Climate change, conflict and development in Sudan: global neo-Malthusian narratives and local power struggles

Dystopian accounts of climate change posit that it will lead to more conflict, causing state failure and mass population movements. Yet these narratives are both theoretically and empirically problematic: the conflict–environment hypothesis merges a global securitization agenda with local manipulations of Northern fears about the state of planetary ecology. Sudan has experienced how damaging this fusion of wishful thinking, power politics and top-down development can be. In the 1970s, global resource scarcity concerns were used locally to impose the fata morgana of Sudan as an Arab-African breadbasket: in the name of development, violent evictions of local communities contributed to Sudan's second civil war and associated famines. Today, Darfur has been labelled ‘the world's first climate change conflict’, masking the long-term political-economic dynamics and Sudanese agency underpinning the crisis. Simultaneously, the global food crisis is instrumentalized to launch a dam programme and agricultural revival that claim to be African answers to resource scarcity. The winners, however, are Sudan's globalized Islamist elites and foreign investors, whilst the livelihoods of local communities are undermined. Important links exist between climatic developments and security, but global Malthusian narratives about state failure and conflict are dangerously susceptible to manipulations by national elites; the practical outcomes decrease rather than increase human security. In the climate change era, the breakdown of institutions and associated violence is often not an unfortunate failure of the old system due to environmental shock, but a strategy of elites in wider processes of power and wealth accumulation and contestation.     

From Simplicity to Complexity: The Changing Geography of Land Vulnerability to Degradation in Italy

Although territorial disparities in land quality are commonly observed in Mediterranean‐type ecosystems, how different geographical gradients impact the changing distribution of land vulnerable to degradation over time and space is poorly investigated in southern Europe. The present study assesses the spatial distribution of vulnerable land according to a composite index that describes the degree of land vulnerability to degradation in Italy along eight gradients during two time periods (1960–1990 and 1990–2010), representing distinct socio‐economic and environmental conditions. While the degree of land vulnerability increased at similar paces from 1960 to 1990 and from 1990 to 2010, the spatial distribution of vulnerable land changed considerably. From 1960 to 1990, the area of vulnerable lands increased in coastal areas, lowlands, and areas with moderately high population density, mainly owing to the increased climate aridity. By contrast, peri‐urban areas experienced, especially in northern Italy, the highest vulnerability from 1990 to 2010 owing to increased human pressure on land generating, e.g. land‐use changes. Results indicate that the importance of the gradients shaping the distribution of vulnerable land in Italy is reflected in the (changing) role of climate, vegetation cover, and human pressure as factors predisposing land to degradation. Finally, policy implications of the changing geography of vulnerable land in the Mediterranean region are discussed.     

从科学到政治:全球变暖问题的历史演变

国际社会在对待全球变暖问题上经历了从科学回应到政治回应的发展过程。一方面,全球变暖科学理论的发展为国际气候科学界达成有关共识提供了基础,同时为政治家的政治决策提供了相关的科学背景知识,从而为全球变暖问题在20世纪80年代的政治化创造了必要的前提条件。另一方面,国际社会对全球变暖问题的政治回应过程反映了更为复杂的国家集团间的利益矛盾,主要包括南北矛盾和北方内部的矛盾,它们的妥协和合作是确保温室气体减排成功的关键因素。     

Climate triggers: Rainfall anomalies,vulnerability and communal conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

The mounting evidence for climate change has put the security implications of increased climate variability high on the agenda of policymakers. However, several years of research have produced no consensus regarding whether climate variability increases the risk of armed conflict. Many have suggested that instead of outright civil war, climate variability is likely to heighten the risk of communal conflict. In particular, erratic rainfall, which reduces the availability of water and arable land, could create incentives for violent attacks against other communities to secure access to scarce resources. Yet, whether groups resort to violence in the face of environmentally induced hardship is likely to depend on the availability of alternative coping mechanisms, for example through market transfers or state accommodation. This suggests that the effect of rainfall anomalies on communal conflict will be stronger in the presence of economic and political marginalization. We evaluate these arguments statistically, utilizing a disaggregated dataset combining rainfall data with geo-referenced events data on the occurrence of communal conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2008. Our results suggest that large negative deviations in rainfall from the historical norm are associated with a higher risk of communal conflict. There is some evidence that the effect of rainfall shortages on the risk of communal conflict is amplified in regions inhabited by politically excluded ethno-political groups.     

