Environmental security and conflict

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Environmental security and conflict

• Rafael Grasa
• Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
•  rafael.grasa_at_uab.es

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Armed conflicts, 19462005
For the data, see Harbom, Högbladh Wallensteen
(2006) and www.prio.no/cscw/armedconflict. In
this figure, the number of conflicts is
normalized by the number of independent
countries. Figure created by Lars Wilhelmsen.
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Armed Conflicts in 2005
Countries with conflict on their territory in
2005 (dark brown color), countries with conflict
on their territory after the end of the Cold War
(light brown color), and the geographical centre
of the conflict (red circle). Source Halvard
Buhaug, on the basis of the Uppsala/PRIO conflict
data, see www.prio.no/cscw/armedconflict.
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Evolution of the security concept
Traditional national (military) security Now
process, multidimensional----Process Common
security Comprehensive security - national
security (freedom from war and occupation) -
political security (freedom from repression) -
economic and social security (freedom from want)
- cultural security (freedom from
ethnic/religious oppression) - environmental
security Insecurity should be reserved for major
threats!
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Environmental security

• Environment physical factors that condition
  human affairs (UNESCO enviroment human beings)
• Environmental security means to reduce or prevent
• environmental consequences of war
• environmental disasters at the level of war
• erosion of the earths carrying capacity
• natural disasters
• war and armed conflict resulting from
  environmental change

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Consequences of Armed Conflict

• Battle-related deaths and war-related deaths
• Genocide and politicide in war and after
• Destruction of physical and human capital, slow
  ec. growth
• Weaker social norms and political chaos
• Weapons proliferation, crime
• Refugees and internally displaced persons
• Regional effects
• Environmental destruction (e.g. landmines)
• - Vietnam War
• - Gulf War
• - Landmines and cluster weapons
• - Nuclear winter

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Environmental disasters at the level of war

• Resource scarcity as public health problem
• lack of clean freshwater and sanitation
• Industrial accidents
• Bhopal, 1984, 2000 people killed Chernobyl Aral
  Sea
• Pollution
• industry and transportation in cities
• Climate change
• - sea-level rise, flooding, drought

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Natural disasters

• Can be as effective killers as war or worse
• Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004 killed
  225,000
• Natural disasters 19952004 killed gt 800,000
• Volcanic eruptions and meteor strikes even more
  deadly
• Most natural disasters are (by definition) not
  man-made
• But some may be exacerbated by man/human activity
• UN High-Level Panel dramatic increase in major
  disasters demonstrates how environmental
  degradation exacerbates the destructive potential
  of natural disasters
• Climate change
• - sea-level rise, flooding, drought

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Environmental factors in conflict Five views

• Neomalthusianism Resource scarcity/demography
  leads to conflict (Homer-Dixon)
• Political ecology Its the distribution of
  resources!
• Cornucopianism There is no inherent resource
  scarcity (critic to Neomalthusianism)
• Institutionalism Cooperation can overcome
  scarcity
• Resource curse Resource abundance is the problem

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The Malthusian Model

• Population grows exponentially
• Food production grows linearly
• Positive checks (higher death rate)
• War, famine, and pestilence
• Negative checks (lower birth rate)
• Abortions, infanticide, birth control

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The neo-Malthusian model

• Population pressure high resource consumption
• Resource depletion
• Resource scarcity
• Resource competition
• Armed conflict

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The Homer-Dixon Model

• Demand-induced scarcity
• (mainly driven by population growth)
• Supply-induced scarcity
• (mainly driven by depletion or degradation of a
  resource)
• Structural scarcity
• (mainly driven by resource distribution)

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Some arguments for the scarcity thesis

• Resource scarcity is the single most important
  issue in armed conflict if you include
  territory
• This is even more true after the end of the Cold
  War
• Territorial disputes can be proxies for disputes
  about other scarce resources (minerals, energy
  sources, food, water, etc.)
• Sharing a river seems to contribute to
  international conflict
• Historical evidence of resource scarcity leading
  to internal fighting and even societal collapse
• Ambiguous evidence from the present linking
  scarcity of water and land to internal conflict

