Ecology, Politics and Violent Conflict

Anon. 1999. Ecology, Politics and Violent Conflict. London: Zed Books.

Ecology, Politics and Violent Conflict

Lots of good things, especially chapter 5.

Chapter 1:

The standard account of conflict in Africa can be broken down into arguments about either blood or babies. By that, the author indicates conflict over either resources or ethnic tensions;. The author believes that these explanations are not as adequately descriptive as they could be. These explanations are not nuance3d, and much more is brought to bear on the cause of African conflict.

There is a very good overview of the history of the conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis. The origins of this conflict is largely related to political situations (Belgium initially preferred the Tutsis, as they were more “European” looking, then preferred the Hutus. The Hutus then gained power, and, when there was the potential for power sharing situations, they quickly took out their frustrations on the Tutsis, eventually leading to genocide when the Hutu president’s plane was shot down.)

Models of agricultural production are also not adequately nuanced and do not take into perspective other options for production, such as organic production that does not overly rely on pesticides, etc. The future needs of global agricultural production are typically prescribed technocratic, top-down solutions, which are not sustainable.

Chapter 2:

There is a typology for African conflict:

1. Banditry
2. National conflict over Political Power
3. Regional conflict over domestic political power
4. Local conflict over renewable resources

The causes of increased violence in Africa are mai8nly Western. Tradi8tional differences between ethnic groups involved violent conflict, but not on the scale that mo9der weaponry affords. . Other causes include the lack of specialization within African countries relating to agricultural or economic production; the economies need to be3 more diversified. Explanations for the cause of conflict typically involve crass claims about e3thnic groups, and do not fully deal with the importance of resources.

Chapter 5:

“A basic assumption of this chapter is that under certain conditions environmental degradation may cause violent conflict or war” (76).


“It is important to note the twin biases in the debate on environmental conflicts among scholars and experts. The first I call ‘the discovery of a new issue’ bias: whenever a new issue emerges, there is a tendency to ignore history. This leads to rather alarming statements about future events such as ‘water wars…The second bias is ‘environmental determinism’, which tends to overestimate the significance of geographical structures, demographic data and resource dependence at the expense of cultural, socioeconomic and political capacities or shortcomings, respectively, in order to deal with environmental degradation as well as discrimination…This chapter does not set out to provide an exhaustive survey of the growing literature dealing with environmental security in one form or another…It concentrates instead on: (1) an early contribution that conceptualized well the interrelationship between environmental transformation, underdevelopment and socio-political conflict…; (2) recent studies which focus on resource scarcity and environmental degradation as a major security issue or as a trigger of various types of serious conflicts” (77).

Then reviews different paths to conflict through environmental scarcity. Of particular use would be the review of three authors and their takes on the link (88). Wallensteen (92), Homer-Dixon (91, 94) and Baechler et al (96) are explored.

Overall, a very useful chapter.

Climate Change and Energy Insecurity

Anon. 2009. Climate Change and Energy Insecurity: The Challenge for Peace, Security and Development. London: Earthscan.

Edited volume of short chapters dealing with many aspects of climate change, clearly not just with energy insecurity.

Some chapters that may have limited use:

Oil: How Can Europe Kick the Habit of Dependence?

Derek Osborn

“Two critical factors will shape the future of oil production and consumption over the next decades. The first is accelerating climate change. The second is the increasing difficulty in finding secure sources of oil in the world. The interaction of these two factors is currently leading the world into a more and more unstable position” (18).

Localized Energy Conflicts in the Oil Sector

Nniimmo Bassey

Oil corrupts already corrupted states. Energy conflicts are not local, but are global (50). What about national peak oils, not just global peak oil (51).

Climate of Fear: Environment, Migration and Security

Devyani Gupta

This is a problem.

Stott: Climate Change, Poverty and War

Stott, R. 2007. “Climate change, poverty and war.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 100(9) (9): 399-402. doi:10.1258/jrsm.100.9.399.

This article looks at the Global Commons Institute policy prescription for mitigating the impacts of climate change, referred to as Contraction and Convergence. There is little about the link between climate change and conflict, though there are three citations that indicate that climate change will exacerbate the drivers of conflict.

OECD: Infrastructure to 2030

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2006. Infrastructure to 2030. Paris: OECD.

