This article discusses environmental security within an environmental conflict
perspective. It is an attempt to examine violent consequences of environmental
stress as a major research issue among the scholars of political conflict. Despite
this study's attempt to shift emphasis to the environmental context, environmental stress results in violent conflict only when interacting with other
political, ethnic, economic, and social causes. But this does not imply that
environmental issues should always be subordinated to others. Conflict is not
a one-time event, but rather a process of change that continues through
successive phases. Citing the case of Sudan, I show that even though ethnopoli tical reasons alone provoked the civil war, as time goes by the character of the
conflict is evolving and is complicated by environmental change. In compari son, demographic and environmental stress have been primary sources of
conflict in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh by stimulating the group
identity of affected people.
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