Violence Through Environmental Discrimination: Causes, Rwanda Arena, and Conflict Model

332 Pages·1999·7.6 MB·English

by  Günther Baechler (auth.)

Violence Through Environmental Discrimination
Social Indicators Research Series
Volume 2
General Editor:
ALEX C. MICHALOS
University ofN orthern British Columbia,
Prince George, Canada
Editors:
ED DIENER
University ofI llinois, Champaign, U.S.A.
WOLFGANG GLATZER
J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
TORBJORN MOUM
University of Oslo, Norway
JOACHIM VOGEL
Central Bureau ·of Statistics, Stockholm, Sweden
RUUT VEENHOVEN
Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The titles published in this series are listed at the end oft his volume.
VIOLENCE THROUGH
ENVIRONMENTAL
DISCRIMINATION
Causes, Rwanda Arena, and Conflict Model
by
GUNTHER BAECHLER
Swiss Peace Foundation,
Institute for Conflict Resolution,
Berne, Switzerland
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-5144-8 ISBN 978-94-015-9175-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-9175-1
Printed on acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
©1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
OriginaIly published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1999
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
inc1uding photocopying. recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
TO MAREN AND CLARA ANNINA
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Xl
SUMMARY xv
1 INTRODUCTION
The Transformation of Society-Nature Relationship 1
1.1. Environmental Conflicts: Historical and
Contemporary Phenomena 3
1.1.1. Society-Nature Relationships 3
1.1.2. Historical Evidence 7
1.1.3. Development of Maldevelopment 9
1.1.4. Socioecological Heterogeneity 11
1.2. Landscape as Threatened Life-Support System 14
1.2.1. Water as Part of the Life-Support System 15
1.2.2. Soil as Part of the Life-Support System 16
1.3. Summary and Overview 17
2 DISCUSSION
State of the Art 21
2.1. Founex Report on Environmental Change and
Underdevelopment 22
2.2. Linkage between Environmental Change, Security,
and Conflict 24
2.2.1. Linkages between Environment and Security 25
2.2.2. Discussion of the Causal Linkage 26
2.3. Methodological Dilemmas in the Study of Causal
Linkage 30
2.3.1. Evaluation of Taxonomies and Typologies 30
2.3.2. A Conflict Story Can Be Told from Different Angles 35
2.3.3. »Someone's Cow Ate Someone Else's Crop« 37
2.3.4. »The Effects of Persistent Drought...« 40
2.3.5. Causation in Complex Politico-Ecological Systems 41
2.3.6. Causal Relationship between Independent and
Dependent Variable 44
2.3.7. Action as a Result of Two Filters 47
2.3.8. To Sort out Causes by Attributing Specific Roles
to Them 50
2.4 Research Strategy 52
viii
3 CORRELA nONS
Environment, Maldevelopment, and Violent Conflict 55
3.1. Human Development Correlated with Violent Conflicts
and Wars 56
3.1.1. War Register and HDI-Country Rank 57
3.1.2. Interpretation of the Tables and Findings 58
3.2. Violent Conflicts and Wars in Arid Lowlands 64
3.2.1. Arid Zones, Poverty, and Conflict 64
3.3. Violent Conflicts and Wars in Mountains 72
3.3.1. Cultural Aspects of Violence in Mountains and
Highlands 73
3.3.2. Patterns of Conflicts in Mountains 80
3.4. Conclusions 82
4 TYPOLOGY
Types of Conflicts and the Role of the Environment 85
4.1. Environmentally Caused Violence: A Phenomenon of
Developing and Transitional Societies (Hypothesis One) 86
4.1.1. Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Type AI) 89
4.1.2. Center-Periphery Conflicts (Type AIl) 91
4.1.3. Internal Migration Conflicts (Type AlII) 92
4.1.4. Cross-Border Migration Conflicts (Type BIV) 94
4.1.5. Demographically Caused Migration Conflicts
(TypeBV) 95
4.1.6. International Water Conflicts (Type CVI) 96
4.1.7. Global Environmental Conflicts (Type CVII) 98
4.1.8. Conflict Types: Conclusions 99
4.2. Inevitable Situations and the Lack of Regulatory
Mechanisms (Hypothesis Two) 101
4.2.1. Inevitable Situations 102
4.2.2. Lack of Regulatory Mechanisms 103
4.2.3. Instrumentalizing the Environmental Problem 105
4.2.4. Opportunities to Build up Organizations and
Find Allies 106
4.2.5. Context of an Ongoing Armed Conflict 107
4.3. The Role of the Environment as a Cause of Conflict 107
4.3.1. Reason 108
4.3.2. Trigger 109
4.3.3. Target 109
4.3.4. Channel 110
4.3.5. Catalyst 111
ix
4.4. The Intensity of Environmental Conflicts 111
5 CASE STUDY
Why Environmental Discrimination Caused Violence on the
'Mille Collines' 113
5.1. Propositions 115
5.2. Causes and Their Roles 117
5.2.1. Reason I: Ethnogenesis as Hierarchy 117
5.2.2. Reason II: Social and Environmental Discrimination 129
5.2.3. Channeling: Increasing Conflict Potential before the