Paying for Environmental Protection in a Cross-national Perspective

The threat of global warming has attracted considerable attention from policy makers around the world. We analyse public support for environmental protection and the main drivers of support in Australia and cross-nationally using survey data from the International Social Survey and the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes. Support is measured as a series of trade-off questions based on willingness to pay extra taxes or prices, or accept cuts to one's standard of living to protect the environment. Willingness to pay more for environmental protection has decreased across a range of countries from 1993 to 2000 with the ‘routinisation’ of ‘the environment’ as a political issue. Risk perceptions regarding the dangers of global warming, having a tertiary education and holding post-materialist value orientations all increase the willingness to pay for environmental protection. In Australia, environmental support is still divided along partisan lines and global warming was as an important issue in the 2007 federal election.     

Climate change,human security and violent conflict

Climate change is increasingly been called a ‘security’ problem, and there has been speculation that climate change may increase the risk of violent conflict. This paper integrates three disparate but well-founded bodies of research – on the vulnerability of local places and social groups to climate change, on livelihoods and violent conflict, and the role of the state in development and peacemaking, to offer new insights into the relationships between climate change, human security, and violent conflict. It explains that climate change increasingly undermines human security in the present day, and will increasingly do so in the future, by reducing access to, and the quality of, natural resources that are important to sustain livelihoods. Climate change is also likely to undermine the capacity of states to provide the opportunities and services that help people to sustain their livelihoods. We argue that in certain circumstances these direct and indirect impacts of climate change on human security may in turn increase the risk of violent conflict. The paper then outlines the broad contours of a research programme to guide empirical investigations into the risks climate change poses to human security and peace.     

On exposure,vulnerability and violence: Spatial distribution of risk factors for climate change and violent conflict across Kenya and Uganda

Recent studies discuss the link between climate change and violent conflict, especially for East Africa. While there is extensive literature on the question whether climate change increases the risk of violent conflict onset, not much is known about where a climate-conflict link is most likely to be found. We address this question by analyzing the spatial distribution of the factors commonly associated with a high exposure and vulnerability to climate change, and a high risk of violent conflict onset in Kenya and Uganda. Drawing on recent literature and quantitative data for the period 1998–2008, we develop various specifications of a composite risk index (CRI) with a spatial resolution of half a degree for Kenya and Uganda in the year 2008. A quantitative comparison with conflict data for the year 2008 provides support for the composite risk index. Finally, the composite risk index is contrasted with the findings of three qualitative case studies, which provide mixed support for the index and help to identify its strengths and weaknesses as well as conceptual needs for further quantitative studies on climate change and violent conflict.     

A Deleuzian critique of resource-use management politics in Industria

In an era of increasingly well‐attended and violent protests around the world against globalisation, this commentary seeks to answer the crucial question: The globalisation of what? The answer proposed is that what is globalising is ‘Industria’, a multiplicitous, global system of power/knowledge, a vast ‘machinic assemblage’ recently accreted from diverse, competing world systems. After describing some of the most serious challenges facing human communities and the rest of the biosphere, the commentary enlists the aid of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his colleague Félix Guattari to expose the cognitive errors underlying political and environmental problems. Applying Deleuze's philosophy of difference to geopolitics and resource‐use management, it is shown that representational epistemologies and a negative ontology of identity obscure the myriad interconnections among human and non‐human beings, leading to conflict and ecological degradation. From there, the ‘Industria’ hypothesis is presented as a conceptual response to Deleuze and Guattari's critique of the ‘Urstaat’ and as a framework for scholars grappling with the need to achieve socioeconomic and ecological sustainability. Finally, the commentary briefly explores the potential of a differential, bioregional geopolitics as a civilised alternative to the predations of Industria.     

The Local Drivers of Land Degradation in South‐East Asia

Economic globalisation has led to a huge increase in demand for food, goods and services by expanding urban middle class populations. These demands cause environmental changes that in turn feed back upon the urban environment and human population. While the global changes are well researched, the cumulative significance of local environmental changes is less well known. Yet, the local changes may have greater impact on the decisions which individuals make that affect soil erosion and land degradation. People respond to family circumstances and to local economic opportunities in ways that most suit the needs of their families and households. Several demonstration projects that were not adopted offer lessons in understanding how people make their land‐use decisions. An understanding of people's past experiences, present needs and views of the future helps those seeking to improve environmental management to promote policies and actions that are likely to succeed by being acceptable to those involved.     

