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"Conflict Arises around scarce resources"from The Jordan Times, Friday-Saturday, October 6-7,2000 |
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By Dima Amr AMMAN A greater investment in environmental stability and management can reduce the steep cost of humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping, said participants in the World Conservation Congress in an interactive session dealing with environment and security issues. According to the Commission on Environment, Economics and Social Policy (CEESP), organisers of the session, certain regional and global environmental deficiencies are producing conditions that render conflict more likely. If the population of a country is growing, and there are not enough resources, it is likely that a conflict will arouse around these scarce resources, said Richard Matthew, assistant professor of International and Environmental Politics at the University of California at Irvine, who cited the civil war in Rwanda as a glaring example. A great part of the people were very poor, and the country had a very high population growth, so in consequence there was not enough agricultural land to meet the increasing food demand, he said. Each of the ethnic groups living in Rwanda accused the other group of being better off and therefore responsible for their own poverty. A civil war broke out and caused massive refugee movements which in turn destroyed the environment in those areas where they resided. Another example mentioned in the session was Indonesia. Although the country was praised by the World Bank in 1994 as being one of the greatest success stories, Indonesia has experienced a deep economic crisis since 1997. Consequently, people's reliance on forest resources increased and long suppressed conflicts around the rich forest areas of the country broke out. Occupations and attacks by one group or another occurred, and forests were set afire as a means of revenge. The year 1997 witnessed devastating forest fires affecting great parts of Southeast Asia. It was not only that civil peace and order were eroded in Indonesia, the country also suffered economically and ecologically, said Charles Barber from the World Resources Institute. Deforestation has caused increased erosion, flooding, drought, fires and landslides in many parts of the country. In most cases there is already the potential for conflict, but in adding the environmental stress such conflict really arises, Matthew told the Jordan Times. He went on to mention that shared freshwater resources are likely to trigger conflicts in the Middle East, an area known for its scarcity of water. A great number of these conflicts would have been predictable and this is why we have to incorporate armed conflict into international policy and try to deal with them before, during and after they occur, emphasized Judy Oglethorpe, executive director of the Biodiversity Support Programme. Participants in the session not only recognized that environmental issues can trigger conflicts, but also that war and war preparations pose threats to the environment. It was mentioned that in the opening days of the second Gulf War, Iraq attacked Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti oil facilities, deliberately destroying the energy infrastructure in Kuwait. The destruction of the Osirak nuclear plant outside Baghdad by the Israelis in 1981, and the destruction of Vietnamese forests with Agent Orange are further striking examples for ecological warfare. The field of environmental security developed after the end of the Cold War. As the threat of a nuclear war between the superpowers vanished, people started to think about other possible dangers to their security. They turned their attention to the environment which they identified as one of the major challenges for the future. We hope that the issue of environmental security will be integrated into the IUCN programme, Matthew said. Recommendations formulated at the end of the session will be forwarded to the IUCN within the next few days. The conference of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), which was opened by IUCN patron Her Majesty Queen Noor on Wednesday, will run until Oct. 11. It is the largest environmental conference ever held in the Middle East. |