten-sive research conducted throughout that decadeon the issue of environmental scarcity and con-flict. Research by Thomas Homer-Dixon’s(1991, 1994, 1995) project at the University ofToronto, Günther Baechler’s (1998) project at

Linnér shows how the bulk of biotechnologyresearch has been, and continues to be, direct-ed towards crops for Western markets. Yet, forthe last decade the biotech industry’s primaryarguments center on feeding the world’s poor.

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the Swiss Peace Institute, and a number otherorganizations on the potentially violent conse-quences of the depletion of renewable naturalresources reintroduced neo-Malthusianism intothe political discourse in the 1990s.1 Thisresearch, communicated to policymakersthrough a few highly influential articles, putneo-Malthusianism on the post-Cold Warmap.2 This research set the stage for the biotechindustry to use a Malthusian discourse.

This point highlights the one shortcoming ofThe Return of Malthus: its failure to engage withthe large and pertinent literature on the securityimplications of environmental change. In fact,the readers of this journal will be surprised tolearn that Linnér never refers to Homer-Dixonor Baechler. Nor does the book reference thosewho criticize some environmental security textsas overly Malthusian. This is a strange omission,since Linnér had already made the scarcity-secu-rity connection in his discussion of the immedi-ate post-World War II era. Why not explorewhether those same dynamics were at workimmediately after the Cold War, when the envi-ronmental security research agenda took shape?One wonders if Linnér, who has carefully ana-lyzed Malthusianism from a historian’s perspec-tive, would classify key thinkers like Homer-Dixon as neo-Malthusian.

This shortcoming, however, hardly dilutesthe power of The Return of Malthus. The bookis a strong work of scholarship that demon-strates that population-resource debates dateback much further than those taking placewithin the environmental security communitytoday. And it demonstrates that Malthusianthought—right or wrong—has had a powerfuleffect on the development of the environmentalmovement.

Notes

1. To be sure, many of the scholars associated withthese projects would renounce the Malthusian label.But the connection these researchers make amonggrowing populations, dwindling resources, and fre-quently bleak outcomes gives much of this work anundeniable Malthusian cast. On the Malthusian natureof Homer-Dixon’s work, for example, see Peluso andWatts (2001).

2. For a detailed analysis of how the environmentalsecurity paradigm took shape see Richard Matthew(2002).

References

Baechler, Günther. (1998). “Why environmental trans-formation causes violence: A synthesis.”Environmental Change and Security Report 4, 24-44.

Borgström, Georg. (1965). The hungry planet: Themodern world at the edge of famine. New York:Macmillan.

Daly, Herman. (1977). Steady state economics: The eco-nomics of biophysical equilibrium and moral growth.San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.

Ehrlich, Paul. (1968). The population bomb. New York:Balantine.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas. (1991). “On the threshold:Environmental changes as causes of acute conflict.”International Security 16, 76-116.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas. (1994). “Environmentalscarcities and violent conflict: Evidence from cases.”International Security 19, 5-40.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas. (1995). “The ingenuity gap:Can poor countries adapt to resource scarcity?”Population and Development Review 21, 587-612.

Malthus, Thomas. (1798). An essay on the principle ofpopulation. London: J. Johnson.

Matthew, Richard. (2002). “In defense of environmentand security research.” Environmental Change andSecurity Project Report 8, 109-124.

Peluso, Nancy Lee, & Michael Watts (Eds). (2001).Violent environments. Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress.


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In the past decade, the links between naturalresources and violent conflict—particularly inthe resource-rich but conflict-ravaged countriesof Africa—have garnered increased attention.Controversial research, led by Paul Collier andhis associates at the World Bank (see, for exam-ple, Collier et al., 2003), argues that conflictsare more likely to be caused by economicopportunities—greed—rather than grievances.This argument contrasts with earlier studies,such as those by the Ted Robert Gurr (1968;2000), which argue that social, political, andeconomic deprivation, inequities, and griev-ances are the main causes of political violence.The August 2005 issue of Journal of ConflictResolution contains a series of articles exploringand critiquing aspects of the resource-basedexplanations of violent conflict (e.g., Ron,2005), illustrating the importance of under-standing such links.

Jeremy Lind and Kathryn Sturman, editors ofScarcity and Surfeit: The Ecology of Africa’sConflicts, have compiled six case studies in twovolatile regions of Africa, the Greater Horn

(Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan) and the GreatLakes (Burundi, Rwanda, and the DemocraticRepublic of the Congo). The contributors chal-lenge the distinction between greed and griev-ance, naming structural inequalities, resourcemismanagement, and predatory states as amongthe principal causes of conflict. While the qualityof the case studies is uneven, the authors all agreethat resource-based factors play an importantrole in sustaining conflicts in Africa. At the sametime, they carefully emphasize that ecologicalissues are rarely the main causes of civil discord.

