Environmental Engineering Reference
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resource scarcity. Rather, extended periods of peace punctuated by conflicts were asso-
ciated more with social and political relations. By contrast, the colonial period, with
far more restrictive resource access to wells and the grazing lands, resulted in structural
changes in resource scarcity. Colonial resource governance was incapable of prevent-
ing the threat of migrant pressures for resident populations. Residents were finally
displaced and former alliances were broken up. The competition resulted in violent
conflicts due to structural changes that altered rights to resources. Oba (2011: 528)
argues that “political drivers, in the form of administration of frontiers and control
of population movements, and particularly through the transfer of resources from
one group to others, created structural resource scarcity.'' He terms this a 'policy of
resource scarcity', and attributes resource governance to the triggering of ethnic con-
flicts (Oba 2011). In spite of this, Oba (2011) does not reject the Homer-Dixon model.
Indeed, transformations in rights, e.g., adjudication of land transforming customary
into statutory rights over land, have triggered many conflicts. However, other causes
are as important now as in the past (see Box 4.2).
Box 4.2: Natural Resource Conflicts Now and in the Past
Post-colonial Kenya is littered with rights-related conflicts (e.g., Kajiado District
group ranches and the Tana Delta 2001 land adjudication (Kagwanja 2003; Martin
2007; Rutten 2008). Maasai along the Kenya/Tanzania border belonging to the
same Matapato section have resource conflicts over access to wells, pastures and
schools. Property rights adjustments on the Kenyan side, blocking access to pastures
for the Tanzanian Maasai are responded to by denying access to the wells located
in Tanzania (although these officially belong to the Kenyans). In reaction, Kenyans
block Tanzanian Matapato children as they cross the border to attend Kenyan
primary schools.
The Maasai struggled among themselves in the past as well. In the 19th century,
prior to the arrival of the British colonisers, the Maasai experienced fierce internal
conflicts. These so-called Iloikop Wars were struggles over stock grazing and water
points according toWaller (1976: 532). Yet these conflicts were also geared towards
breaking the political hegemony of the LaikipiakMaasai. Several other sections and
related Maa-speakers, such as the Samburu, joined hands to diminish the Laikipiak
supremacy, which came to a complete eradication of this sub-group around the
1870s. This also marked the end of Maasai control over most of their traditional
grazing areas in today's Kenya, stretching over a large area as far as the Coast and
North of Kenya.
The cause of conflicts - pasture, water and cattle - is also central in the reasoning
of Witsenburg and Roba (2007), who, after analysing rainfall data, cattle raids and
casualties in northern Kenya, claim conflicts are more severe during the wet season than
during a drought. In other words, it is not scarcity but instead an abundance of natural
resources that triggers conflicts. Referring to their findings, which appear to challenge
Homer-Dixon's framework that violence can be associated with scarcity of resources,
Oba (2011: 505) suggests that the violence they observed may “be explained by factors
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