Although conflicts with natural resource underpinnings have historically engaged academic interest, efforts to draw thematic links between natural resources and conflict are of comparatively recent dating. Indeed, one of the earliest efforts to draw a link between natural resources and factors that predicate conflict was Malthus' warning on the possible implications of natural resource scarcity that could come from overpopulation. The Malthusian philosophy dominated attention for generations and was to be the precursor of many subsequent writings on the subject. Furthermore, that Malthus' writing came during a period when two opposing schools of thought—mercantilism and revolutionary utopianism—dominated European thinking about population enhanced its importance. The pursuit of concerted theoretical linkage then experienced a lull, only to recommence in the last few decades, largely because of the increase in the number of conflicts over natural resources.

One conclusion that seems to have emerged from most studies on natural resource conflicts is that local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies influence the ways in which natural resources intertwine with conflict.