Climate change,conflict, and cooperation: Global analysis of the effectiveness of international river treaties in addressing water variability

Climate-driven water variability is a natural phenomenon that is observed across river basins, but one that is predicted to increase due to climate change. Environmental change of this kind may aggravate political tensions, especially in regions which are not equipped with an appropriate institutional apparatus. Increased variability is also likely to challenge regions with existing institutional capacity. We argue that our best attempts to assess the ability of states to deal with variability in the future rest with considering how agreements have fared in the past. In this paper, we explore treaty effectiveness, or treaty resilience, by investigating whether particular water allocation and institutional mechanisms help mitigate inter-country tensions over shared water. We use water-related events from the Basins at Risk events database as a dependent variable to test particular hypotheses regarding the impact of treaty design on conflict and cooperation over time. A broad set of climatic, geographic, political, and economic variables are used as controls. The analysis is conducted for the years 1948–2001 using the country dyad as the level of observation. Findings pertaining to our primary explanatory variables suggest that country dyads governed by treaties with water allocation mechanisms exhibiting both flexibility and specificity evince more cooperative behavior. Country dyads governed by treaties with a larger sum of institutional mechanisms likewise evince a higher level of cooperation, although certain institutional mechanisms appear to be more important than others.     

Managing Heritage in a War Zone

Threats to the rich Palestinian cultural heritage are many and diverse. They are quite serious and hard to deal with. Some of them, such as illegal digging and the antiquities trade, are the result of a mixture of past colonial history and internal and self-inflicted problems, while the Israeli Separation Wall, direct military and settlement activities are present-day external threats. Up to this very day, they are devastating the country’s heritage, and nothing has thus far been done to confront them. The present paper intends to discuss those threats and suggests ways to confront them.

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Résumé  Les menaces mettant en péril le riche héritage culturel Palestinien sont nombreuses et variées. Elles sont très sérieuses et d’un abord difficile. Certaines d’entre-elles, comme l’excavation illégale et le commerce des antiquités, sont le résultat d’un amalgame entre l’histoire post-colonialiste et de problèmes issus des Palestiniens eux-mêmes. Le mur dressé par les Israélien, les interventions militaires et les activités d’implantation dans les territoires occupés constituent actuellement des menaces. Jusqu’à ce jour, ils sont entrain de dévaster l’héritage du pays, et rien n’a été fait pour les confronter. Cet article a pour objectif de discuter de ces menaces et suggère des moyens de les confronter.

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Resumen  Las amenazas que acechan al rico patrimonio cultural de Palestina son muchas y muy variadas. Son, además, bastante graves y difíciles de combatir. Algunas de ellas, como la excavación ilegal y el comercio de antigüedades, se deben en parte a la historia colonial y a problemas autoinflingidos, mientras que el muro de separación israelí y las actividades militares y coloniales directas son las amenazas externas de la actualidad. Hasta hoy, han estado destruyendo el patrimonio del país y nada se ha hecho para evitarlo. En este trabajo se pretende analizar estas amenazas y sugerir medios para combatirlas.

     

The efficacy of violence mitigation: A second look using time-series analysis

Among peace researchers and practitioners, it is generally accepted that efforts to prevent violence can be instrumental in its mitigation. So, it was distressing to read the research findings of Meier, Bond, and Bond (2007) that mitigation was positively related to organized raids in the Horn of Africa where there is pastoralist–pastoralist and pastoralist–agriculturalist violence. This article seeks to build on their research. It uses a ‘de-trending’ approach for time-series analysis that is commonly used in economics and financial studies. It reports an opposite statistically significant finding. When the data used by Meier et al. are de-trended, violence associated with organized raids is negatively correlated with mitigation. This negative correlation is similar when data on mitigation and organized raids are de-trended with time as a predictor, on the one hand, and with seasonality over time as a predictor, on the other. Implications regarding the temporal dimension of peace research and practice are presented.     

Geomorphology and the sand and gravel industry of west Central Scotland

The countryside around towns is under increasing pressure for development as a result of the centrifugal forces which have characterised the capitalist urbanisation process in the post‐war era. Conflict between pro‐growth and anti‐growth interests is now endemic in many peri‐urban areas. This paper identifies the principal agents involved in the production of the built environment in the urban fringe and presents a detailed analysis of how divergent interests interact to determine the nature of the fringe environment. The research informs academic debate on rural land conversion and provides guidance for decision‐makers charged with management of the urban fringe.     

