Population, Government, and Conflict

Since the end of the Cold War, a major concern for the United States has been the problems caused when states "fail"‹that is, when governments fall apart or become incapable of maintaining peace within their own borders. In recent years, U.S. troops have been dispatched to Somalia and Haiti to help restore order in these countries, and the Americans have witnessed mass killings in Rwanda and random violence on the streets of Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia. Each of these civil conflicts has produced streams of refugees into neighboring countries.

What are the roots of these conflicts, and why are so many occurring today? No single cause or theory can fully explain why societies fall into disorder, and it is unrealistic to expect human behavior to follow predictable laws as physical systems do. A group of researchers led by University of Toronto political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon hypothesizes that one frequent characteristic of societies vulnerable to internal conflict is scarcities of such critical natural resources as fresh water, farmland, forests and fisheries. As people compete for access to these resources, some gain more than their share while others become increasingly marginalized.

Misunderstanding the complex interplay of factors involved in such conflicts, those affected may blame historic or traditional enemies in other ethnic groups. Governments face escalating demands to mediate the resulting tensions. Decisive action may be hampered by a shrinking tax base, because the dominant (usually wealthier) factions have influenced tax policy to their benefit. At some point, the pressure on weak and resource-poor governments becomes too much and they collapse. Homer-Dixon and his colleagues contend that the growth of population contributes to the underlying environmental scarcities in at least three important ways: through subdivision, depletion and degradation of the resource base. As greater numbers of people divide a fixed pie of fresh water or cropland, for example, the amount available to each person shrinks. To the extent the resource is renewable, its total size may remain the same, but less is still available to each person. To the extent the resource is nonrenewable‹and even water and land can become nonrenewable resources when they are used beyond critical thresholds of renewability‹the same process can cause resource depletion or degradation. In any combination of the three impacts, natural resources become less available as the number of people needing them increases. The same set of impacts can result as well from increases in per capita consumption by even a stable population. Most frequently, population and consumption dynamics interact to increase the use of natural resources more rapidly together than either force would by itself. Especially in the presence of other key ingredients‹a history of ethnic strife, inequitable divisions of power and wealth, an ongoing economic crisis, for example‹this can set the stage for acute conflict.1

This explanation may fit most closely the circumstances of many developing countries, which are more likely than wealthier countries to feel the impacts of environmental scarcity and less likely to compensate for resource scarcities through trade or substitution. Elements of the theory, however, may apply to wealthier countries as well. Population growth increases the demands for the kinds of services that all governments must provide. The more rapid the growth in numbers of people, in general, the greater the growth in demand. The need to expand basic infrastructure‹roads, water supply, sewers, hospitals and schools, for example‹becomes especially acute. When the number of dependent children is high relative to that of working adults, these demands can become excessive in relation to the revenues governments derive from taxes. The crowding that accompanies population growth inevitably multiplies the rate of basic human interactions. To maintain order societies require some degree of regulation or other forms of mediation. In the words of Fred Charles Iklé, Undersecretary of Defense in the Reagan administration, "More often than not, higher densities will lead to more government. More crowding means more people will bump into one another; and to mitigate these bumps, people nowadays demand that the government interfere even more. An unintended consequence of [population] growth will be more government."2 Where governments are neither resourceful nor effective, however, the tendency may be not toward bigger government but simply toward governmental breakdown.