Resource Scarcity, Environmental Stress, and the Escalation of Armed Conflict
Scarcity is an accelerant, not a detonator. Drought cuts cereal yields by about 6% and doubles the odds of a crop failure, but in the same country an ordinary dry year barely changes the risk of war. Severe droughts raise the chance a new conflict starts the next year by about 60%, and in fragile states local droughts shift fighting toward communal and militia violence. Violence concentrates where scarcity meets weak states: 24 such countries, 7% of humanity, suffered 37% of conflict deaths in 2016–24.