AFRICA: SPECIAL REPORT

Policy makers urged to examine ecological sources of conflict

NAIROBI, 13 Mar 2003 (IRIN) - African policy makers should move beyond "traditional" methods of conflict management, that have so far failed to produce tangible solutions to conflicts in the region, researchers argue.

Instead they should adopt an intergrated approach which takes into account ecological sources of conflict, if their efforts to bring peace to the region are to be successful.

This relatively new school of thought is being advanced by conflict management scholars, who seek to incorporate an environmental perspective into diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving and preventing wars in the sub-Saharan region.

At a meeting, held this week in Nairobi, experts said conflict management approaches had largely focused on political sources of conflict, which simply acted as triggers, rather than the root causes of conflict in the region. Diplomatic approaches traditionally used in the region have largely focused on the text-book concepts of conflict management, notably "conflict resolution", "conflict management" and "post conflict disarmament and rehabilitation", they argued.

The meeting, jointly organised by the Nairobi-based African Centre Technological Studies (ACTS) and the Freidrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation (FES), a German funding agency, urged policy makers to adhere to the principles of good governance and fair use and distribution of natural resources.

COMPLEXITIES

The meeting also examined the findings of a new research project, which studied ecological dimensions in selected conflicts in sub-Saharan countries. The findings of the project have been documented in a book, "Scarcity and Surfeit: the ecology of Africa's conflicts".

The book, jointly published by ACTS and the South African-based Institute of Security Studies (ISS), has identified important ecological factors that often not only sustain the cycle of violence in the sub-Saharan Africa's conflicts, but in some cases trigger conflicts.

"Conflict systems in Africa are operationally complex. The levels of engagement and the number of variables underlying conflict are many; and more often than not the operation of conflict is uncertain," noted Joao Gomes Porto, a senior researcher with the South African based Institute of Security Studies.

According to Chris Huggins, a research associate at ACTS, sub-Saharan countries have environments that not only have diverse extremes but which have great significance to the livelihoods of local communities. Climatic factors also characterise these environments, in cyclical patterns that have shaped population movements and regional conflict systems.

In addition, many of the ecological factors and livelihood systems straddle international borders in the form of drainage basins, rivers and lakes, which result in seasonal cross-border migration by pastoralist communities, Huggins said.

Where resources are scarce, resulting from environmental stress and mismanagement, high population growth or unfavourable climatic factors, conflicts have emerged out of competing interests for the resources, he added.

Ethnicity also has become a factor of survival and conflict in specific ecological zones with resource scarcity.

"Because conflict takes on ethnic dimensions in Africa, where wars generally involve militias and guerrilla groups rather than troops, civilians are targeted just because they belong to the 'enemy group'," said Huggins. "Ecological borders, therefore, tend to become ethnic and social borders, and often the scene of conflict."

SCARCITY

Scarcity of land and continued environmental degradation is one of the main ecological dimensions that the researchers have associated with several conflicts in the region.

In Rwanda for example, land scarcity was politicised by the ruling elite who framed the issue on political terms, further aggravating the conflict, which resulted in the 1994 genocide, said researcher Caroline Abong.

"The Rwandese conflict has been wrongly portrayed as a purely ethnic problem. But there were also issues of ecological scarcity," she noted. "The management of the conflict was not properly addressed. They aimed at defusing ethnic tensions, but ignored aspects of ecological scarcity."

Land scarcity also has been found to be an indirect source of conflict in the agriculturally-rich Jubaland region of southern Somalia, where much of the fighting in the country's civil war is concentrated, according to Ibrahim Farah, an officer on the Somalia desk at the US embassy in Nairobi.

Several factions in Somalia have battled for control in the Jubaland region, in part to stake their claim to its resource-rich "deegan" [a Somali concept referring to exclusive control of land and its resources].

"Conflict in Jubaland centres on access and control of deegan. The overall ecology of the southern Somalia region is considerably drier and less favorable to agro-pastoralists than is the Jubaland region," Farah told the meeting.

ABUNDANCE

Scarcity, however, is not the only source of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. Ecological abundance also has been found to be the source of some of the most violent conflicts in the region. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a case in point, where abundant natural resources such as gold, diamonds, and coltan, have resulted in the deaths of millions of people since the colonial period.

According to John Katunga, a programme coordinator with the Nairobi Peace Initiative organisation, up to 3.5 million people have been killed in eastern DRC as a direct result of regional and international interests in exploiting coltan, a valuable mineral discovered only recently in the country.

Regional efforts aimed at bringing peace to DRC, notably the Lusaka peace accord, have only addressed the political interests of the parties to the conflict, Katunga said. "History repeats itself in the way of violent and illicit exploitation of its abundant resource base."

"There is a long and tragic history of resource predation in Congo, beginning during the time when Congo was a private concession held by Belgian king Leopold, lasting through to the time the country was ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko, and continuing during the ongoing civil war that followed the demise of Mobutu's regime," Katunga said.

"This is no longer a Congolese war. There were six foreign armies in Congo. Now they have been reduced to three. The fact the Rwanda and Uganda have fought six times inside Congo is a clear sign that they are interested in Congolese wealth," he added.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, exploitation of natural resources - which directly determine the livelihoods of communities - is often marked by patterns of predation, exploitation and lack of political accountability, the researchers noted. At the same time, those with the means to add value to the commodities often belong to particular elite groups, which act in their own interests at the expense of primary producers.

In Burundi for example, the commodity chain linking peasants to consumers includes a number of actors and groups, at the top of which the government coffee sector regulatory body maintains a monopoly over coffee exports, while fixing lower prices for the producers.

Ecological conflicts between people and their governments also have been sustained by foreign elements which are interested in exploiting the resources, the researchers said.

Ecological conflicts in sub-Saharn Africa also have international dimensions, such as the Nile river basin, whose resources are contested by 10 countries. Although the Nile waters were entirely allocated to Egypt and Sudan, by a treaty they signed with British colonial government, upstream riparian countries - particularly Ethiopia - have challenged the agreements.