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Studies of effects of resource scarcity

• Hauge Ellingsen (1998) environmental
  degradation stimulates civil war
• - Theisen but these findings cannot be
  replicated
• - State Failure Task Force (1998) environmental
  degradation does not stimulate state failure
• - de Soysa (2002) change variables do not
  measure degradation
• Binningsbø et al. (2005) ecological footprint ?
  peace
• few robust findings for internal conflict
• more robust findings for water and interstate
  conflict

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Cornucopian objections

• methodological
• economic
• political
• demographic

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Methodological objections

• few systematic studies
• many studies limited to countries in conflict
• spurious factors is poverty the key?
• is resource scarcity a cause of conflict or an
  effect?

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Economic objections

• environmental Kuznets curve
• resources can be substituted
• technological innovation
• market pricing

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Air pollution an environmental Kuznets curve?
Income per person, 1985 PPP
SO2 levels in 47 cities in 31 countries. Source
Lomborg (2001 176), mainly based on World Bank
data
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The long-term decline in food prices
World Bank, various sources (personal
communication with Betty Dow, Commodities
Information Analyst, Development Prospects Group,
World Bank, 7 September 2006). The price is
weighed by the Manufactures Unit Values Index and
is given in constant 1990 USD, thus reflecting
real prices. For the trend to reflect real food
availability all markets have to be open (in
order to make the price mechanisms work
properly). If this caveat holds, there seems to
be a marked decline in global food prices up to
the mid 1980s when it stabilizes. The peak in
1974 is due to increased production costs (and
perhaps increased hoarding) due to the 1973 oil
crisis.1
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Political objections

• Democracy and environmental performance (or
  commit-ment)
• - Freedom of information
• - Pluralism
• - Pragmatism
• - International cooperation
• - Market orientation
• - Greater respect for human life
• The democratic peace (internal, external)
• Cooperation trumps conflict

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Environmental cooperation

• Law of the Sea
• River authorities
• Joint hydroelectric projects
• Cooperation cuts across conflict boundaries
• Webs of interdependence?
• Towards an International Dike Authority for
  Low-Lying Areas?

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Demographic objections

• Population pressure may not always be harmful
• Ester Boserup
• Julian Simon
• Limited impact of three forms of population
  pressure
• population density
• population growth
• youth bulges
• Global population explosion has been called off

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World population, 1950-2300
Source World Population to 2300.
ST/ESA/SER.A./236. New York United Nations,
Population Division, 2004, www.un.org/population/p
ublications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf.
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The resource curse

• Abundance of natural resources lead to
• low economic growth
• corruption
• poor governance
• resource capture and looting

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Natural resources and civil war
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Criticism of the resource curse literature

• Share of natural resources exports to GDP does
  not reflect lootability (saqueo)
• Results are not robust
• Case selection, as in neo-malthusian stories
• Nation-level data too rough

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Diamonds and conflict I
Source Halvard Buhaug, Scott Gates Päivi
Lujala, 2003. Lootable Natural Resources and the
Duration of Armed Civil Conflict, 1946-2001,
paper presented at the 11th Norwegian National
Meeting in Political Science, Trondheim, 810
January.
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Diamanter og konflikter II
Source Elisabeth Gilmore, Päivi Lujala, Nils
Petter Gleditsch Jan Ketil Rød, 2005. 'Conflict
Diamonds A New Dataset', Conflict Management and
Peace Science 22(3) 257292.
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Opium and coca cultivation since 1950
Source Päivi Lujala, NTNU, unpublished.
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Will the future be different from the past?

