Liberal ends, illiberal means: National security, 'environmental conflict' and the making of the Cairo consensus

The field of environmental security, and in particular Thomas Homer-Dixon's model of environmental conflict, were heavily influenced by neo-Malthusian degradation narratives, which disproportionately blame population pressures for generating poverty, environmental degradation, migration and political violence. In turn, the presence of these degradation narratives provided an avenue through which population actors and interests could intersect with the emerging environmental security agenda in the 1990s. As part of a political strategy to engage the foreign policy establishment in the 1994 UN Population Conference in Cairo, private population funders supported environmental conflict research and its dissemination at a variety of venues. There was a general willingness to deploy racially-charged demographic alarmism, particularly concerning population and migration, in the representation of Third World threats. The result was a kind of ideological schizophrenia within the population community as some actors used the politics of fear to generate support for the Cairo conference, while others appealed to a feminist agenda of women's empowerment and reproductive health. Some did both at the same time. This case illustrates the tension between liberal foreign policy goals and the illiberal means and ideologies deployed to achieve them, and the critical role played by private philanthropy. It is a cautionary tale with relevance today as certain population agencies are employing demographic explanations of terrorism to attract conservative support for international family planning assistance.