Many scientists, politicians and journalists now agree that climate change and a scarcity of resources could lead to armed conflict. So much so, in fact, that this year's Nobel Prize for Peace went to former U.S. vice president turned environmentalist Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the argument is far from settled, writes online magazine Science Daily.
The link between pressure on natural resources and armed conflicts simply doesn't exist, say researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
In their study, Helga Malmin Binningsbø, Indra de Soysa and Nils Petter Gleditsch examined environmental sustainability in 150 countries in the period between 1961 and 1999, by using an internationally recognised method called "Ecological Footprint". In a nutshell, the method examines how many resources a portion of land produces and how much people living there use up.
According to the research, there were no conflicts in the regions where consumption exceeded the production of natural resources. And those parts of the world which were involved in war had sufficient resources.
Some commentators have said the conflicts in Darfur, Rwanda, Haiti and Somalia are essentially battles for increasingly scarce resources. So, is this argument now on shaky ground?
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