ABSTRACT
Apart from the role of territory in interstate armed conflict, and to some extent the demographic factors, there is very little systematic research on the effects or resource or environmental factors on armed conflict. Stephan Libiszewski argues that simple resource conflicts are very common, but that the concept of environmental conflict calls for a more restricted use. Both at the theoretical and empirical level, the study of interstate conflict has been conducted largely separately from the study of civil war. Yet, much of the reasoning about the prevalence of scarce resources as a factor in war is built on lessons from the study of interstate war, as the literature review indicates. The levels-of-analysis problem is not dealt with at any length in the relevant literature, which freely jumps between the dyad, the nation, and the system levels with regard to theory as well as empirical evidence.
