The environment and violent conflict: a response to Gleditsch's critique and some suggestions for future research.

This paper provides a summary of the article, "The Environment and Violent Conflict: A Response to Gleditsch's Critique and Some Suggestions for Future Research". Written by Thomas Homer-Dixon and his colleagues at the University of Toronto, the paper serves as a response to Nils Petter Gleditsch's critique of environment, population, and conflict literature in his seminal 1998 article, "Armed Conflict and the Environment: A Critique of the Literature". The paper addresses some of the conceptual and theoretical problems identified by Gleditsch and discusses his selective critique of the literature on the relationship between environmental scarcity and conflict. Also, the article examines underlying methodological issues and addresses Gleditsch's concerns arising from his methodological perspective. The final section of the article looks forward and suggests avenues for future research on the environment-conflict nexus.