ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the feedback loops between global markets and interstate politics on the one hand, and the daily allocation and misallocation of resources in highly localized contexts, on the other. The origins of 'human security' can be traced to the founding of the International Labor Organization (ILO) written in the wake of World War I, explicitly linked peace with social justice. Common pool resources (CPRs), or human-made goods for which use by one reduces the availability of the resource for another, under some circumstances foster cooperation but can and often do lead to conflict in others. The chapter argues that some of the greatest threats to human security, and the most violence, arise not from interstate or civil war but from the mundane competition over natural resources at the smallest scales. Most pressing, though, is what the trend of dustbowlification will mean for food security in places such as sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia.
