1 – River-based Livelihoods in the Clash of Armed Violence and Climate Extremes in Colombia
Laura Betancur Alarcón
IRI THESys, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Abstract:
Droughts and floods are expected to become longer and more intense under climate change. River- dependent livelihoods are particularly affected by prolonged dry and rainy events. At the same time, riverine occupations, such as artisanal fishing, remain the main source of food security during critical periods such as El Niño and La Niña. In Colombia’s Magdalena River Basin, the most important socio-economic watershed in the South American country, these climatic events are also interspersed with the country’s ongoing armed violence. Policy diagnosis and interventions around the impacts of climate extreme events in freshwater ecosystems tend not to include armed violence dynamics. Thus, there is an empirical knowledge gap on how prolonged climate events are experienced by river dwellers, who are already coping with violence’s impacts. In this paper, I analyze the experiences of river dwellers (ribereños, in Spanish) along the Sogamoso and Magdalena rivers in the Colombian Andes over the past three years, with a particular focus on La Niña (2020-2022) and El Niño (2023-2024). These events coincided with the regrouping of illegal armed groups during the first leftist government in the country’s history. Drawing on ethnographic research, I present how violence dynamics restrict and instrumentalize riverine occupations, transform access practices, and limit environmental defenders’ role in protecting their riverscapes and lifestyles. Furthermore, I document how the cycles of violence reassemble hydrosocial relations between ribereños and rivers and what are the consequences for the sustainable development of riverine communities and freshwater ecosystems. Similarly, I discuss the relevance of river-based livelihoods as practices of post-development visions and territorial defense, as understood by ribereños. Overall, I argue for a nuanced understanding of climate-driven impacts in conjunction with poly-crises such as biodiversity loss and armed violence for riverine livelihoods, and present evidence on how those simultaneously unfold in the everyday lives of riverine dwellers.
2 – How does Climate Migration Affect Conflict? A Systematic Literature Review of the Statistical Evidence
Simon Merschroth
Future Lab Security and Migration, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Abstract: Public debates portray climate migration as a risk factor for conflict. However, a robust theoretical and empirical understanding of this relationship is missing. This hinders plausibly deriving such conclusions. In particular, statistical evidence of the climate migration-conflict nexus is scarce and mixed. Against this backdrop, we ask ‘When and how does climate migration affect conflict?’. To this end, we i) derive a theoretical framework explaining the climate migration-conflict relationship, ii) systematically review statistical works to summarize the existing findings against this framework, and iii) propose ways forward to allow causal inference techniques to better disentangle the climate migration-conflict links. Our framework unravels different mechanisms (e.g., competition over employment and contestation of socio-cultural identities) and contextual factors in the place of destination (e.g., political and economic conditions) which could link different climate migration types to different conflict risk outcomes (e.g., protest and interpersonal violence). Via a systematic literature review, we identify 13 micro- and macro-level studies using statistical analysis to elaborate how climate migration impacts the risk of conflict. The preliminary findings suggest that if climate migration increases risk of conflict, it mainly contributes to local and low intensity conflicts (e.g., protests and crime). This far, there is no evidence that international climate migration contributes to conflict increase at the destination. Main
research gaps in the empirical works evolve around the contextual factors and mechanisms linking climate migration to conflict, as well as on immobility and planned relocations.
3 – Microfoundations of climate-induced farmer-herder conflicts: Field evidence from Ghana.
Daniel K. Banini
Providence College, United States
Abstract: In the past two decades, we have witnessed a sharp rise in confrontations between farmers and herders in many West African countries. Burkina Faso recorded about 4,000 of these clashes between 2008 and 2012, with at least 600 events occurring each year, resulting in the death of herders, farmers, animals, and the destruction of agricultural property (Jefferys, 2012). The case of Nigeria is instructive, where these tensions culminated in violence that killed hundreds of people and upped national security concerns in 2021. President Obasanjo declared a state of emergency in 2004 when farmer-herder conflicts resulted in ‘near-mutual genocide’ (Moritz, 2010, 138). Social violence data estimates suggest farmer-herder conflicts now killed nearly six times more people than Boko Haram, leading to more than 1,300 deaths in the first half of 2018 alone and causing roughly 300,000 people displaced.1 These conflicts have become a significant security threat in the West African sub-region.