Weather variability and conflict forecasts: Dynamic human-environment interactions in Kenya

While conflict prediction has gained considerable attention in recent years, the existing literature has relied mainly upon aggregated data for large administrative areas or even entire countries. Such approaches obscure significant geographic variation of conflict dynamics based on household and individual experiences. Conflicts are highly localized, shaped by social and economic contexts that vary across space and change throughout time. We predict two types of conflict reported by respondents in a 2018 Kenyan population survey (N = 1,400) using an identical survey carried out in 2014 in the same enumeration areas (sample locations). We use a conditional random forest (CRF) machine learning method for forecasting. Due to heavy reliance on agriculture in Kenya, we expect that adding weather variability and vegetation health (“environmental”) predictors to a CRF model with 29 demographic and contextual variables will improve the performance of our baseline forecasts. Against our expectations, adding environmental predictors does not enhance our 2018 predictions. Models with only environmental data have the worst fit. A logical extension of many “climate-conflict” studies is that environmental data should improve our ability to predict the location and timing of conflict, yet we find that they generally do not. We interpret this finding through the lens of human-environment interactions research developed in human geography and political ecology. These studies similarly emphasized that circumstantial and historical political, economic, and social relationships have greater credibility for understanding conflict than the weather.     

Conflict on the urban fringe: Urbanization,environmental stress,and urban unrest in Africa

Most research on the security implications of environmental and demographic change does not explicitly distinguish between urban and rural areas. While statistical conflict analyses are increasingly sophisticated with respect to spatial and substantive disaggregation they largely ignore the possibility that urban and rural areas may be affected differently. In Africa, a continent assumed to be particularly vulnerable to the social and economic externalities of environmental and demographic change, less than one percent of the land mass is defined as ‘urban’. Yet, the population that lives in African cities is expected to increase by more than 150% between 2020 and 2050 according to UN population forecasts, massively outpacing rural population growth estimated at 35%. Given the vast social transformation associated with this process of rapid urbanization, understanding the dynamics and consequences of urban population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, and its possible relationship with environmental factors is key to reducing vulnerabilities and facilitating sustainable urban growth on the continent. In this article we argue that high urban population growth may strain the provision of public services in urban areas, heighten competition over scarce urban land, and increase the chances of urban social unrest. We expect population pressure to have the most profound effects on social unrest in peri-urban areas, meaning the urban outskirts. We further investigate whether environmental push factors, operationalized as droughts happening in rural areas proximate to the urban centers, could be driving any effect of urban population growth on social disorder, possibly supporting concerns over climate change-induced social unrest. We test our expectations on a sample of similarly sized urban and peri-urban ‘grid cells’ covering the whole of the African continent for the 1997–2010 period, using geo-coded social unrest data. Our analysis shows that urban population growth is associated with increased unrest in the peri-urban areas only. We find no evidence, however, that this relationship is driven by environmental push factors in the form of nearby droughts. The study contributes insights relevant to the broader debates about possible security implications of hyper-urbanization and climate change.     

环境营造:中国历史上人类活动对全球变化的贡献

在古代-近现代中国,历时数千年人类活动展开所具有的时空条件、土地面积和经营方式、人口规模和质量、社会组织形式、社会形态延续条件等基本内容,在世界各国中是难有其比的。国外许多科学家将加大力度利用丰富的历史文献(中文为主),用于研究和解释人类活动对地球环境变化可能具有的作用和影响份额的希望,寄托在中国科学家和历史学家身上,是有充足理由的。本文认为,发挥国情和历史地理专业优势,现阶段可以视为全球变化研究框架中的重要内容是(1)土地利用与土地覆盖格局的变化;(2)流域生命-文化环境的构成及其成长;(3)河湖海系统的演变;(4)制度和政策因素怎样调节人类的社会经济行为;(5)提取和整理对地球环境有重大影响的自然、人文事件。为了对人类活动引起环境变化的影响和作用作出较为准确的判断,研究中需要做好的事项有(1)排查文献资料中的人为主观撰述因素;(2)核实人类活动可以影响的范围或方面;(3)分析人类活动本身包含的复杂性因素;(4)充分估计自然本身的力量;(5)尊重和学习其它专业的研究方法及其实验结果。时至今日,科学事业发展的形势,已经将历史学加入自然科学研究计划的工作提到了研究时间表上。     

