This paper explores the emergence of conflict through the lens of conflict prevention theory, identifying latent, manifest limited, and escalating violent conflict as distinct stages. The author argues that structural interventions are most effective when implemented early, during the latent stage, before positions harden. The paper examines traditional conflict causes—political, socioeconomic, resource-based, and environmental—and introduces climate change as a new multiplier that threatens human security by reducing access to critical natural resources. The analysis suggests that inquiry focused on the nexus of latent conflict and environmental scarcity may reveal insights necessary for viable conflict resolution and transformation.
A primary reason for studying the emergence of conflict is to apply the resulting knowledge toward prevention efforts. Conflict prevention theory identifies three key stages in conflict development: latent conflict, manifest limited conflict, and escalating violent conflict (Lund, 2009). While these stages are theoretically discrete, the implication is clear: interventions aimed at prevention, particularly those of a structural nature, are more effective when implemented in the early—or latent—stages of conflict (Lund, 2009). This timing matters significantly because earlier intervention creates greater opportunity for transformative change before positions harden and escalation becomes difficult to contain.
The concept of structural violence refers to long-term, intractable social and cultural arrangements that harm populations without direct physical force. Yet this framing also suggests opportunity: governments can address the socioeconomic sources of conflict by dismantling these systems. When states fail to address underlying tensions through early, meaningful, systematic, and peaceful structural and cultural corrections, conflict becomes more likely (Galtung, 1990). In fact, threats to structural violence often trigger defensive responses from those whose interests are protected by inequitable cultural, economic, and social arrangements—creating a cycle where attempted reform itself can spark resistance (Galtung, 1990).
Conflict arises from multiple causal, context-specific, and multidimensional factors that scholars generally categorize as political and institutional, socioeconomic, or resource and environmental (GSDRC, 2014). In contemporary society, conflict tends to be associated with nationalism, political legacy, unresolved religious or ethnic conflict, the presence of corrupt and repressive regimes, and—importantly—long-standing unequal access to critical resources (Pedersen, 2004). To these conventional formulas for conflict emergence, a new multiplier has been added: climate change (Barnett & Adger, 2007). Rather than a direct cause on its own, climate change functions as a force amplifier, intensifying existing tensions and vulnerabilities rooted in resource scarcity and governance failure.
Human security is grounded in homeostasis—a state of equilibrium whose acceptable range varies widely across time and context. Yet climate change functions as a direct threat to the acceptable range of homeostasis that most people prefer and that generally supports human activity (Barnett & Adger, 2007). By reducing both access to and the quality of natural resources needed to sustain livelihoods and ecological niches, climate change undermines human security in the present and increasingly in the future (Barnett & Adger, 2007). This erosion of environmental stability removes a fundamental underpinning of stability, making populations more vulnerable to the grievances and tensions that spark conflict.
"Why early prevention offers the best transformation chances"
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