Continuing Conflict

A relatively small but growing literature in economics examines conflictive activities where agents allocate their resource endowments between wealth production and appropriation. To date, their studies have employed a one period, static game theoretic framework. We propose a methodology to extend this literature to a dynamic setting, modeling continuous conflict over renewable natural resources between two rival groups. Investigating the system’s steady states and dynamics, we find two results of general interest. First, Hirshleifer’s “paradox of power” is self-correcting. Second, if productive activities cause damage to disputed resources, the introduction of a small amount of conflictive activity enhances social welfare.Conflict, Dynamics, Paradox of Power, Renewable Resources

Conflict and Renewable Resources

The economic literature on conflict employs a static game theoretic frame- work developed by Jack Hirshleifer. We extend this literature by explicitly introducing conflict dynamics into the model. Our specific application is based on two stylized facts. First, conflict often arises over scarce renew- able resources, and second those resources often lack well-defined and/or enforceable property rights. Our stylized model features two rival groups, each dependent on a single contested renewable resource. Each period, the groups allocate their members between resource harvesting and resource appropriation (or conflict) in order to maximize their income. This leads to a complex non-linear dynamic interaction between conflict, the two populations, and the resource. The system's steady states are identified and comparative statics are computed. As developed, the model relates most closely to conflict over renewable resources in primitive societies. The system's global dynamics are investigated in simulations calibrated for the historical society of Easter Island. The model's implications for contemporary lesser developed societies are examined.Conflict, Dynamics, Renewable Resources

Dynamic Winner-take-all Conflict

This paper develops a model of dynamic conflict featuring probabilistic winner- take-all outcomes and compares its behavior to a model in which combatants emerge with a share of the conflict spoils. While these two models generate the same behavior in a one-shot game, we find that in a repeated conflict setting the winner-take-all model generates richer dynamics than the dynamics generated by the share model. Differences include outcomes that illustrate the rise and fall of great powers, the endogenous extinction of combatants, and frequent changes in the relative dominance of combatants. The model's behavior is compared to real world military, business and political conflict outcomes.Anarchy, Fog of War, Paradox of Power, Winner-take-all conflict

The Effect of Natural Resources on Civil War Reconsidered

This paper reconsiders the role of natural resources in civil war in light of the continuing debate over whether resource scarcity/abundance fuels conflict. We argue the role of resources in civil war is due to their life-preserving and income-generating attributes, not their scarcity or abundance per se; and the effect may differ across resources and depending upon whether we examine the onset versus the presence of civil war. We highlight the need to consider comprehensive sets of life-preserving and income-generating resources in tandem, as any given resource may affect others by way of belonging to the same economy and physical environment. The empirical investigation employs a large N statistical analysis of civil wars. The independent variables include broad sets of life-preserving resources, including key environmental conditions pertaining to hospitable climate, and income-generating resources. The results indicate that the role of resources in civil war vary by resource. The size of effect varies depending on whether we examine civil war onset or presence, but the sign of the effect essentially does not

Climate-related migration and population health: social science-oriented dynamic simulation model

Background: Social science models find the ecological impacts of climate change (EICC) contribute to internal migration in developing countries and, less so, international migration. Projections expect massive climate-related migration in this century. Nascent research calls to study health, migration, population, and armed conflict potential together, accounting for EICC and other factors. System science offers a way: develop a dynamic simulation model (DSM). We aim to validate the feasibility and usefulness of a pilot DSM intended to serve as a proof-of-concept and a basis for identifying model extensions to make it less simplified and more realistic. Methods: Studies have separately examined essential parts. Our DSM integrates their results and computes composites of health problems (HP), health care (HC), non-EICC environmental health problems (EP), and environmental health services (ES) by origin site and by immigrants and natives in a destination site, and conflict risk and intensity per area. The exogenous variables include composites of EICC, sociopolitical, economic, and other factors. We simulate the model for synthetic input values and conduct sensitivity analyses. Results: The simulation results refer to generic origin and destination sites anywhere on Earth. The effects’ sizes are likely inaccurate from a real-world view, as our input values are synthetic. Their signs and dynamics are plausible, internally consistent, and, like the sizes, respond logically in sensitivity analyses. Climate migration may harm public health in a host area even with perfect HC/ES qualities and full access; and no HP spillovers across groups, conflict, EICC, and EP. Deviations from these conditions may worsen everyone’s health. We consider adaptation options. Conclusions: This work shows we can start developing DSMs to understand climate migration and public health by examining each case with its own inputs. Validation of our pilot model suggests we can use it as intended. We lay a path to making it more realistic for policy analysis

Conceptual Simulation Model for Climate Migration and Population Health

Growing literature expects that environmental degradation due to climate change (combined with non-environmental factors) will increasingly drive migration from affected areas in this century. It reflects psychology that views ecological decline as reducing the quality of life. Another literature projects that climate will have adverse health outcomes worldwide, including both physical and mental, but the role of this climate migration in health, particularly population health, is under-discussed. The paper assesses and illuminates the need for greater focus and work on climate migration by conceptually modeling the causal flow from environmental degradation in an origin area, to leaving this site, to the health of migrant and native populations in the host area. The conceptual modeling condenses and clarifies some of the questions at stake and suggests the need for future research including the codification and empirical testing of this or similar models. This capability is illustrated by heuristically simulating the model to contribute to emerging discussions on climate migration and population health. The article assesses the results and applies them to comment on policies seeking to promote population health in areas poised to receive many climate migrants in this century

Special Journal Issue -- Introduction: The Opportunities and Roles of Experimentation in Addressing Climate Change

On 9 July, 2017, the widely-read New York Magazine published an article depicting a pessimistic scenario of what might happen in the near-future due to global warming. This will be bad, the article said, including famines, lasting economic collapse, a sun that cooks us, climate refugees, spread of ancient diseases now buried in the permafrost, Arctic, and Antarctic, rolling smog that suffocates people, poisoned oceans, drowning coastal cities and infrastructure, and war. The story was immediately criticized; the piece is alarmist and pessimistic, many said (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uninhabitable_Earth). The point for this Special Issue is not if the New York Magazine got it right. In truth, there is surely a risk that it got it right, but we still do not know how big it is. The story shows that fears about climate change are now in the public and psychic domain—the magazine, of course, would not have chosen this topic had it not been on people's mind

Economic Growth, Environmental Scarcity, and Conflict

The global population is expected to reach nine billion by 2050, intensifying "environmental scarcity," a term used here to denote environmental degradation and pressure on renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. Currently, environmental scarcity is more pronounced in less developed countries (LDCs) than in developed countries (DCs). Many argue that this scarcity is increasingly promoting armed conflicts in LDCs. The conventional solution to the problem of environmental conflict is economic growth. It is argued that as LDCs' income per capita rises to the level ofthat of DCs, their population growth and environ mental scarcity will decline, preventing conflict and building peace. This paper illustrates that the growth approach to conflict prevention probably will not work because the biosphere most likely would not be able to support a DC-level standard of living for all the people on Earth, at least not at the current state of technology. The resulting intensification of pressures on natural resources is likely to induce more, not less, environmental conflict. Still, economic growth in LDCs is important on both moral and practical grounds. One could make economic growth in LDCs ecologically-and therefore politically-feasible by balancing it with a coordinated economic contraction in DCs. The difficulties associated with implementing this approach are discussed. I believe that the approach will probably be rejected by DCs in the short run, but might eventually be initiated in response to some global ecological-social-political crisis. The problem is that such a crisis also might result in extensive damages. Whether or not such damages could be alleviated would depend on the nature ofthe crisis and the extent of the damages up to that point. Copyright (c) 2002 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.