Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Due to the linkages of these economies of violence with the larger world mar-
kets, the role of international trade and business came under closer scrutiny for
being complicit in some of the wars in the 1990s and 2000s (Brown et al. 2007).
In connection with this, some experts have called for the promotion of markets for
conflict-free goods, the promotion of conflict-sensitive business as part of a larger
emphasis on social corporate responsibility, and careful scrutiny of the revenues (and
origin) derived from natural resources. Some major policy initiatives in this domain
will be mentioned below. Another strand of critical analysts has suggested that the
western world has been complicit in creating or permitting the existence of chaotic
'borderlands', so that conditions legitimised interventions - in the form of both armed
invasions or peace-building - aimed at creating or installing a neo-liberal world order
(Duffield 2005). Globalisation is additionally critically examined in this body of
literature.
In all these attempts to rethink warfare in the post-Cold War era, environmental
issues took on a new relevance. Apart from playing their usual role in the classical,
but waning debates on sustainable development, they now acquired a new signif-
icance as factors causing or explaining contemporary conflict. Some analysts even
suggested that this was nothing more than a cynical attempt by environmentalists to
grab the government's attention and spending related to security (see Sheehan 2006:
99). Whatever the case, a plethora of studies, documents, seminars and policy state-
ments emerged that promoted the idea of environmental conflict and even put it centre
stage (Homer-Dixon 1999, Klare 2001). Among them were the more alarmist publica-
tions and scenarios that prophesied full-blown oil, water and resource wars. Though
these early studies were instrumental in putting the idea of environmental conflict
on the international academic and policy agenda, they tended to overstate the issue.
Several leading scholars have questioned the definitional clarity, theoretical founda-
tion, (causal) analysis and empirical basis of these earlier studies (Gleditsch 1998;
2001). The work by Collier and his colleagues at the World Bank was, for example,
heavily criticised on substantive as well as methodological grounds (see Klem 2003 for
details).
2.2.4 The present position: an emerging consensus
Insights are currently evolving into a more nuanced and qualified direction. At present,
scholarship tends to promote a multi-causal, multi-level and multi-actor perspective in
which the role of environmental factors is mediated through or combined with other
factors, often of a socio-political nature (Gleditsch 2001). Mono-causal approaches
highlighting the environment as the reason for war in the 21st century have given way
to a more modest approach in which environmental factors are certainly not discarded
as a conflict factor, but positioned into a broader and more complex framework (see
Allen 1999; Goodhand and Hulme 1999).
The present position is characterised by the recognition that the environment and
associated factors like environmental degradation, resource scarcity and more recently
climate change, do or may play a role in the rise and continuation of conflict, but
are seldom the only or most important factor (see e.g. Trombetta 2008; Adano et al.
2012). Environmental issues must become politicised before they can lead to violent
Search WWH ::
Custom Search