• Are we eroding the earth's carrying capacity?
• - neomalthusians and cornucopians
  disagree sharply
• Many gloomy predictions in the past were wrong
• - population, food, raw materials
• Are changes now less reversible?
• - biodiversity loss, soil erosion and
  deforestation less so
• Is the best strategy to prevent or to alleviate?
• - global warming

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Some tentative conclusions

• Cornucopians are justified in questioning the
  apocalyptic visions of global man-made collapse
• - global warming a major uncertainty
• Neomalthusians rightly point to local scarcity
  conflicts over land, water, etc.
• - but these are low-level conflicts and tied to
  the quality of government and the level of
  development
• The 'resource cursers' argue correctly that some
  conflicts are fueled by natural resource wealth
• - but some of their generalizations are as
  hasty as those of the neomalthusians
• Liberal policies provide our best general answer
  to threats to human security, including
  environmental
• - promote democracy by peaceful means!

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The commodity-conflict relation is becoming
better understood

• Primary commodities strongly associated with
  conflict, and oil in particular
• Two key mechanisms
• (1) through the weakening of the state
• (2) through the financing of rebels, sometimes by
  corporations
• Effect (1) seems dominant but some clear cases of
  effect (2) also
• Here follow 5 suggestions for dealing with these
  governance problems

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Recommendation 1

• Publication of Payments Make it mandatory
• The Problem with Voluntary Compliance
• The countries where voluntary compliance is least
  likely are the countries where you need it most
• If voluntary compliance fails, corporations will
  still want to deal with unrepresentative
  governments
• If it succeeds, regimes in resource rich
  countries are still likely to be overthrown, more
  so than governments in corporations home
  countries
• Advantages of Mandatory Compliance
• For governments Mandatory requirements can
  strengthen the position of willing governments
• For corporations It can level the playing field
  in cases where corporations compete against other
  corporations that are not constrained by human
  rights concerns
• Practicalities
• There are different ways this can be done
  delisting, through IFI conditionality, through
  other legislation

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Recommendation 2

• Establish a Global Public Information Center
• The Problem
• Lack of transparency about what is transparent!
• What deal did Chad get? I dont know, Chadians
  dont know. We are not sure even what we are
  supposed to know about this transparent deal
• Suggestion Establish a single site, posting
  relevant legislation bids and contracts from all
  resource producing states
• Advantages
• Makes it obvious when documents are not available
• Posting could be used as a condition for
  financing
• Practicalities Could be hosted by the World
  Bank, by the OSI

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Recommendation 3

• Maintain Income Taxes
• The Problem States accessing resource revenues
  are tempted to drop income axes, in part because
  they are distortionary, in part because they are
  difficult to collect and sometimes unpopular. But
  doing this weakens the linkages between the state
  and society.
• Suggestion Maintain Income Taxes
• Advantages
• Avoid hollowing out of state structures
• Make revenues dependent on national income
• Make revenues dependent on popular support
• Practicalities Use natural resources revenues
  for targeted expenditure not for general
  budgetary support

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Recommendation 4

• Get corporations involved at the peace
  negotiations table
• The Problem
• The implementation of peace negotiations is often
  jeopardized by the lack of employment
  possibilities for ex-combatants. Investors fears
  of a re-start of conflict can become
  self-fulfilling prophecies.
• Advantages of getting corporations involved at
  the peace negotiations table
• For corporations Awareness of quality of deals
  and interests of groups
• For the country Help provide basis and
  confidence in economic terms of the deal
• Risks
• May stifle competitions
• Moral hazard

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Recommendation 5

• Make contracts conditional upon criteria for
  Regime Recognition
• The Problem Successful mining may lead to the
  desire to capture the state. Whoever gets the
  sate gets control of the assets. This increases
  political risk.
• Suggestion. Tie accounts and contracts to
  available mechanisms for recognizing regimes
• For example Regimes recognized by the African
  Union
• For example Establish club criteria for
  recognition, similar to the Millennium Challenge
  Account provisions

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