The chapters on Rwanda, Burundi, andSomalia persuasively examine how economicissues, particularly land distribution, play sig-nificant roles in conflicts traditionally viewed asdriven by ethnicity. Jean Bigagaza, CarolyneAbong, and Cecile Mukarubuga argue thatRwanda’s political violence was greatly influ-enced by competition to control scarce land.Unfortunately, peace-building attempts in theregion (e.g., the Arusha peace process) placedundue emphasis on the ethnic dimensions ofthe conflict. As a result, the remedies focusedon institutional solutions such as sharingpower, holding elections, and adjusting the eth-nic composition of the armed forces. Theseefforts lacked concerted attempts to tackleunequal land distribution, the decreasing inter-national value of agricultural commodities, anddeepening rural poverty.

The Burundi case study makes a similar argu-ment. Like Rwanda, Burundi must cope with theproblem of land scarcity, which is accentuated bythe country’s dependence on its main naturalresource, coffee. The Burundi state is predatoryand rent-seeking; controlling the state meanscontrolling coffee production and export. InSomalia, too, the interplay between local and

Scarcity and Surfeit: The Ecology of Africa’sConflictsJeremy Lind and Kathryn Sturman (Eds).Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, South Africa, 2002. 388 pages.

Reviewed by BIDISHA BISWAS

Bidisha Biswas is a doctoral candidate in

government and politics at the

University of Maryland, College Park.

Her dissertation examines international

intervention in ethnopolitical conflicts.

She has published in Nationalism and

Ethnic Politics and the Journal of

Conflict Resolution, and has also written

for the Center for Strategic and

International Studies’ South Asia

Monitor.

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national competition for land influences politics.To help build peace, all three countries needgreater consideration of land usage patterns andpolicies that emphasize sustainable naturalresource use and management.

The war-ravaged Democratic Republic of theCongo (DRC) illustrates the tragedy of the“resource curse.” Though the country is richlyendowed with high-value natural resources, 70percent of its population lives in absolute poverty.Celine Moyroud and John Katunga investigatethe deleterious effects of coltan extraction, whichis concentrated in the eastern part of the coun-try.1 While coltan extraction is not the sole—oreven primary—cause of conflict, it is an aggravat-ing factor, as it contributes to environmentaldegradation and tensions over land ownershipand utilization—and generates revenues for rebelgroups. The authors provide some interestinginsights into the politics of natural resourceextraction in DRC; for example, trade in coltan iscontrolled almost entirely by Rwandan brokers.Policymakers might benefit from heeding thechapter’s suggestions. For example, the authorsfavor an international code of conduct to moni-tor the extraction and purchase of coltan, butthey also argue that this issue must be addressedwithin the wider context of the conflict.

Writing on Sudan, Paul Goldsmith, Lydia A.Abura, and Jason Switzer counter identity-based interpretations of conflict by arguing thatresource mismanagement, exploitation, repres-sion, and the absence of community participa-tion in decision-making have all sharpeneddivisions in the country—to the point that con-flicts would have occurred even if the country’speople shared one religion. While the authorschallenge ethnicity-based explanations of civilwar, a clearer discussion of the role of environ-mental factors, such as the availability of wateror oil and the specific links between theirexploitation and conflict, would have strength-ened the chapter.

Fiona Flintan and Imeru Tamrat examinethe role of water scarcity in exacerbating con-flicts in Ethiopia, underlining the importanceof local capacity in resolving or mitigatingresource-based conflicts. Community elders

and religious leaders manage access to and dis-tribution of resources. According to traditionalnorms, clan resources are often shared in timesof resource scarcity or stress. Clan leaders alsohelp adjudicate conflicts and appeal to the gov-ernment in the event of larger conflicts.Traditional peace-building institutions haveworked with the government to hold peaceconferences in the Afar region. In addition,women often act as mediators between compet-ing clans and play important roles in conflictprevention and resolution. While the authorsprovide some fascinating insights, the articleneeds a tighter focus on the impact of waterissues on the situation, and an analysis of thestrengths and limitations of localized conflictmanagement efforts, particularly in disputesbetween Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The case studies compiled in this volumepersuasively argue that structural inequalities,particularly land distribution, are key determi-nants of conflict in Africa. Rather than blamingviolence solely on opportunistic criminals, thesestudies examine how state power can become anarena of conflict over material resources. Manyof the authors suggest that building local capac-ity to effectively utilize resources would be auseful way to challenge predatory states. A closeexamination of local or national initiatives thathave contributed towards peacemaking andpeace building would help these efforts.