Revolution of 1959/60 143
5.2.4. Targeting: Freedom from Oppression versus
Elimination 152
5.2.5. Development without Democratization 157
5.2.6. Catalysts: The Invasion of the FPR and the Arusha
Peace Agreement 158
5.2.7. Trigger: Plane Crash and First Massacres 162
5.3. Preservation of Power at All Costs: Conclusions 162
6 MODEL
Causal Relationship between Environmental Transformation
and Violent Conflict 167
6.1. Model Building and Constraints 168
6.1.1. Explain a Lot with Very Little 168
6.1.2. Prerequisites of a Model 170
6.2. Propositions and Hypotheses 175
6.3. Environmental Conflict Model 179
6.4. Indicators 181
7 EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
Six Area Studies and Six Control Cases to Check the Model 187
7.1. Environmental Discrimination 189
7.1.1. Ethnopolitical Conflicts 189
7.1.2. Center-Periphery Conflicts 192
7.1.3. Internal Migration Conflicts 193
7.1.4. Cross-Border Migration Conflicts 196
7.1.5. Demographically Caused Conflicts 199
7.1.6. International Water Conflicts 201
7.2. Dependence on Natural Capital: The Cases of Mexico,
Botswana, and South Africa 204
x
7.3. Marginalization and Group Cohesion: The Cases of
Mexico, Botswana, and South Africa 206
7.4. Lack of Regulatory Mechanisms 209
7.5. Population Dynamics 211
7.6. State Instability and Poor Performance 212
7.7. Complex External Influences 217
7.8. What Makes a Difference? 219
8 OUTLOOK
Conflict Potential, Sustainable Development, and Environmental
Security 221
8.1. Multiple Causal Roles Concept 222
8.2. Crisis Triangle: Maldevelopment, Transformation, Conflict 226
8.2.1. Rural Transformation 226
8.2.2. Ethnopoliticized Environmental Conflict in the
Rwanda Arena 229
8.2.3. Population Dynamics and Migration 231
8.2.4. Force or Cooperation? 232
8.3. Sustainable Development and Environmental Security 233
8.3.1. The Development/Security Prism 234
8.3.2. What Can Be Learned from the Borana Solution? 239
9 APPENDIX
Tables 243
Abbreviations 272
List of Tables 274
List of Figures 275
10 GLOSSARY 277
II BffiLIOGRAPHY 287
PREFACE
Since all-out interstate wars for the time being seem to belong to the past, con
flict studies focus more and more on domestic conflicts. This is a broad field,
not only because the arbitrary line between war and sub-war violence disap
pears and the analyst is confronted with phenomena reaching from criminal
violence and clashes between communities to violent conflicts of long duration
and civil wars with massacres and genocides as their characteristics. It is also
because there are so many different types of conflicts to be analyzed, so many
different types of behavior to be studied, whereas there is often little informa
tion available on what is really going on.
Against the background of internal conflicts, which tend to be as protracted
as diffuse in terms of time, intensity, actors, and their goals, this study aims to
follow a specific pathway through the current thicket of violent circumstances.
It focuses on causation patterns by exploring the causal role of the environ
mental factor in the genesis of violent conflicts occurring today and probably
even more so tomorrow. This approach, which for once does not focus on a
specific level of the conflict system, on one area in the conflict geography, or
on a specific category of actors, analyzes causation dynamics. Concentrating on
one causal chain in a syndrome of factors may not only contribute to a better
understanding of organized violence, which is mainly violence in developing or
transitional societies. It may also help to explain why certain conflicts escalate.
Today many analyses as well as media news and reports restrict themselves by
highlighting the how and when. Concerning the question why, only thin expla
nations about ethnic, religious, or nationalist cleavages are offered. However, if
one fails to find out the root causes, therapy will be either wrong or superficial,
in any case not long-lasting and sustainable. Therefore, the premise in this
study is that the conflicts have major material roots. These roots are related to
the socioeconomic and sociopolitical transition of developing economies, the
transformation of the society-nature relationship being only a crucial part of it.
The study focuses on the African continent. Not only because it is the for
gotten continent, studying it may bring no major benefits to the scholar in the
North. It is because African countries have to find their way out of devastating
structures and the vicious circle of economic decline, environmental degrada
tion, livelihood insecurity, and political power struggle. And it is because the
author became deeply engaged in the affairs of this beautiful continent during
xi