Post‐conflict Heritage and Tourism in Cambodia: The Burden of Angkor

The World Heritage Site of Angkor is enduring one of the most crucial, turbulent periods in its 1200‐year history. Since the early 1990s over 20 countries have contributed millions of dollars to help safeguard and restore its temples. As one of Southeast Asia’s premier destinations, Angkor has also seen a 10,000% growth in international tourist arrivals in just over a decade. The challenges arising from the intense convergence of these two paradoxical and unstable agendas—heritage conservation and tourism development—are greatly compounded by Cambodia’s need to recover from war and turmoil. This paper explores the critical trends that have surfaced at Angkor and why the challenges posed by surging tourism have been inadequately addressed. It argues Angkor’s dominant role within Cambodia’s post‐conflict heritage and tourism industries requires closer, more critical attention given recent events in the country. This article is the summary of Winter's book Post‐conflict Heritage, Post‐colonial Tourism (Routledge 2007).     

Paleoclimates and the emergence of fortifications in the tropical Pacific islands

Paleoclimatic data from the tropical Pacific islands are compared to archaeological evidence for fortification construction in the Holocene. The results suggest that in some regions, people constructed more fortifications during periods that match the chronology for the Little Ice Age (AD 1450–1850) in the Northern Hemisphere. Periods of storminess and drought associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation have less temporal correlation with the emergence of fortifications in the Pacific, but significant spatial correlation with the most severe conditions associated with this cycle. These temporal and spatial correlations require additional study to investigate possible causal relationships.     

Reasons for leaving: The effect of conflict on English landholding in late thirteenth-century Leinster

In 1297 a parliament was convened at Dublin one of the main purposes of which was to defend more effectively the borders of the English lordship of Ireland. The conquest of Ireland had never been complete. Several of the pre-conquest kingdoms survived beyond the effective edge of the English lordship and elsewhere the actions of conquistador and settler had pushed the native Irish up into the hills. Consequently, the settler population in many parts of Ireland lived in close proximity to areas under Gaelic control. This was not a particular problem in the eastern province of Leinster until the 1270s when the Irish of the Wicklow mountains began to raid settler manors. It has recently been suggested that the effects of this ‘Gaelic revival’ and the legislation passed at the Dublin parliament to deal with its effects led several English lords to cut their landholding ties with Ireland. This article questions how important a factor conflict actually was in the decision-making processes of such English lords by examining their withdrawal from Ireland in a wider context. It concludes by pointing out that withdrawals from a landholding community were not necessarily negative in their effect or cause.     

Why insurgents kill civilians in capital cities: A disaggregated analysis of mechanisms and trends

Research into the causes of violence against civilians has increased significantly in recent years, yet the mechanisms governing spatial patterns of victimization remain poorly understood. My investigation explores if and why one specific locality, capital cities, experiences a higher frequency of violence against civilians perpetrated by armed insurgent organizations. I argue that the political value associated with capitals allows these groups to asymmetrically impose higher costs on the regime by targeting civilians in these localities. I lay out and validate three specific mechanisms to explain this pattern: elite coercion, popular intimidation, and international persuasion. In the first scenario insurgents aim to influence domestic elites directly. In the second, they aim is to affect domestic civilians’ resolve. In the third, they seek to influence international audiences. Using new geolocated global atrocities data for the years 1996–2009, I evaluate this linkage by employing different methodological approaches and accounting for potential reporting biases. Finally, I show that ethnic and secessionist wars are more likely to experience atrocities in the capital compared with other conflicts. The findings illustrate potential benefits from explaining the temporal and spatial variation in violence by insurgents, with a focus on strategic conditions and power asymmetries.     

Spanish Civil War caves of Asturias in archaeology and memory

As the Spanish Civil War drew to a close, retreating Republican troops in the northern region of Asturias took refuge in caves in the mountains from the brutal victor’s justice of the Francoist forces. In this paper we examine three of these caves in the context of the Civil War experiences of the rural municipality of Santo Adriano, based on a combination of archaeological recording and oral history interviews. The paper focuses on the role of the La Ponte-Ecomuseum, a grassroots heritage organisation that has worked to preserve and communicate the tangible and intangible heritage of the district. The Civil War heritage presents cultural, political and practical challenges for the museum: nonetheless it has succeeded in establishing an ongoing programme for its communication and protection.