Normally, when I think about conflicts I usually think about religious, ethnic/racial, interstate, intrastate with foreign involvement, ideological, territorial, and economic. I tend to forget about environmental conflicts or resource conflicts.  This type of conflict is also important because it contributes to mass migration, global warming, and trafficking of all kinds (human, animal, and weapons). Listening to Professor Richard Matthew discuss environmental violence was intense.  He kept painting a bleak picture but it was information we needed to hear. It is not just resource scarce conflicts such as drought areas or lack of fertile land for farming that create massive problems but also certain resources creating problems as well such as the diamond or ruby trade.  I remember reading  from the UNEP report “From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment” about 18 conflicts/internal unrests that was caused by natural resources. The following resources are some of the resources that are the cause of these conflicts: timber, opium, diamonds, gold, oil, cocoa, coffee, rubber, and copper. From the readings and the lecture, I have realized that these conflicts will become more and more frequent and will eventually involve all the powerful nations at some point, which will definitely put weaker nations at a disadvantage and create bigger catastrophes for themselves. One thing that stuck with me from the lecture was the fact that the 8 richest individuals in the world have 0.2% of the global wealth and that the bottom 50% of the population constitute that same amount of global wealth (0.2%) as well.  Knowing that the wealthy and powerful continue to control the worlds resources is a scary thought.