”Tomorrow’s infrastructure will demand a much lower spend than today’s fixed line and cellular mobile and will be much quicker to roll out” (53).

“Often overestimated in the past, telecommunications will nevertheless increasingly be viewed as a potential substitute for travel. This could reduce dependencies on vehicles and their fuels and ameliorate the effects of pollution” (54).

“This section briefly reviews the telecommunication infrastructure developments of the past 25 years by examining gfour areas of trends in infrastructure investment:
-past demand and the main drivers
-current state of the infrastructure
-whether past developments in demand will continue
-which trends seem clearly unsustainable” (61).

The publication presents a table over viewing the main drivers of telecommunication demand. Under the “main drivers” of broadband (long-distance, not local loop) demand are “cost and technical (ease of upgrading capacity) for growing international data traffic, especially Internet users after 1996/7 as World Wide Web interface made the Internet popular” (62). It is clear that the roll-out of broadband is very heavily driven by consumer demand.

“The major point here is that there is an underlying force behind the successful developments of recent times. Liberalization has been a significant driver of infrastructure development over the past 25 years since it has allowed the door to open to a new era of multiple infrastructures. Demand-side forces, especially the power of consumers acting on the political balance in government, have produced a revolution in the three key infrastructure drivers of telecommunications:
-…deregulation…
-competition of all kinds…
-new technology…” (64).

What about the future of telecom demand? “With the growing importance of the knowledge-based economy, the demand for telecommunications and its infrastructure will continue to expand well beyond 2030” (68).

“Key factors driving future demand and infrastructure investment” (70).
“-geopolitics;
-security;
-macroeconomy;
-finance;
-demography;
-environment;
-technology;
-governance;
-telecommunications pricing;
-microeconomics—primary consumer basics inflation” (70).

“Projected trends in demand for telecoms and investment to 2030” (78).

“Accessibility = control of access + cost of access + ease of access + ubiquity + speed of rollout” (79).

“In general we can say that the main trend in demand for telecommunications that will drive infrastructure is a massive expansion of demand globally from developin countries, firstly as incomes increase to around the USD 3 000 level. Secondly we can expect take-up for those below this income level, as prices fall” (82).

“In later years, beyond 2015, an increasing component of traffic is expected to be machine-to-machine communications and transactions over the Internet, especially in industrial applications such as supply chain, process control and also in financial transactions for person to machine. An ‘Internet of things’ will grow up. Machine-to-machine communications for industrial and consumer functions and person-to-machine, for instance to make purchases, will be increasingly an everyday event. The impact on infrastructure will be to increase not only the traffic, but the address space required for all the new respondents” (84).

“The telecommunications industry has been notoriously poor at forecasting the take-up of new technologies and services, largely because market forecasts have often been supply driven and technocentric and do not focus on understanding consumers; behavior and their needs—and what they will pay for…A better approach to forecasting is to identify and understand the underlying trends and their drivers, and to take a demand-driven approach. Firstly a more global view of the market is not essential. This perspective provides an understanding that the overall telecommunications market has the potential to grow to three or four times its current size in terms of the number of consumers, by expansion outside the OECD group. This pricing is important and this will be the key stimulant for consumer take-up. A second key finding is that ‘content is not king’; instead it is connectivity that consumers will pay for as their primary m0otivation as this new market opens…Third, wireless technologies are developing rapidly and allowing infrastructure to be rolled out more cost effectively than ever before, offering the promise of connectivity anytime, anywhere, and at even lower prices…” (85).


The issue of infrastructure investment is then explored. It is highlighted that telecom investment, as a percentage of total infrastructure investment, has found its share steadily growing (86).

Private v public investment: “Private sector-led growth in infrastructure investment has revolutionzed access to telecommunications services around the world over the past ten years. For the OECD community we see that deregulation has allowed new pricing regimes, not controlled by the incumbents, and specifically the VoIP market to take off, despite attempts to ban or restrict it in some countries” (88).

“The key growth regions for telecommunications infrastructure, as outlined above, are in developing countries” (88).

There is a discussion of the future mix of technology, and how this relates to current infrastructure constraints (the local loop, for example).

