The Earth's human population is expected to pass eight billion
by the year 2025, while rapid growth in the global economy will
spur ever increasing demands for natural resources. The world
will consequently face growing scarcities of such vital
renewable resources as cropland, fresh water, and forests.
Thomas Homer-Dixon argues in this sobering book that these
environmental scarcities will have profound social consequences
--contributing to insurrections, ethnic clashes, urban unrest,
and other forms of civil violence, especially in the developing
world. Homer-Dixon synthesizes work from a wide range of
international research projects to develop a detailed model of
the sources of environmental scarcity. He refers to water
shortages in China, population growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and
land distribution in Mexico, for example, to show that
scarcities stem from the degradation and depletion of renewable
resources, the increased demand for these resources, and/or
their unequal distribution. He shows that these s