Source of Environmental Conflicts: Ignored grievances from minorities

Over the past couple weeks, our class has been exploring how conflict is related to the environment, and several theories used to explain the root cause of conflicts. In this paper I will be looking specifically at conflicts surrounding forest resources, both in the Amazon, from our class readings, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). By looking at both case studies, I will prove that environmental conflicts are rooted in scarcity issues, but come to life through a lack of recognition of indigenous and minority grievances. Continued lack of recognition runs the likely risk of entrenching and increasing the civil unrest surrounding the scarce resource.   

The Kayapo have been living in the Amazon for thousands of years, slowly accumulating shared knowledge of the rainforest and how to subsist from it. They are a nomadic people, living in temporary settlements for a few years until all natural resources are exhausted, then they move on. Yet, because of land colonization by non-indigenous people, the Kayapo have been forced into a sedentary lifestyle that basically transformed the once lively population into peasants (WWF 2014). The establishment of non-indigenous people, namely loggers and gold miners, not only caused the Kyapo and other local people to lose control over their territory, but also destroyed their traditional nomadic lifestyles. The land, a scarce resource, is still a contested resource today; as indigenous people are reliant on the forest for survival, and are pitted against the interests of loggers eager to extract valuable timber. Although the Kyapo and other indigenous groups are receiving attention by various activist groups, more than 1,000 environmental activists, religious workers, organizers and rural workers have been murdered in the Amazon in the last 20 years (New York Times 2011). Successful prosecutions of those who order the killings are virtually nonexistent, proving both that competition over the scarce forest resources is very real, and that cooperation with the indigenous groups reliant on the forest is essentially absent. In order to properly cope and deal with the violence, governments must cooperate with the indigenous. While their claims to the land were never formally conceded, this does not delegitimize their claim in any way.

The issue surrounding land claims in forest regions is occurring similarly in the DRC. Vitshumbi is a fishing village located on the southern shore of Lake Edward within Virunga National Park in the DRC. Africa’s oldest national park and a UNESCO World Heritage site, Virunga is home to many endangered and endemic species, and holds the largest intact forest of all of Africa. Now that the country is reaching a relatively peaceful era, after two decades of civil war, loggers are pouring in to the capital hoping to reinstate their companies and profit from the regions’ rich forest resources. One London-based company in particular, SOCO, is devoted to tapping into the supposed oil reserves under Lake Edward (The Guardian 2014).  This exploration has direct negative impacts for the villagers of Vitshumbi. With little to no assistance from the weak central government, the village relies entirely on the lake for sustenance. Villagers and park wardens have taken to the streets to try and block SOCO from exploring within the national park, an illegal activity to begin with. SOCO has allegedly dealt with this complication by paying off the park wardens, promising them a share of SOCO’s profits from the exploration. Armed groups are now getting involved as well, promising to stifle village protests by any means for a share of the profit (Global Witness 2014). This behavior unquestionably feeds into continued conflict.

Rebel groups in the northeastern town of Beni, located right outside of Virunga National Park, have carried out a series of seemingly arbitrary killings and kidnapping against civilians, brutally murdering men, women and children with machetes and axes. The attacks have left more than 100 casualties in the October alone, after villagers took to the street demanding the government respond to the injustice occurring in the park (AlJazeera 2014). In a country that is struggling to pull itself out of civil war, SOCO and other invasive companies that come in and ignore the local population threaten the vulnerable country’s newly reinstated peace. If the villager’s claims and contestations were taken into account, the resulting conflict could have been evaded.

Resource scarcity undoubtedly leads to competition over the resource, yet this competition does not necessarily have to be violent. It turns violent when a stakeholder’s claims remain unrecognized. In both cases, in the Amazon and in DRC’s Virunga Park, the villagers stated their claims through activist groups and protests, which led to violence by those seeking to silence their voice. Granted, a government needs to be capable of responding to villagers’ claims, which in some cases it is too fragile to do, but disregarding and thereby discrediting indigenous grievances will more than likely lead to conflict. 

Works Cited:

Balint-Kurti, D. 2014. “Drillers in the mist’: How secret payments and a climate of violence helped UK firm open African national park to oil” Global Witness.

Rudolf, John. 2011. “After Killings, Brazil Vows to Confront Amazon Violence.” New York Times.

Vidal, J. 2014. “Soco Denies Paying for Congo DRC Trip to UN to Discuss Virunga Oil Drilling.” The Guardian.

2014. “DR Congo town hit by protestors over killings.” AlJazeera: Africa.  

2014. “About the Amazon People.” WWF.