By Dr. Kariuki Muigua, PhD (Leading Environmental Law Scholar, Policy Advisor, Natural Resources Lawyer and Dispute Resolution Expert from Kenya), Winner of Kenya’s ADR Practitioner of the Year 2021, ADR Publisher of the Year 2021 and CIArb (Kenya) Lifetime Achievement Award 2021.*
It has been argued that environmental scarcity emerges within a political, social, economic, and ecological context and interacts with many of these contextual factors to contribute to violence. Arguably, contextual factors include the quantity and vulnerability of environmental resources, the balance of political power, the nature of the state, patterns of social interaction, and the structure of economic relations among social groups. These factors, it has been observed, affect how resources will be used, the social impact of environmental scarcities, the grievances arising from these scarcities, and whether grievances will contribute to violence.
Notably, when some groups of people fight across ethnic lines it is nearly always the case that they fight over some fundamental issues concerning the distribution and exercise of power, whether economic, political, or both. Notably, groups engaged in internal conflict are often united by a common ethnic or religious identity. The tribal conflicts in Kenya over the past decades have often taken this shape, with some informed by political influences while others are based on resource scarcity but ultimately, they may all be connected as political power cannot be divorced from resource control.
Arguably, government policies sometimes also play a role in causing or worsening ethnic or internal conflict situations. For instance, the Endorois case, where the Endorois community was fighting against violations resulting from their displacement from their ancestral lands without proper prior consultations, adequate and effective compensation for the loss of their property, the disruption of the community’s pastoral enterprise and violations of the right to practise their religion and culture, as well as the overall process of their development as a people demonstrates how the Government’s policies that exclude communities from decision-making policies can adversely affect the livelihoods of such group of people resulting in conflicts.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) found Kenya to be in violation of the African Charter, and urged Kenya to, inter alia, recognise the rights of ownership of the Endorois; restitute their ancestral land; ensure the Endorois have unrestricted access to Lake Bogoria and surrounding sites for religious and cultural rites and for grazing their cattle. There is no evidence so far that this decision was acted upon by the Government. Such scenarios as the one of Endorois community can fuel internal conflicts where, if and when such a group of people is displaced, they have to look for new settlement areas. More often than not, they will seek to settle among other communities. The resultant friction and tension can result in ethnic conflicts. While the governments’ capacity to repress rebellions may quell the open conflict, it has been argued that they often fail to address the underlying economic, social, or political causes. Political refugees have often suffered under the hands of locals who consider them foreign, either in their country or other countries.
There is scholarly evidence to suggest that economic and social horizontal inequalities provide the conditions that lead to dissatisfaction among the general population and, consequently, give rise to the possibilities of political mobilization, but political exclusion is likely to trigger conflict by giving group leaders a powerful motive to organize in order to gain support. There is also often a provocative cultural dimension in group mobilization. The 2007/2008 post-election violence in Kenya may be explained this way. Political tensions such as those witnessed in post-election violence of 2007-2008 in Kenya also caused ethnic conflicts resulting in deaths. This mainly involved a class of political leaders using certain ethnic groups to either capture power or remain in power.
Another example of political influence coupled with natural resource scarcity on eruption of inter-ethnic conflicts is the Rwanda genocide of 1994. It has been documented that the discontentment of the poor peasantry driven by environmental and population pressures, in conjunction with drought and famine, made leaders of the Tutsi rebellion based in Uganda believe that there was an opening for war against the regime. When the country became deeply entangled in the war, radical leaders were able to re-center the political dialectic, from rich versus poor, to Tutsi against Hutu, inciting ethnic hatred and the spiral of political violence which led to genocide in 1994.
It has been observed that with scarcity, distributional conflicts over access to natural resources will become much more pressing, both within and between countries. As a result, it has been argued that while seeking to address the all the above mentioned three factors of environmental degradation, population growth and inequalities, deemed as ‘sources’ of environmental scarcity and conflict, they must be understood as resulting from political decisions. They must therefore not be depoliticized wholly as government policies may affect the direction that such a conflict takes. This is because inequalities in access to and control over resources cannot be detached from the political economic conflicts already existent in society.
*This article is an extract from the Article “Natural Resource Conflicts: Addressing Inter-Ethnic Strife through Environmental Justice in Kenya” by Dr. Kariuki Muigua, PhD, Kenya’s ADR Practitioner of the Year 2021 (Nairobi Legal Awards), ADR Publisher of the Year 2021 and ADR Lifetime Achievement Award 2021 (CIArb Kenya). Dr. Kariuki Muigua is a foremost Environmental Law and Natural Resources Lawyer and Scholar, Sustainable Development Advocate and Conflict Management Expert in Kenya. Dr. Kariuki Muigua is a Senior Lecturer of Environmental Law and Dispute resolution at the University of Nairobi School of Law and The Center for Advanced Studies in Environmental Law and Policy (CASELAP). He has published numerous books and articles on Environmental Law, Environmental Justice Conflict Management, Alternative Dispute Resolution and Sustainable Development. Dr. Muigua is also a Chartered Arbitrator, an Accredited Mediator, the Africa Trustee of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Managing Partner of Kariuki Muigua & Co. Advocates. Dr. Muigua is recognized among the top 5 leading lawyers and dispute resolution experts in Kenya by the Chambers Global Guide 2022.
References
Muigua, K., “Natural Resource Conflicts: Addressing Inter-Ethnic Strife through Environmental Justice in Kenya,” Available at: http://kmco.co.ke/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Natural-Resource-Conflicts-Addressing-Inter-Ethnic-Strife-Through-Environmental-Justice-in-kenya-Kariuki-Muigua-7th-September-2019.pdf (accessed 5 May 2022).
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