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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."
The degradation of renewables - land and freshwater - worldwide
leads to conflict over access and/or distribution of these
resources. However, not all conflicts become violent.
Environmentally-caused violence is hardly found in relations
between states. Today, mainly in developing countries, there is a
correlation between environmental degradation and violent
conflicts. As this synthesis of 40 case studies indicates, there
are different causal pathways of current violent conflicts and wars
that can be traced to the environmental roots of the conflict.
Rwanda is a good example to demonstrate the interaction of ethnic,
social, political and ecological factors. Whereas most studies in
this field focus on classical security issues, the author here puts
an emphasis on growing structural heterogeneity in agricultural
societies which tend to discriminate chiefly against those rural
producers who are the victims of bad resource allocations, unequal
resource distribution, high dependence on natural capital, and bad
state performance. One major conclusion to be discussed among
scholars, teachers, and advanced students and to be taken seriously
by professionals in international organizations is the following:
competing land tenure systems, unclear property rights, large-scale
farming, and nationalizing land by discriminating against
small-holders, pastoralists, the landless, etc. provide a
considerable potential for conflict and, thus, contribute to
unsustainable resource use, social unrest, and political
instability.
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