The effect of renewable natural resource scarcity on ethnic conflict: An analysis of minorities at risk, 1985--1998

Renewable natural resource scarcity has been determined by scholars of environmental security to be a source of acute conflict. One form of acute conflict is ethnic conflict. Scholars of ethnic conflict have offered two particular theories of why conflict occurs that reasonably seem to allow renewable natural resource scarcity to have causal sway---ethnic security dilemmas, and competition theory.; This dissertation seeks to bridge a gap between the two bodies of literature to determine in quantitative and qualitative manner if there is a measurable relationship between renewable natural resource scarcity and ethnic conflict. Based upon research that has shown loss of arable land, loss of forested land, and fresh water scarcity to be the primary renewable natural resource scarcities of concern, and upon theoretical constructions taken from security dilemma and competition theory work, hypotheses about the relationship between the scarcities and ethnic conflict are developed.; Utilizing data from the Minorities at Risk project, quantitative analytical tests of the hypotheses are conducted. Based on the relationship determined to exist further tests of the mechanisms that allow renewable natural resource scarcity to be translated into ethnic conflict are conducted. Based on the findings from these quantitative tests a set of case studies are conducted to see if a process can be traced in actual situations where ethnic conflict did or did not exist and where scarcity did or did not exist that would further bolster the conclusions drawn from the statistical analyses that were conducted.; Findings show that a statistical relationship does exist between renewable natural resource scarcity and ethnic conflict. Further, the relationship is often a very strong relationship. However, the results show that not all of the scarcities previously considered carry statistical weight. The cases that are observed show that the relationship does exist in some situations, but not in all situations.