ABSTRACT
In the early 1970s, all under the shadow of the first oil crisis, the report of the Club of Rome on the limits of growth and of the first UN environmental summit in Stockholm in 1972, the spectre of resource wars was evoked for the first time. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then foreign minister of Egypt and later UN Secretary General, made the statement that the next war in the Near East would not be fought over oil, but over water. At the same time, Malthus’ hypothesis became fashionable again, predicting that overpopulation and hunger would lead to crises and revolts in the near future. An example used was the hunger catastrophe in the Sahel region with its effect on the collapse of states in the Horn of Africa, and the growing interstate conflicts over land use and rights in West Africa.
