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Environmental conflicts or ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) are
social conflicts caused by
environmental degradation
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment (biophysical), environment through depletion of resources such as quality of air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems; habitat destruction; the extinction of wildlife; an ...
or by unequal distribution of
environmental resources.
[Libiszewski, Stephan.]
What is an Environmental Conflict
." ''Journal of Peace Research'' 28.4 (1991): 407-422. The Environmental Justice Atlas documented 3,100 environmental conflicts worldwide as of April 2020 and emphasised that many more conflicts remained undocumented.
Parties involved in these conflicts include locally affected communities, states, companies and investors, and social or environmental movements;
typically
environmental defender
Environmental defenders or environmental human rights defenders are individuals or collectives who protect the environment from harms resulting from resource extraction, hazardous waste disposal, infrastructure projects, land appropriation, or ...
s are protecting their homelands from
resource extraction
Extractivism is the process of extracting natural resources from the Earth to sell on the world market. It exists in an economy that depends primarily on the extraction or removal of natural resources that are considered valuable for exportation w ...
or
hazardous waste
Hazardous waste is waste that has substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. Hazardous waste is a type of dangerous goods. They usually have one or more of the following hazardous traits: ignitability, reactivity, co ...
disposal.
Such activities create resource scarcities (such as by
overfishing
Overfishing is the removal of a species of fish (i.e. fishing) from a body of water at a rate greater than that the species can replenish its population naturally (i.e. the overexploitation of the fishery's existing fish stock), resulting in th ...
or
deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated d ...
), pollute the environment, and degrade the living space for humans and nature, resulting in conflict.
Frequently environmental conflicts focus on
environmental justice
Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses.Schlosberg, David. (2007) ''Defining Environmental Justic ...
issues, the
rights of indigenous people, the
rights of peasants, or threats to communities whose livelihoods are dependent on the ocean.
Outcomes of local conflicts are increasingly influenced by trans-national environmental justice networks that comprise the global environmental justice movement.
Environmental conflict can complicate response to
natural disaster
A natural disaster is "the negative impact following an actual occurrence of natural hazard in the event that it significantly harms a community". A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property, and typically leaves some econ ...
or exacerbate existing conflictsespecially in the context of
geopolitical
Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ ''gê'' "earth, land" and πολιτική ''politikḗ'' "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to ...
disputes or where communities have been displaced to create
environmental migrant
Environmental migrants are people who are forced to leave their home region due to sudden or long-term changes to their local or regional environment. These changes compromise their well-being or livelihood, and include increased drought, deserti ...
s.
The terms socio-environmental conflict, environmental conflict, or EDCs are sometimes used interchangeably. The study of these conflicts is related to the fields of
ecological economics,
political ecology, and environmental justice.
Causes
The origin of environmental conflicts can be directly linked to the industrial economy. As less than 10% of materials and energy are recycled, the industrial economy is constantly expanding energy and material extraction at
commodity frontiers through two main processes:
# Appropriating new natural resources through territorial claims and land grabs.
# Making exploitation of existing sites more efficient through investments or social and technical innovation
EDCs are caused by the
unfair distribution of environmental costs and benefits. These conflicts arise from social inequality, contested claims over territory, the proliferation of extractive industries, and the impacts of the economic industrialization over the past centuries. Oil, mining, and agriculture industries are focal points of environmental conflicts.
Types of conflicts
![Environmental_conflicts](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Environmental_conflicts.jpg)
A 2020 paper mapped the arguments and concerns of environmental defenders in over 2743 conflicts found in the
Environmental Justice Atlas
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
(EJAtlas).
The analysis found that the industrial sectors most frequently challenged by environmental conflicts were mining (21%),
fossil energy (17%),
biomass
Biomass is plant-based material used as a fuel for heat or electricity production. It can be in the form of wood, wood residues, energy crops, agricultural residues, and waste from industry, farms, and households. Some people use the terms bi ...
and land uses (15%), and
water management
Water resources are natural resources of water that are potentially useful for humans, for example as a source of drinking water supply or irrigation water. 97% of the water on the Earth is salt water and only three percent is fresh water; slightl ...
(14%).
Killings of
environmental defender
Environmental defenders or environmental human rights defenders are individuals or collectives who protect the environment from harms resulting from resource extraction, hazardous waste disposal, infrastructure projects, land appropriation, or ...
s happened in 13% of the reported cases.
There was also a distinct difference in the types of conflict found in high and low income countries, There were more conflicts around conservation, water management, and biomass and land use in low income countries; while in high income countries almost half of conflicts focused on
waste management
Waste management or waste disposal includes the processes and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal.
This includes the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste, together with monitoring ...
, tourism, nuclear power, industrial zones, and other infrastructure projects.
The study also found that most conflicts start with self-organized local groups defending against infringement, with a focus on non-violent tactics.