The causal process of conflict is complex,and, as these case studies make clear, environ-mental factors are only one dimension of politi-cal violence. By examining how resource issuescan harden ethnic divides (or vice versa), we canenhance our understanding of the interplay ofconflict’s economic, social, and political deter-minants. However, we need more systematicempirical research to understand the preciserole of resource-based issues. In the concludingchapter, Richard Cornwall calls for more criti-cal and innovative research on the subject.Indeed, attempts to prevent, manage, andresolve conflicts can greatly benefit from effortsby the research and policy communities tounderstand, as clearly as possible, the role ofecology in conflicts in Africa and elsewhere.

The contributorschallenge thedistinctionbetween greedand grievance,naming structuralinequalities,resource misman-agement, andpredatory statesas among theprincipal causesof conflict.


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Notes

1. Coltan (short for columbite-tantalite) is a keyingredient in capacitors for cellular phones. The tech-nology boom caused the price of coltan to soar, but itsettled down after 2002. However, other resources havesince become new targets (see Balint-Kurti, 2005).

References

Balint-Kurti, Daniel. (2005, July 3). “Tin trade fuelsCongo war.” News24. Available online athttp://www.news24.com/

Collier, Paul, V. L. Elliott, Håvard Hegre, AnkeHoeffler, Marta Reynal-Querol, & NicholasSambanis. (2003). Breaking the conflict trap: Civilwar and development policy. Washington, DC:World Bank.

Gurr, Ted Robert. (1968). Why men rebel. Princeton:Princeton University Press.

Gurr, Ted Robert. (2000). People versus states:Minorities at risk in the new century. Washington,DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.

Ron, James. (2005). “Paradigm in distress? Primarycommodities and civil war.” Journal of ConflictResolution 49(4), 443-450.

The comprehensive and excellent book Twenty-First Century India: Population, Economy,Human Development, and the Environment isthe outcome of a research project “designed toexamine the nature and consequences of thefuture growth of India’s population” (page vii).The book’s editors—Tim Dyson and RobertCassen of the London School of Economics,and Leela Visaria of Delhi’s Institute ofEconomic Growth—have achieved this ambi-tious goal.

The volume’s 16 chapters can be groupedinto 3 sections. The first describes past, present,and future trends in India’s population growth,while the middle section examines the implica-tions of this growth for education, employ-ment, poverty, and the economy. The last thirdof the volume outlines major challenges thatIndia faces in meeting its requirements for food,water, and energy, as well as the implications forthe environment. The final chapter discussesthe lessons learned, and suggests policies toaddress these challenges. The 14 authors, mostof them based in the United Kingdom (the rest

Twenty-First Century India: Population, Economy,Human Development, and the EnvironmentTim Dyson, Robert Cassen, and Leela Visaria (Eds.)Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 414 pages.

Reviewed by TOUFIQ A. SIDDIQI

Toufiq Siddiqi is president of Global

Environment and Energy in the 21st

Century, a nonprofit organization based

in Hawaii. He is also an adjunct senior

fellow at the East-West Center and affili-

ate graduate faculty at the University of

Hawaii. Dr. Siddiqi has published widely

in the fields of energy, environment, and

global climate change, and coordinated

a recent study on water and security in

South Asia. He is a graduate of

Cambridge University, and received a

doctorate in nuclear physics from the

Johann Wolfgang Goethe University,

Frankfurt, Germany. He was a regional

adviser on energy for the United

Nations, and a consultant for the World

Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the

UN Development Programme.

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mainly in India), bring a variety of disciplinarybackgrounds to bear on the topics, resulting ina rich diversity of approaches.

Past, Present, and Future Trends inIndia’s Population Growth

With a current population of more than 1 billion,it is hard to imagine that India had only 251 mil-lion people in 1921. Due to high mortality frominfectious and parasitic diseases, epidemics, andfamines, preceding centuries witnessed only asmall growth rate (Visaria & Visaria, 1982).Improved health care led to a rapid decline inmortality after 1921, and attention turned to thecountry’s high birth rate. Consequently, in 1952India became the first country to officially adopta family planning program, but it was not untilthe 1990s that the birth rate began to fall signifi-cantly faster than the death rate.

