Stress Factor 3 - Cropland and Fresh Water

Evidence from case studies suggests that the major sources of vulnerability to civil conflict that are associated with declines in available cropland and fresh water have been generated by the decreasing capacity of rural areas to maintain secure livelihoods and absorb growing labor forces. In the past, eruptions of civil tensions over cropland have been more common than over freshwater resources. While low per capita levels of land and water persist in several populous industrial countries, these countries — with their robust urban economies and well-run services — are much less vulnerable to civil conflict involving these resources.

Tensions between states over renewable natural resources have most often developed over rights to ocean fisheries and transboundary freshwater supplies. These tensions generally have led to interstate negotiations rather than warfare. Continued rapid population growth in the developing world, however, suggests a future unlike the past. The prospects for continued interstate cooperation, particularly over transboundary water rights, remain uncertain.

Countries in high or extreme demographic stress categories for cropland or renewable fresh water were about 1.5 times as likely to experience civil conflict in the 1990s as countries that did not fall into these categories, suggesting a weak association between worsening scarcities of these critical resources, by themselves, and an increased likelihood of civil conflict.

Policy Prescription

Mediators of environmental disputes prescribe strategies for easing tensions over cropland and fresh water that include formalizing and enforcing unambiguous property rights, training resource managers and funding management and extension programs, pricing agricultural products fairly, and investing in programs that slow population growth