Accounting for the Emergence of Conflict Accounting for Emergence of Conflict

Presumably, a primary reason for accounting for the emergence of conflict is to use whatever knowledge is gained in efforts to prevent conflict. Conflict prevention theory suggests the following identifiable key stages of conflict: Latent conflict, manifest limited conflict, and escalating violent conflict (Lund, 2009). Accepting that these stages are discrete in theory, the possibility exists that interventions aimed at prevention, particularly that of a structural nature, are more robust when implemented in early (latent) stage of conflict (Lund, 2009). Although the concept of structural violence indicates long-term, intractable social and cultural arrangements, it also suggests opportunity for governments to tackle socioeconomic sources of conflict. It follows that states fail to address tensions through early, meaningful, systematic, and peaceful structural and cultural corrections (Galtung, 1990). Indeed, threats to structural violence trigger responses intended to preserve the status quo from those whose interests are protected by inequitable cultural, economic, and social arrangements (Galtung, 1990). Conflict arises from multiple causal, context-specific, and multidimensional factors that may be generally categorized as political and institutional, socioeconomic, or resource and environmental ("GSDRC," 2014). In contemporary...

To these variable but conventional formulas associated with the emergence of conflict, comes a new multiplier: climate change (Barnett & Adger, 2007). Human security is grounded in homeostasis, the outer bounds of which vary widely over time and context. Yet climate change functions as a direct threat to the acceptable range of homeostasis that most people prefer -- and that, by and large, support human activity (Barnett & Adger, 2007). By reducing access to, and the quality of, natural resources needed to sustain livelihoods and ecological niches, human security is undermined in the present and increasingly in the future (Barnett & Adger, 2007). During the latent stage of conflict, inter-party and societal mistrust, suspicion, and animosity exist at lower levels ("GSDRC," 2014). Greater opportunity lies in the early times of a conflict cycle, as more transformative and far-reaching change may be accomplished. Once the later stage of conflict has been reached, efforts are directed toward thwarting or containing escalation -- and all positions harden ("GSDRC," 2014). The dynamic interactions of the various causes and dimensions of conflict,…