The Evolution of Environment-Conflict Research: Toward a Livelihood Framework

The focus of qualitative environment-conflict research since the early 1990s on the state level of analysis has led to considerable uncertainty about the validity of hypothesized connections and under-specification of existing pathways inhuman-environmental change interactions. As a corrective, this article proposes a household-livelihood framework for qualitative environment-conflict research. This approach begins at the local level and then scales the analysis of social-political effects to higher levels. A household-livelihood framework also improves our understanding of many previously-ignored violent conflicts at the local level that have roots in human-environmental change.