Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

1
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Homer-Dixon on resource scarcity and ingenuity
• Ohlsson on livelihood conflicts
• Case of Chiapas and EZLN

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Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Homer-Dixon on Resource Scarcity and Ingenuity
• Crti
• Rt
• Consumption/resource ratio is an approximate
  measure of a resources scarcity.
• For many resourcespopulation growth and
  increasing per capita resource consumption are
  causing a steady increase in the ratio
• To maintain constant-satisfaction requirement,
  humans will need to run resource systems every
  more efficiently requiring ever greater amounts
  of (technical and social) ingenuity.

3
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Some societies are locked into a race between a
  rising requirement for ingenuity and their
  capacity to supply it.
• Homer-Dixon, p. 605
• Discuss

4
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Four factors that can limit the supply of social
  and technical ingenuity
• Market failure property rights, non-priced
  externalities
• Social friction power relations (narrow
  coalitions), culture of selfishness vs. goodwill
• Shortage of capital financial and human
• Constraints on science complexity, cost,
  accumulative knowledge, pro-science social and
  cultural context.

5
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Livelihood conflicts (Ohlsson)
• Rapid loss of livelihoods and falling into
  poverty associated with high fertility,
  environmental degradation, declining agricultural
  production, and increasing inequality
• Dispossessed youth become soldiers in rebel
  armies/political forces in pursuit of easy gain
  non-renewable resources, illegal trade
  (especially in Africa).

6
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Causes of the EZLN rebellion
• Simultaneous
• Worsening environmental scarcity demand,
  supply, structural
• Weakened legitimacy of the Mexican corporatist
  state (economic liberalization, Reform of Article
  27)
• Liberation theology (Catholic/ evangelistic
  churches), plus intellectual revolutionary
  leadership (Marcos) support long-standing
  activist peasant groups insurgent
  consciousness.

7
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Wealth and poverty in Chiapas
• Chiapas highly endowed with natural riches
  oil, natural gas, hydroelectric power, primary
  forests, rich agricultural valleys, diverse plant
  and animal species (quote from Marcos)
• Severe marginalization of indigenous population
  insecure land rights, pushed to infertile
  frontier areas or off the land entirely as
  resource capture by elites and political power go
  hand in hand high rates of poverty, illiteracy,
  morbidity (data chart).

8
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Chiapas The Southeast in Two WindsA Storm and a
  Prophecyby Subcommander Marcos, August 1992
• The road into the northern part of the state, the
  road along the Pacific coast, and the road you
  entered by are the three ways to get to this
  Southeastern corner of the country by land. But
  the state's natural wealth doesn't leave only by
  way of these three roads. Chiapas loses blood
  through many veins Through oil and gas ducts,
  electric lines, railways, through bank accounts,
  trucks, vans, boats and planes, through
  clandestine paths, gaps, and forest trails. This
  land continues to pay tribute to the
  imperialists petroleum, electricity, cattle,
  money, coffee, banana, honey, corn, cacao,
  tobacco, sugar, soy, melon, sorghum, mamey,
  mango, tamarind, avocado, and Chiapaneco blood
  flows as a result of the thousand teeth sunk into
  the throat of the Mexican Southeast. These raw
  materials, thousands of millions of tons of them,
  flow to Mexican ports and railroads, air and
  truck transportation centers. From there they are
  sent to different parts of the world The United
  States, Canada, Holland, Germany, Italy, Japan,
  but with the same fate--to feed imperialism. The
  fee that capitalism imposes on the Southeastern
  part of this country oozes, as it has since from
  the beginning, blood and mud.

9
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Demand-induced environmental scarcity
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Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Supply-induced environmental scarcity
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11
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Structural-induced environmental scarcity
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12
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Demand-induced environmental scarcity
• High population growth rate since 1970 (3.6 for
  Chiapas/4.6 for indigenous pop)
• Refugees from Guatemala during the 1980s, and
  seasonal migrants from Guatemala and Mexican
  states to the north mainly to the Eastern
  Lowlands
• Chicon volcano displaced people to Eastern
  lowlands
• Hydroelectric projects/dams displaced tens of
  thousands of smallholders to Eastern Lowlands
• Land per capita began to decrease after 1975
  higher pop densities on marginal farmland in the
  highlands

13
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Supply-induced environmental scarcity
• Deforestation - unsustainable farming practices
  on hillsides (shorter fallows)...soil erosion
  yield declines for maize and beans
• Eroded and depleted soils converted to grazing
  land 42 of deforested land converted to
  pasturelands, only 3.7 to agric.
• Overgrazed land turns into unproductive naked
  hills and gullies
• 1,000s of peasants seek sustenance from frontier
  land in Eastern Lowlands (Lacandon rainforest)
  but tropical soils are not well suited for
  agriculture leading to vicious cycle of
  deforestation, soil erosion, capture by grazing
  and logging interests
• Montes Azules bioreserve created and expanded in
  lead up to NAFTA
• Result env. services of wood for timber and
  firewood, topsoil for agriculture and water are
  seriously depleted
• Other causes of deforestation/fragmentation
  besides grazing and agriculture road
  construction, hydroelectric and oil projects,
  logging.

14
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Structural-induced environmental scarcity
• Severely unequal land distribution Agrarian
  Reform did not reach most fertile areas,
  inequities exacerbated by economic liberalization
  when small farmers unable to compete with global
  markets, PRI protected private landowners from
  redistribution with certificados de
  inafectabilidad
• Insecure property rights long history of
  illegal rental/purchase of communal and ejido
  land/eviction of communities and families, and
  later of frontier land in the Eastern lowlands
  for grazing
• Caciques with PRI support (corporatist State)
  control access to markets and product prices
  through control of transportation
• Virtually no agricultural credit for indigenous
  population and scarce access for campesinos (87
  - no credit)
• Wealth from natural resources oil, gas, timber,
  cattle, coffee controlled by agribusiness,
  large ranchers and industry
• Ecological marginalization poor forced to
  migrate to ecologically fragile areas..setting
  up downward poverty-env. degradation cycle
• Economic liberalization Salinas, to modernize
  and compete tries to get rid of ejido, communal
  lands through Reform of Article 27 of the
  Constitution land titling provision, and for
  poverty alleviation and social services (Social
  Contract) declines.

15
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• To cause civil strife, economic crisis must be
  severe, persistent, and pervasive enough to erode
  the legitimacy or moral authority of the dominant
  social order and system of governance. System
  legitimacy is therefore a critical intervening
  variable between rising poverty and civil
  conflict. P. 51
• Discuss with regard to Chiapas or other
  well-known violent conflict.

16
Population, Resource Scarcity and Conflict

• Environmental security flows best out of policies
  that target poverty and governance it also is
  more synergistic when build on existing
  priorities instead of on resource conservation,
  which competes with other policy demands. Adil
  Najam, p. 67
• Discuss