ABSTRACT
This chapter links the role of environmental change to the role of economic development in the analysis of armed conflict. Much of it fails to address properly, if at all, the crucial issue of the role of development and natural resources in conflict processes. The lack of questioning about the relative importance of environmental scarcity as well as the use of methodology has given rise to the sharpest criticisms against the work of Thomas Homer-Dixon and his colleagues. Important intervening variables between environmental scarcity and conflict are decreased agricultural production, decreased economic activity, migration and weakened states. The results of the logistic regression indicate first and foremost that links between various indicators of economic development and conflict/civil war should be further explored. In a quantitative study covering the period 1980-92, Wenche Hauge & Havard Hegre tested out Huntington's dynamic model and P. David Rapkin & P. William Avery's static model on outbreaks of civil war.
