A University of Leeds collaborative study has probed links between environmental change and famine – two problems perceived to lie at the heart of Africa’s current crisis – in the context of another all too often linked to the continent - warfare and civil unrest. Land hunger and environmental depletion in the aftermath of war are often cited as causes of famine that in turn will lead to further conflict. Is such a chain reaction really at work? Is there an inevitable causal link between environmental degradation and violent conflict?

Fieldwork in the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, compared with fresh analysis of earlier findings, suggested these connections may be partly rooted in myth. Investigations were conducted in rural areas of Ethiopia and Eritrea, Mozambique and Namibia and involved active collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Ethiopia, Namibia, and Maputo and the Eritrea Relief and Rehabilitation Commission. Methods included interviews with governmental, international and bilateral agencies, as well as with nongovernmental organisations. Informal household surveys were also conducted in selected rural areas. The resulting findings were correlated with evidence from earlier fieldwork in both regions.

The Leeds findings challenge a commonly advanced view that war and famine are twin symptoms of competition for land and natural resources under threat of depletion. A simplistic view of environmental determinism tends to see such links as unbreakable. In contrast, the study revealed the several possible origins of conflict, including regional influences. Moreover, struggles over resources are not as a rule sufficient to spark violent conflict unless land or similar issues become politicised by elites. But whatever the causes of war, there are inevitably longer-term consequences for environmental sustainability and food security.

When assessing the particular impacts of conflict on people and their environment it proved important to draw distinctions between differing origins and modes of conflict, such as internal vs. external intervention, or guerrilla vs. conventional warfare, or the use of terror. Local investigation brought out the challenges these effects pose for post-war recovery.

Evidence of the impacts is that:

• Conflict and its consequences throw rules for managing or accessing common land into confusion and cut people off from vital supplements to their regular diet and livelihoods (fruits, honey, fodder, thatch, wood).
• A long-term legacy can be a ‘land-mined environment’ where arable and grazing lands are off-limits for years.
• Deforestation can result from war and famine where there is pressure on land and livelihoods but regeneration of forest cover has been observed in some areas completely depopulated by war.
• War creates shortages of adult labour, notably in households where even more women are left on their own with children.

Returnees (ex-combatants and refugees returning to their homes after armed conflict) need land and secure rights to it if they are to stand a fair chance of rebuilding their livelihoods and social networks. Yet in many respects they share the predicament of significant numbers of impoverished people who have consumed, sold up or lost productive assets through war. In this light, the effects of war and famine can be regarded as reinforcing one another, especially for the poorest. Hence environmental recovery and sustainability measures and land reform are potentially important factors in post-war relief and rehabilitation. Other specific policy lessons that stand out from the findings in hand are that:

• Food aid or other livelihood support must continue after ‘emergencies’ in order to meet structural food shortages.
• People need time and longer-term assistance to build or rebuild income-generating capacities.
• 'Food for work' schemes may reduce aid dependency for the able-bodied but can exclude families, especially women-headed households, already overwhelmed by labour demands.

Source(s):
'Village and Household Food Security after War and Drought in Eritrea', Environment and Development in Transition Occasional Paper #8 - Centre for Development Studies, University of Leeds - by June Rock, Philip White and Lionel Cliffe (1998)
‘Perspectives on the Effects of Conflict at Village Level: Mozambique', Environment and Development in Transition Occasional Paper #12 - Centre for Development Studies, University of Leeds - by Martin Whiteside (1996) Full document.
'Regional Dimensions of Conflicts: The Horn of Africa and Southern Africa Compared', Environment and Development in Transition Occasional Paper #5 - Centre for Development Studies, University of Leeds - by Lionel Cliffe (1997)

Funded by: Economic and Social Research Council, Global Environmental Change Programme 1994–1995

id21 Research Highlight: 31 October 2000

Further Information:
Lionel Cliffe
Institute of Politics and International Studies (POLIS)
University of Leeds
Leeds
West Yorkshire LS2 9JT
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 113 233 4386
Fax: +44 (0) 113 233 4400
Contact the contributor: l.r.cliffe@leeds.ac.uk

University of Leeds

Other related links:
Search Eldis for sources on conflict