Overview

Unstable Ground looks at the human impact of climate change and its potential to provoke some of the most troubling crimes against humanity—ethnic conflict, war, and genocide. Alex Alvarez provides an essential overview of what science has shown to be true about climate change and examines how our warming world will challenge and stress societies and heighten the risk of mass violence. Drawing on a number of recent and historic examples, including Darfur, Syria, and the current migration crisis, this book illustrates the thorny intersections of climate change and violence. The author doesn’t claim causation but makes a compelling case that changing environmental circumstances can be a critical factor in facilitating violent conflict. As research suggests climate change will continue and accelerate, understanding how it might contribute to violence is essential in understanding how to prevent it.

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9781442265684

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Reviews

Unstable Ground provides a guide to understanding the many and varied implications of climate change-ranging from environmental destruction, mass migration and dissolution of established borders, the need to rethink issues of national security, and the existential question of life on planet Earth-if there is not action now to stem the self-inflicted wound. Alvarez's timely book is essential reading for citizens, policy makers, and scholars. -- Roger W. Smith, College of William & Mary Alvarez has written one of the first, and most assuredly the best, analyses of the connection between climate change and genocide. As one of the top genocide scholars, he has combined his in-depth knowledge of that subject with the most important and up-to-date research on climate change. Alvarez is not afraid to confront the possible connection between future political violence and the changing environment on our planet. His analysis is a warning that must be heeded by policy makers from both industrialized and less industrialized countries. -- Herbert Hirsch, Virginia Commonwealth University

Unstable Ground provides a guide to understanding the many and varied implications of climate change-ranging from environmental destruction, mass migration and dissolution of established borders, the need to rethink issues of national security, and the existential question of life on planet Earth-if there is not action now to stem the self-inflicted wound. Alvarez's timely book is essential reading for citizens, policy makers, and scholars. -- Roger W. Smith, College of William & Mary Alvarez has written one of the first, and most assuredly the best, analyses of the connection between climate change and genocide. As one of the top genocide scholars, he has combined his in-depth knowledge of that subject with the most important and up-to-date research on climate change. Alvarez is not afraid to confront the possible connection between future political violence and the changing environment on our planet. His analysis is a warning that must be heeded by policy makers from both industrialized and less industrialized countries. -- Herbert Hirsch, Virginia Commonwealth University Climate change, the critical defining catastrophe of our time, is simultaneously a scientific and a human concern. In this path breaking volume, Alvarez has combined a number of approaches to the core issue in order to show just what this will portend for the future-a future in which violence, genocide, and population collapse is entirely likely unless the means can be found to address the slide towards disaster. This is a thought-provoking and terrifying book that nonetheless offers us some measure of hope...if only we pay heed to its message. -- Paul R. Bartrop, Florida Gulf Coast University In this highly engaging multidisciplinary volume, Alvarez explores the central issue of our time-the causes and far-reaching consequences of human-induced climate change. Drawing on his own deep expertise as a genocide studies scholar, Alvarez takes us on an at times harrowing tour of the role climate change is already playing-and will increasingly play-in producing and shaping violent conflicts, atrocities, and refugee flows around the globe. Of interest to both scholars and informed citizens, Alvarez's book clearly sets out the enormous challenges facing all of us, while offering hope that we can take substantive steps to confront this unprecedented threat to humanity and the planet that is our one and only home. -- Maureen S. Hiebert, University of Calgary

Author Information

Alex Alvarez is a professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. He was the founding director of the Martin-Springer Institute for Teaching the Holocaust, Tolerance, and Humanitarian Values. He is the author of several books, including Governments, Citizens, and Genocide, Genocidal Crimes, and Native America and the Question of Genocide. He has also served as an editor for the journal Violence and Victims, and he was a founding coeditor of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention.

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