Population and Security: How Demographic Change Can Lead to Violent Conflict

Abstract

the marked decrease in population growth in many countries and regions is good news for those concerned about global population, it offers no clear relief for concerns about the security implications of population change. As we cross into the new century, the world seems finally to have turned the corner on population growth. A combination of increased education for women, national and international support for policies of population planning and the spread of economic development and accompanying movement along the demographic transition frontier have led to falling population growth rates around the world. Whether among the behemoths--China and India--or among the smaller but rapidly growing nations--such as Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Malawi--population growth rates have dropped dramatically in the last decade. (1) Yet while population growth rates have dropped around the world, they remain high in some areas. In particular, many nations in the Middle East, southeast Asia and central and northern Africa still are growing at nearly 3 percent per year, a growth rate that leads to a doubling of population in approximately 25 years. Moreover, although in most countries the rate of population growth has slowed, the absolute number of people being added to the world's population has not; the large number of women of childbearing age in the developing world, carrying the momentum of past population growth, ensure that even while growth rates fall as a percentage of the existing population, the number of new births each year continues to rise. For example, although China's growth rate has fallen to 1.0 percent per year, China will still grow by 10 to 11 million people per year for the next 15 years. The world as a whole will add roughly 80 million people per year, or another 960 million (that is, another India) in the next dozen years. (2) DEMOGRAPHY AND SECURITY: KEY FINDINGS After nearly three decades of debate and analysis, stemming from Myron Weiner's (1971) path-breaking study, scholars are beginning to develop much clearer answers to the complex questions regarding how population changes affect security concerns. Those answers can be summarized briefly in the following propositions, each of which we shall treat in greater detail below: 1) While population growth often brings degradation of forests, water resources, arable land and other local resources, such environmental degradation is not a major or pervasive cause of international wars, ethnic wars or revolutionary conflicts. Such degradation often brings misery, yet such misery does not generally trigger the elite alienation and opposition to the government necessary for large-scale violence to occur. 2) Population growth can give rise to conflicts over increasingly scarce resources, such as farmland, if those conflicts involve elites seeking to take resources from popular groups, or competition between elite factions for control of those resources. However, what determines whether violent conflict arises are the relationships among popular groups, elites and the state, and particularly whether the state has the capacity to channel and moderate elite conflicts. Only where elite conflicts or popular resistance to elite actions overwhelm weak states do major conflicts arise. 3) While overall population growth and population density do not generally predict political risks, a number of distinct kinds of demographic changes--rapid growth in the labor force in slow-growing economies, a rapid increase in educated youth aspiring to elite positions when such positions are scarce, unequal population growth rates between different ethnic groups, urbanization that exceeds employment growth and migrations that change the local balance among major ethnic groups--do appear to increase the risks of violent internal political and ethnic conflicts. In addition, there is some evidence that countries with larger populations have greater risks of both armed conflict and state repression. …

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