The chapter “Mortality Trends and theHealth Transition” provides tables detailing notonly the overall death rates during the last partof the 20th century, but also the impact of spe-cific communicable diseases, such as tuberculo-sis (TB) and typhoid. The resurgence of malar-ia, the spread of drug-resistant TB, and therapid rise in HIV/AIDS indicate that despiteconsiderable progress communicable diseasesare still major contributors to mortality.

Many of the book’s tables provide state-leveldata rather than country-level aggregates—aparticularly useful feature in a country as vast asIndia, where regions differ considerably.Policies must be designed to take social, cultur-al, and economic differences into account. Inhis chapter on India’s future population, Dysonprojects a total population of about 1.4 billionby 2026 and more than 1.5 billion by 2051.Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (in their former bor-ders) will continue to have the largest popula-tions during the next 50 years.

Education, Employment, Poverty,and the Economy

The much-discussed “outsourcing” of softwareand other services to India by the United States

is one indicator of India’s enormous progress inproviding quality education to ever-larger num-bers. The overall literacy rate has climbed to 65percent, but a third of the population is stillilliterate. As in many other developing coun-tries, poorer children and girls have access onlyto lower-quality schooling. Twenty-FirstCentury India provides a wealth of informationon education-related topics, such as schoolattendance and literacy rates, in various statesand age groups.

Although the Indian economy grew fairlyrapidly during the 1990s, unemployment hasalso increased, due to privatizations of stateenterprises and the introduction of moderntechnologies, among other factors. KirstyMcNay, Jeemol Unni, and Cassen, in theirchapter on employment, estimate that eightmillion people will join the work force everyyear for the next 20 years. Even if the Indianeconomy grew by eight percent a year duringthat period, unemployment is still likely toincrease—a serious and growing problem thatpolicymakers should address.

Poverty is defined these days not only as lackof income, but also as lack of education, healthcare, and other important components of thequality of life. The analysis undertaken in theeducation chapter confirms the prevalent viewthat inequalities in many fields are large andgrowing, both within and between states. Intheir chapter on education and literacy, GeetaGandhi Kingdon, Cassen, McNay, and Visariaconclude that five large states—Bihar, MadhyaPradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, and UttarPradesh—suffer more than their fair share ofpoverty, inadequate health care, and malnutri-tion. They also find large gaps between religiousgroups, and between the mainstream popula-tion and cultural minorities.

During the 1990s, India’s economyincreased about six percent per year; the statesof Gujarat and Maharashtra grew the fastest,with Rajasthan not far behind. In the chapter“The Economy, the Past, and the Future,”Shankar Acharya, Cassen, and McNay ascribethis growth to the states’ reform of infrastruc-ture, industrial policy, and investment incen-


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tives, which echoes the conclusions of otheranalysts (e.g., Bajpai & Sachs, 1999). They alsoaddress a question seldom explicitly discussed:how might environmental degradation affecteconomic growth? The authors estimate thatIndia’s annual losses due to environmental dam-age range from 2-9 percent, depending on dif-ferent estimates of the impacts on humanhealth and the value assigned to human life.

Major Challenges

Twenty-First Century India also addresses theopposite and more traditional concern: theimpact of economic growth on the environment.Based on the results of a model that links realGDP to emissions from energy production anduse, Dennis Anderson makes five propositions:

• Addressing environmental problems willimprove, not reduce, India’s economicprospects;

• If environmental policies were in place, the“population effect” would be relatively small;

• The worst environmental problems affectthe lowest income groups the most, andenvironmental policies will therefore helpthem the most;

• Technical progress, and policies that induceit, are the most important factors in promot-ing growth along with improving the envi-ronment; and

• Environmental problems should be ad-dressed sooner rather than later.

Anderson provides case studies to supportthese propositions, and uses computer simula-tion models to predict emissions of pollutantsunder various scenarios. His findings are gener-ally in agreement with those of several otherstudies (e.g., Grubler, 1998; Pachauri &Sridharan, 1998). He recommends eliminatingsubsidies for rural electrification and for coal-fired and nuclear power, which would not onlyprovide economic benefits, but also help reducethe pressure on groundwater resources.

As in other rapidly growing developingcountries, India’s environment has deteriorat-

ed—particularly in the urban areas—duemostly to the use of fossil fuels for transporta-tion, power generation, industrial activities,and domestic needs. Many of India’s largestcities rank among the most polluted in theworld. The chapter “India’s UrbanEnvironment, Current Knowledge, andFuture Possibilities” predicts that these nega-tive trends—as well as the problems of munic-ipal solid waste, sewage, and shortage of safedrinking water—will continue, and that envi-ronmental quality in urban areas will becomeincreasingly problematic for India.