Water protector
Water protectors are activists, organizers, and cultural workers focused on the defense of the world's water and water systems. The ''water protector'' name, analysis and style of activism arose from Indigenous communities in North America dur ...
s and
land defender
A land defender, land protector, or environmental defender is an activist who works to protect ecosystems and the human right to a safe, healthy environment. Often, defenders are members of Indigenous communities who are protecting property ri ...
s who defend
indigenous rights
Indigenous rights are those rights that exist in recognition of the specific condition of the Indigenous peoples. This includes not only the most basic human rights of physical survival and integrity, but also the rights over their land (includ ...
are criminalized at a much higher rate than in other conflicts.
Environmental conflicts can be classified based on the different stages of the commodity chain: during the extraction of energy sources or materials, in the transportation and production of goods, or at the final disposal of waste.
EJAtlas Categories
The EJAtlas was founded and is co-directed by Leah Temper and Joan Martinez-Alier, and it is coordinated by Daniela Del Bene. Its aim is “to document, understand and analyse the political outcomes that emerge or that may emerge” from ecological distribution conflicts.
It is housed at the ICTA of the
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Since 2012, academics and activists have collaborated to write the entries, reaching 3,500 by July 2021.
The EJ Atlas identifies ten categories of ecological distribution conflicts:
# Biodiversity conservation conflicts:
# Biomass and land conflicts (Forests, Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock Management)
# Fossil Fuels and Climate Justice/Energy
# Industrial and Utilities Conflicts
# Infrastructure and Built Environment
# Mineral Ores and Building Materials Extraction
# Nuclear
# Tourism Recreation
# Waste Management
# Water Management
Ecological distribution conflicts
Ecological Distribution Conflicts (EDCs) is a term introduced in 1995 by
Joan Martínez-Alier and
Martin O'Connor. EDCs arise from the unfair access to natural resources, unequally distributed burdens of environmental pollution, and relate to the exercise of power by different social actors when they enter into disputes over access to or impacts on natural resources. For example, a factory may pollute a river thus affecting the community whose livelihood depends on the water of the river. The same can apply to the climate crisis, which may cause sea level rise on some Pacific islands. This type of damage is often
not valued by the market, preventing those affected from being compensated.
Ecological conflicts occur at both local and global scales. Although many of these conflicts take place between the global South and the global North (e.g. an Australian mining company operating in Indonesia), many are also local conflicts within a short commodity chain (e.g. local extraction of sand and gravel for a nearby cement factory).
Intellectual history
Since its conception, the term Ecological Distribution Conflict has been linked to research from the fields of
political ecology,
ecological economics, and
ecofeminism
Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in h ...
. It has also been adopted into a non-academic setting through the
environmental justice movement
Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses.Schlosberg, David. (2007) ''Defining Environmental Justice: ...
, where it branches academia and activism to assist social movements in legal struggles.
In his 1874 lecture ‘
Wage Labour and Capital
"Wage Labour and Capital" (German: ''Lohnarbeit und Kapital'') was an 1847 lecture by the critic of political economy and philosopher Karl Marx, first published as articles in the ''Neue Rheinische Zeitung'' in April 1849. It is widely considered ...
’, Karl Marx introduced the idea that economic relations under capitalism are inherently exploitative, meaning economic inequality is an inevitability of the system. He theorised that this is because capitalism expands through
capital accumulation
Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form o ...
, an ever-increasing process which requires the economic subjugation of parts of the population in order to function.
Building on this theory, academics in the field of political economy created the term ‘economic distribution conflicts’ to describe the conflicts that occur from this inherent economic inequality.
This type of conflict typically occurs between parties with an economic relationship but unequal power dynamic, such as buyers and sellers, or debtors and creditors.
However, Martinez Allier and Martin O’Connor noticed that this term focuses solely on the economy, omitting the conflicts that do not occur from economic inequality but from the unequal distribution of environmental resources. In response, in 1995, they coined the term ‘ecological distribution conflict’. This type of conflict occurs at commodity frontiers, which are constantly being moved and reframed due to society's unsustainable
social metabolism
Social metabolism or socioeconomic metabolism is the set of flows of materials and energy that occur between nature and society, between different societies, and within societies. These human-controlled material and energy flows are a basic featu ...
. These conflicts might occur between extractive industries and Indigenous populations, or between polluting actors and those living on marginalised land. Its roots can still be seen in Marxian theory, as it is based on the idea that capitalism's need for expansion drives inequality and conflict.
Unfair ecological distribution can be attributed to capitalism as a system of cost-shifting. Neoclassical economics usually consider these impacts as “market failures” or “externalities” that can be valued in monetary terms and internalized into the price system. Ecological economics and political ecology scholars oppose the idea of economic commensuration that could form the basis of eco-compensation mechanisms for impacted communities.
Instead, they advocate for different valuation languages such as sacredness, livelihood,
rights of nature
Rights of nature or Earth rights is a legal and jurisprudential theory that describes inherent rights as associated with ecosystems and species, similar to the concept of fundamental human rights. The rights of nature concept challenges twentie ...
, Indigenous territorial rights, archaeological values, and ecological or aesthetic value.
Use in legal cases
The concept of ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) was introduced to facilitate a systematic documentation and analysis of environmental conflicts and to produce a more coherent body of academic, activist, and legal work around them.
In some cases that have been taken to the litigation stage, at times with the help of grassroots environmental justice movements, the claims of locally affected communities have been recognized and reparations have been made.