At a micro level, in March 2020 at Gyaneboafo, a farming community in the Eastern Region of Ghana, herders killed three farmers when the deceased tried to arrest the fleeing herders after cattle destroyed yam tubers. In October 2017, nine herders and an unspecified number of farmers were killed at Dwerebeafe, Aboyan, and Mpeamu in the Eastern Region following altercations in the farm fields. In February 2016 in the Akyem North of the Ashanti Region, a herder shot and killed a 25-year-old farmer
following brief interactions on his farm. The next day, farmers launched a reprisal attack that killed over 500 cattle. In Akatsi, southeastern Ghana, farmers poisoned the only dam cattle drink from and killed animals in February 2016. In a village near the Burkina Faso border, a herder butchered a farmer to death when the former asked the latter to keep stray cattle off his land. These conflicts are now common, with a dossier documenting hundreds of events from 2016 to 2020 in Ghana. With the frequency and intensity of recent farmer-herder clashes, there is a need to examine the conflict dynamics systematically to untangle the causal mechanisms. This paper probes farmer-herder interactions empirically from two theoretical perspectives.
First, I argue that violent farmer-herder conflicts are evidence of extreme environmental stress like drought, which makes it difficult for farmers and herders to sustain their operations, leading to conflict. Farmers and herders might react differently to the same environmental stress stimuli. For the herders, the wet season entails an abundance of fodder and water for the animals, with small (natural) water reservoirs filling up during this period. As such, herders may not have to travel long distances to access food and water, minimizing interaction with farmers and competition over resources. However, these communities cannot pipe water during volatile seasons, diminishing resources that can feed the animals. The inability to feed animals or locate resources within a short distance can make herders encroach on vegetation areas, including farmlands during drought. For farmers, enduring seasonal extremes can hearten competitive behaviors, including infringing on small reservoirs that supply water. Therefore, the wet season should witness fewer farmer-herder conflict events, with the conflict frequency and intensity peaking during the dry period, as grazing field quality and available water sources likely diminish around this time of the year.
Second, I assess the effects of local (traditional) institutional qualities such as land allodial authority in the conflict hotspots on the conflict processes. This is an important, albeit ignored layer, in climate-conflict studies that often hold institutional quality constant. About 80% of Ghana’s land is vested in traditional authorities, with the state controlling only 20%. Accordingly, land allodial authority can enable or constrain farmers’ and herders’ calculations about using violence to access scarce or shared-use resources. Fair, or abusive land allodial regimes can restrain or escalate farmer-herder interactions in times of environmental stress. In short, the research makes theoretical and empirical improvements to the literature by linking low-intensity, micro-level farmer-herder tensions, where the people’s livelihood and everyday survival depend on exogenous environmental factors.
The analysis uses data from Ghana. Data was culled from more than 100 interview participants from central and northern Ghana, in combination with external micro-social conflict data. The data collection occurred in two phases. Phase one includes 48 interview respondents in central Ghana in 2020, culminating in a chapter of my Ph.D. dissertation, and 2022 extends it and involves 55 farmers and herders. The empirical proof focuses on evidence of environmental stress followed by conflict and contrasts it with circumstances where environmental stress is without conflict. The study reveals that drought affects farmer-herder interactions, with the conflict frequency and fatality peaking during the climax of the drought period. The evidence also shows that local context is important, with land allodial authority quality crucial in conflict escalation/mitigation. Villages in central Ghana where traditional land allodial rights have been abused experienced intractable climate-induced conflicts. In northern Ghana communities where traditional land allodial institutions guarantee a fairer and transparent land allocation have witnessed limited conflict amid environmental stress. The result suggests transparent traditional institutions moderate environmental stress’ influence on micro conflict. It indicates that the link between environmental stress and farmer-herder conflict operates through traditional land allodial quality, moving the literature away from its unidirectional and, at times, deterministic assertions.