Water, agriculture, and food are closely relat-ed. While short, the chapter on water byBhaskar Vira, Ramaswamy Iyer, and Cassenaddresses several important issues, includingthe possible effects of climate change. Climatemodeling is still not precise enough to predictthe magnitude and direction of changes in rain-fall and temperature at the state level, but suchchanges will likely occur by the middle of thiscentury. Thus, policymakers should begin con-tingency planning soon. Many parts of Indiaalready suffer water shortages, especially duringthe dry months, which have led to conflictsbetween states and between end-users. Theauthors summarize the demand for waterthrough 2050, concluding that India can avoida water crisis if appropriate supply- anddemand-side measures are adopted in time.

The chapter points out that some states’ pol-icy of providing free water and electricity hasled to overuse of surface and ground water.Political parties have been unwilling to incurfarmers’ wrath by eliminating or reducing thiscostly subsidy. Since water comes under thejurisdiction of the state rather than the centralgovernment, the latter can only intervene in thecases of rivers that flow across state borders.1

Cereal production in India has increasedfaster than the population during the past 50years. In “Prospects for Food Demand andSupply,” Amresh Hanchate and Dyson assertthat this trend may continue for the next fewdecades, if some policy changes, such as increas-ing the price of water and electricity, can beimplemented. While this may be true for the

As in otherdeveloping

countries, imple-menting policies

in India thatcreate some

hardships willtake time,

education, and asocial safety net.

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country as a whole, over a long-term horizon,regions can fluctuate considerably from oneyear to another. Global climate change couldalso affect future cereal production.

Common pool resources (CPR)—whichinclude fuel wood, fodder, crop wastes, cowdung, organic manure, and small timber, aswell as local fisheries and water for drinking,cooking, and irrigation—are closely linked toIndia’s rural economy. Vira’s chapter on CPRdescribes the conflicting claims on theseresources by, for example, the forest productand chemical industries.

Lessons Learned

In the final chapter, “Lessons and Policies,” theeditors outline the policies that they consider tobe especially important for meeting India’s chal-lenges. While the government has already articu-lated policies and legislation for the issues dis-cussed in the book, difficulties arise in theirimplementation. Policymakers in many devel-oped as well as developing countries face thisproblem, so it is no surprise that the authors offerno magical solutions. For example, while manyparts of India suffer from water shortages, theagriculture sector uses a great deal of water,which is essentially provided free of charge. Nopolitical party is willing to advocate chargingmoney for water, for fear of being voted out inthe next election. Similarly, closing down a facto-ry for polluting—even temporarily—is likely tolead to widespread demonstrations and strikes.As in other developing countries, implementingpolicies in India that create some hardships willtake time, education, and a social safety net.

Despite the lack of new policy recommen-dations, Twenty-First Century India is an

insightful and comprehensive book that shouldbe of great value to academics, policy advisors,and researchers interested in exploring thedemographic and sustainable developmentchallenges facing the second most populouscountry in the world.

Notes

1. Readers interested in examining these issues ingreater detail should refer to a number of recent works,such as Shiva (2002) and the two volumes edited bySiddiqi and Tahir-Kheli (2004, 2005).

References

Bajpai, Nirupam, & Jeffrey D. Sachs. (1999). Theprogress of policy reform and variations in perform-ance at the sub-national level in India (HarvardInstitute of International Development DiscussionPaper No. 730). Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity.

Grubler, Arnulf. (1998). Technology and global change.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pachauri, R. K., & P.V. Sridharan (Eds.). (1998).Looking back to think ahead: Green India 2047.New Delhi: Tata Energy Research Institute.

Shiva, Vandana. (2002). Water wars: Privatization, pol-lution, and profit. New Delhi: India Research Press.

Siddiqi, Toufiq A., & Shirin Tahir-Kheli (Eds.).(2004). Water conflicts in South Asia: Managingwater resource disputes within and between countries.Honolulu: Global Environment and Energy in the21st Century.

Siddiqi, Toufiq A., & Shirin Tahir-Kheli (Eds.).(2005). Water needs in South Asia: Closing thedemand-supply gap. Honolulu: Global Environmentand Energy in the 21st Century.

Visaria, Pravin, & Leela Visaria. (1982). “Population(1757-1947).” In D. Kumar (Ed.), The Cambridgeeconomic history of India, Volume II: c. 1757-c. 1970(pages 463-532). Hyderabad, India: OrientLongman.