Climates of control: Violent adaptation and climate change in the Philippines

This paper considers the limits of adaptation as a concept in global environmental governance and advocacy by examining the climate change policy of the populist Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. By focusing on heterogenous state responses to the 2018–2019 El Niño drought, I demonstrate how the Duterte administration has worked to achieve a violent vision of climate adaptation through a jarring combination of practices: exhorting the devastating reality of climate change; denigrating multilateral mitigation efforts as colonial injustices; subverting indigenous peoples' land rights; and fostering the extrajudicial assassination of activists. Though Duterte's wider climate change policies are often viewed as a strategic distraction or the isolated product of an erratic populist, I argue that these recent responses to climate change in the Philippines, which fuse decolonial and nationalist sensibilities to confrontational forms of illiberalism, should be examined as part of the larger unfurling of illiberal adaptation politics across Philippine history and the Global South. These politics, and their considerable (though far from total) local resonance, challenge both universalist Western political rationalities and new directions in climate justice movement calling for ontological inclusivity. I highlight the need for a closer examination of the origins, practices and implications of violent adaptions.     

Come rain,or come wells: How access to groundwater affects communal violence

This article empirically analyzes the relationship between groundwater scarcity and incidences of communal violence. Case studies suggest that appropriating water is more likely when resource scarcities are not effectively mitigated and where property rights are disputed. Yet, covering water more broadly remains piecemeal in quantitative research on communal conflict. While water scarcity features in large-N literature on climate variability and nonstate conflicts, such studies rely heavily on rainfall data which covers only one aspect of the hydrological cycle. Employing precipitation data alone neglects the use of groundwater, an important factor for drought resilience and the source for 50% of global drinking water. While rainfall remains key for agriculture, pastoralists and smallscale farmers in particular rely on groundwater as a buffer during dry periods. Thus, analyses on water scarcity and conflict ought to combine measures for groundwater, surface water, and precipitation. While controlling for other sources of water, the lack of groundwater access is hypothesized to increase incidences of violent communal conflict. The effect of groundwater on communal violence is also argued to vary with the presence of drought, low rainfall, in densely populated areas, and with state presence. These propositions are tested through large-N analyses using previously not utilized data on water availability with incidence data on violent conflict for Africa and the Middle East (1990–2014). The results show that lacking access to groundwater is associated with a higher risk of communal violence. Further, the effect of groundwater access on communal violence is conditioned by precipitation levels as well as population density. The results also suggest that the effect of groundwater on violence is smaller in areas with higher state presence.     

Deal or no deal: the outlook for agricultural land investment in Africa

Recent sharp increases in food prices have prompted some food-importing countries to promote the acquisition of farmland abroad as a strategy to secure food supplies at affordable prices. Businesses are recognizing new opportunities for strong returns from agricultural investment, including agri-food, biofuels and other agricultural commodities. Dubbed 'land grabs' in the press, large-scale land acquisitions have kindled much international debate, in which strong positions are taken on the impacts of such investments on the environment, rights, sovereignty, livelihoods, development and conflict at local, national and international levels. This article provides an analysis of this complex and shifting situation, focusing on Africa and drawing on quantitative inventories of land acquisitions in four countries and on a small sample of land deals. The article lays out key trends and drivers, and discusses the main features of international land deals before analysing the main risks and opportunities involved, focusing on implications for local, national and global food security. The article concludes by outlining practical steps to make the renewed momentum in agricultural investment work for development, and avoid the pitfalls of exacerbated political tensions.     

