Unstable Ground: Climate Change, Conflict, and Genocide

Alvarez (Native America and the Question of Genocide), professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northern Arizona University, examines climate change and its effect on conflicts in this thoughtful academic volume. He argues that the pressing issue regarding climate change is the role it plays in “helping create certain kinds of conflict,” particularly “communal and ethnic violence, war, and genocide.” Alvarez lays out a few ways in which environmental shifts can affect populations and occasionally lead to famine and war. He cites as an example the record heat waves that struck India and Pakistan in the summer of 2016, which melted pavement and killed over 1,000 people. Alvarez also discusses access to natural resources such as wood, oil, and gas, explaining that they “allow a state to meet the basic survival needs of its citizens.” Water, Alvarez notes, is often taken for granted in industrialized nations “where cheap and apparently endless supplies of fresh water are readily available.” He writes of the massive drought that ravaged Syria from 2006–2011 and bears some responsibility for the subsequent conflict there. On the flip side, populations are equally threatened by flooding rivers and rising sea levels. Alvarez’s thoughtful and precise work highlights some deeply troubling but underdiscussed aspects of climate change. (Oct.)