Environmental justice comprises multiple dimensions that include
recognition
Recognition may refer to:
*Award, something given in recognition of an achievement
Machine learning
*Pattern recognition, a branch of machine learning which encompasses the meanings below
Biometric
* Recognition of human individuals, or biomet ...
,
distributive, or
procedural justice. Litigation cases mostly seek a fair distributional outcomes, although they sometimes mobilize recognition or procedural dimensions of environmental justice. A technical instrument known as
environmental liabilities may be used to claim payment of damages to affected communities.
Social movements
Ecological distribution conflicts have given rise to many environmental justice movements around the globe. Environmental justice scholars conclude that these conflicts are a force for sustainability.
These scholars study the dynamics that drive these conflicts towards an environmental justice success or a failure.
Globally, around 17% of all environmental conflicts registered in the EJAtlas report environmental justices 'successes', such as stopping an unsustainable project or redistributing resources in a more egalitarian way.
Movements usually shape their
repertoires of contention as protest forms and direct actions, which are influenced by national and local backgrounds. In environmental justice struggles, the biophysical characteristics of the conflict can further shape the forms of mobilization and direct action. Resistance strategies can take advantage of ‘biophysical opportunity structures’, where they attempt to identify, change or disrupt the damaging ecological processes they are confronting.
Finally, the ‘
collective action frames’ of movements emerging in response to environmental conflicts becomes very powerful when they challenge the mainstream relationship of human societies with the environment. These frames are often expressed through pithy protest slogans, that scholars refer to as the ‘vocabulary of environmental justice’ and which includes concepts and phrases such as ‘environmental racism’, ‘tree plantations are not forests’, ‘keep the oil in the soil’, ‘keep the coal in the hole’ and the like, resonating and empathizing with those communities affected by EDC.
Environmentalism of the poor
Some scholars make a distinction between ''environmentalist conflicts'' that have an objective of sustainability or resource conservation and environmental conflicts more broadly (which are any conflict over a natural resource). The former type of conflict gives rise to
environmentalism of the poor
Environmentalism of the poor is a social movement that arises from environmental conflicts when impoverished people struggle against powerful state or private interests that threaten their livelihood, health, sovereignty, and culture. Part of the ...
, in which environmental defenders protect their land from degradation by industrial economic forces. Environmentalist conflicts tend to be ''intermodal conflicts'' in which peasant or agricultural land uses are in conflict with industrial uses (such as mining). ''Intramodal conflicts'', in which peasants dispute amongst themselves about land use may not be environmentalist.
In this division movement such as La Via Campesina (LVC), or the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) can be considered in the halfway between these two approaches. In their defense of peasant agriculture and against large-scale capitalist industrial agriculture, both LVC and the IPC have fundamentally contributed to promoting agroecology as a sustainable agriculture model across the globe, adopting an intermodal approach against industrial agriculture and providing new sources of education to poor communities that could incentive an aware integration in the redistribution of resources. A similar attitude has shaped the action of the Brazilian Landless Farmworkers movement (MST) in the way it has struggled with the idea of productivity and the use of chemical products by several agribusiness realities that destroy resources rich in fertility and biodiversity.
Such movements often question the dominant form of valuation of resource uses (i.e. monetary values and cost-benefit analyses) and renegotiate the values deemed relevant for sustainability.
Sometimes, particularly when the resistance weakens, demands for monetary compensation are made (in a framework of ‘weak sustainability’).
The same groups, at other times or when feeling stronger, might argue in terms of values which are not commensurate with money, such as indigenous territorial rights, irreversible ecological values, human right to health or the sacredness of redefining the very economic, ecological and social principles behind particular uses of the Mother Earth, implicitly defending a conception of ‘strong sustainability’. In contesting and environment, such intermodal conflicts are those that are most clearly forced towards broader sustainability transitions.
Conflict resolution
A distinct field of conflict resolution called Environmental Conflict Resolution, focuses on developing collaborative methods for deescalating and resolving environmental conflicts.
As a field of practice, people working on conflict resolution focus on the collaboration, and consensus building among stakeholders.
An analysis of such resolution processes found that the best predictor of successful resolution was sufficient consultation with all parties involved.
A new tool with certain potential in this regard is the development of video games proposing distinct options to the gamers for handling conflicts over environmental resources, for instance in the fishery sector.
Critique
Some scholars critique the focus on natural resources used in descriptions of environmental conflict.
Often these approaches focus on the commercialization of the natural environment that doesn't acknowledge the underlying value of a
healthy environment
Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, organizations and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where possible, to repair dam ...
.
See also
*
US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution
The 1998 Environmental Policy and Conflict Resolution Act (P.L. 105-156) created the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution to assist parties in resolving environmental conflicts around the country that involve federal agencies or int ...
*
Inventory of Conflict and Environment
The Inventory of Conflict and Environment (ICE) is a project initiated by Jim Lee, School of International Service (SIS) at American University in Washington, D.C. He has also written extensively on environment and conflict, including the book "H ...
References
{{Environmental justice
Environmental controversies
Social conflict
Environmental justice