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.