“In consequence it is possible to see the progressive arrival of a new model of infrastructure, heavily influenced by the requirements of the low-cost demands, from developing countries seeking more ‘bits per buck’ for their billions of people in the under USD 3 000 per year income bracket” (101).

“The result may be parallel operation of two infrastructure models globally for at least a decade: a previous OECD model of mixed long distance carrier standards for trunk networking with a legacy of wireline in broadband DSL and CATV cable in the local loop, and at the same time, the simpler two level radio access/fibre long distance model slowly spreading across the world” (103). The mix of this parallel development is explored for different key regions on 110-1.

Cross-infrastructure impacts on transport are explored on 122-5. On health and medicine on 128-9. On the elderly on 130-1. On education on 131-3. On crime on 133-4.

The chapter ends with policy recommendations.

Stordahl: Long-Term Broadband Technology Forecasting

Stordahl, K. 2004. “Long-term broadband technology forecasting.” Teletronikk 4(4.2004): 13-31.

“This paper gives an overview of the relevant broadband technologies, describes their market positions and possibilities. Diffusion models are used to make long-term broadband forecasts for the Western European residential market. The forecasts are separated for the main broadband technologies…based on market share predictions for each technology. The long-term forecasts are evaluated and compared with other broadband forecasts for the Western Europe market” (13).

There is increasing difficulty to make specific, long-term forecasts of ICT related technologies because
the market has become deregulated.

In order to understand “broadband rollout”, we must have two components: we must first know the overall broadband coverage, and secondly the “take rate”, which is the, “proportion between demand and coverage in an area” (17).

“The long-term broadband forecasts are based on results from techno-economic calculations. The techno-economic calculations evaluate the ‘economic value’, i.e. expressed by net present value or pay back [sic] period of rollout of different broadband technologies. The assessments have been carried out for rollout on a national level and on specific areas like urban, suburban, rural and especially the rest market to examine the potential of the different broadband technologies. The main results from the techno-economic calculations show that it is difficult for new broadband technologies to capture significant market share in areas where cable modem and/or DSL are already deployed” (18).

“Important drivers in the broadband market are of course the applications. The evolution of applications generates continuously higher broadband penetration” (21). Other important drivers are the online content and the government supported programs promoting the technology.

“The broadband forecasts for the different technologies are modeled by beginning with the broadband penetration forecasts developed for the total broadband demand in the Western European residential market. Based on experience from the last few years, diffusion type models have proved to have the best abilities for long-term forecast modeling” (22).

There is a broadband forecast from 2000-2010 for Western Europe, with the inflection point at around 2005-6.

The author then compares broadband forecasts for 7 models.

Fildes and Kumar: Telecommunications Demand Forecasting - A Review

Fildes, Robert, and V. Kumar. “Telecommunications demand forecasting--a review.” International Journal of Forecasting 18(4) (October): 489-522. doi:10.1016/S0169-2070(02)00064-X.

“This paper describes various models that have been used to understand market dynamics. Markets discussed include both established and new: mobile, the internet, and PSTN… Cross-sectional choice models of the mode of accessing the service are discussed along with models for usage in established markets. These models typically include price…differ4entials and use standard econometric methods, focusing on price elasticity estimation. Forecasting accuracy has been neglected. New product models may include additional ‘drivers’ such as aspects of service quality and the attributes of the products themselves. Both choice models of adoption of new products and Bass-type diffusion models have been used in forecasting. Because of the complexity of the ‘drivers’ of the adoption process, the successful modeling of these markets has been limited, not least by inadequate data. Simulation models have been proposed to structure the problems more completely and overcome these inadequacies. Both these classes of model have not been effectively validated, researchers having been content to just propose a new approach without thoroughly testing it against alternatives” (Robert Fildes and V. Kumar, 1).

“The core concept at the heart of most models of telecommunications demand is simple—that expected usage determines access demand and these two in turn determine equipment requirements” (R Fildes and V Kumar 2002).

“In standard models of demand in the PSTN, modeling is though a two stage procedure where usage (quantity in minutes demanded or number of calls) is modeled as a function of price, income and other relevant variables conditional on access while access is modeled through a model of the individual choices made between alternatives. here the dependent variable is categorical and the logit framework, which we discuss later in this section, offers a suitable representation” (R Fildes and V Kumar 2002, 5).