Violence and territorial order in Caracas,Venezuela

In 2015, Caracas, Venezuela, had a homicide rate of 75 per 100,000 inhabitants, which made it one of the most violent cities in the world that year. Despite these high rates of violence, the international community knows relatively little about the dynamics underlying conflict in the city. Through a systematic comparison of three poor and working-class neighborhoods in the Caracas metropolitan area, this article analyzes the factors that have driven these remarkably high rates of violence, as well as those factors that have configured the heterogeneous violent conditions that operate across the city. Building on extensive interviews in these neighborhoods, we argue that the levels of violence in particular locales derive from the ways in which the Bolivarian political regime failed in its efforts to incorporate the poor and working-class inhabitants of different parts of the metropolitan area into the political, social, and economic systems that dominate the country today. We also argue that variation in violence results from the way in which certain neighborhoods are geographically inserted into local illicit economies and the political and social dynamics of an increasingly violent and unstable political system.     

Climate change as the ‘new’ security threat: implications for Africa

Once it was an environmental issue, then an energy problem, now climate change is being recast as a security threat. So far, the debate has focused on creating a security ‘hook’, illustrated by anecdote, to invest climate negotiations with a greater sense of urgency. Political momentum behind the idea of climate change as a security threat has progressed quickly, even reaching the United Nations Security Council. This article reviews the linkages between climate change and security in Africa and analyses the role of climate change adaptation policies in future conflict prevention. Africa, with its history of ethnic, resource and interstate conflict, is seen by many as particularly vulnerable to this new type of security threat, despite being the continent least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions. Projected climatic changes for Africa suggest a future of increasingly scarce water, collapsing agricultural yields, encroaching desert and damaged coastal infrastructure. Such impacts, should they occur, would undermine the ‘carrying capacity’ of large parts of Africa, causing destabilizing population movements and raising tensions over dwindling strategic resources. In such cases, climate change could be a factor that tips fragile states into socio‐economic and political collapse. Climate change is only one of many security, environmental and developmental challenges facing Africa. Its impacts will be magnified or moderated by underlying conditions of governance, poverty and resource management, as well as the nature of climate change impacts at local and regional levels. Adaptation policies and programmes, if implemented quickly and at multiple scales, could help avert climate change and other environmental stresses becoming triggers for conflict. But, adaptation must take into account existing social, political and economic tensions and avoid exacerbating them.     

Political geographies of urban demarcation: Learning from Nepal's state-restructuring process

In this paper we use the case of Nepal to advance political geographic analyses of how, during moments of rupture, territory act as an important political technology in state restructuring, and how urban demarcation along with other territorial structures of the state will play a significant role in this process. Nepal has experienced more than three decades of state-restructuring characterized by consecutive political and constitutional crises, including close to ten years of violent conflict. Within the brief period between 2014 and 2017, more than 230 new municipalities were demarcated on top of the existing 58. In our analysis we unpack why and how the number of municipalities is quadrupled at that particular moment of time and how this is shaped by and have implications for re-configurations of Nepal's territorial structures. This is achieved through a historical analysis of how the state's politico-administrative system has been mapped, reasoned and challenged. The analysis is based on official documents, such as census data and reports, legislative acts, public debates and academic analyses of processes of administrative and political reforms and conflicts in Nepal since the early 1990s. It therefore engages with a rich literature on conflict, the post-conflict situation and the restructuring of the state. Based on our findings we argue that urban demarcation is an important part of a states' political technology complex, and warn against trends in studies of urbanization to question the analytical bearing of differentiating the rural and urban. Showing that Nepal's recent urban boundaries have been justified by the need to achieve a better geographical balance, we conclude by arguing for the need for studies of urban transformations that critically examine whether and how the new territorial structures in their implementation contribute to balance geographical and social inequalities.     

关于极端干旱地区人地关系历史演变的初步研究——以塔里木盆地为例

纵观极端干旱地区生态环境与人类活动关系的全过程,可以看出:在气候环境自然演化的背景下,人地关系存在着时间与空间上的两种变迁。从历史时期看,从原始社会、农业社会到工业社会,人地关系大致经历了依附自然、干预顺应自然、干预自然、回归自然四个阶段。从空间上看,表现出人类"逐水而徙","依水而居"的相互关系。各个阶段以气候环境变化为背景,以水资源为主线,表现出人地关系演变的时空特征。塔里木水系的瓦解和塔里木盆地的沙漠化以及胡杨林植被面积的缩小,说明近100年来人类活动对人地关系的演化逐步起主导作用