Environmental Security: A Geographic Information System Analysis Approach—The Case of Kenya

Studies into the relationships between environmental factors and violence or conflicts constitute a very debated research field called environmental security. Several authors think that environmental scarcity, which is scarcity of renewable resources, can contribute to generate violence or social unrest, particularly within states scarcely endowed with technical know-how and social structures, such as developing countries. In this work, we referred to the theoretical model developed by the Environmental Change and Acute Conflict Project. Our goal was to use easily available spatial databases to map the various sources of environmental scarcity through geographic information systems, in order to locate the areas apparently most at risk of suffering negative social effects and their consequences in terms of internal security. The analysis was carried out at a subnational level and applied to the case of Kenya. A first phase of the work included a careful selection of databases relative to renewable resources. Spatial operations among these data allowed us to obtain new information on the availability of renewable resources (cropland, forests, water), on the present and foreseen demographic pressure, as well as on the social and technical ingenuity. The results made it possible to identify areas suffering from scarcity of one or more renewable resources, indicating different levels of gravity. Accounts from Kenya seem to confirm our results, reporting clashes between tribal groups over the access to scarce resources in areas that our work showed to be at high risk.

[1]  Colin H. Kahl.  Population Growth, Environmental Degradation, and State-Sponsored Violence: The Case of Kenya, 1991-93 , 1998, International Security.

[2]  S. Hastenrath.  Glacier recession on Mount Kenya in the context of the global tropics , 1995 .

[3]  J. E. Dobson,et al.  LandScan: A Global Population Database for Estimating Populations at Risk , 2000 .

[4]  M. Levy,et al.  Environment and Security , 1995 .

[5]  Indra de Soysa,et al.  Ecoviolence: Shrinking Pie, or Honey Pot? , 2002, Global Environmental Politics.

[6]  Systems Approach to Environmental Security , 2004, EcoHealth.

[7]  E. Dooley,et al.  Environmental Change and Security Project , 2002 .

[8]  Robert Costanza,et al.  Scarcity or Abundance? A Debate on the Environment , 1994 .

[9]  J. G. Ferrigno,et al.  SATELLITE IMAGE ATLAS OF GLACIERS OF THE WORLD: NORTH AMERICA. Richard S. Williams Jr and Jane G. Ferrigno (Editors). 2002. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office (US Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386-J). xii+405 p, illustrated, soft cover. ISBN 0-607-98290-X. , 2004, Polar Record.

[10]  P. Ehrlich.  The Population Bomb. , 1962, Canadian Medical Association journal.

[11]  Tanja Ellingsen,et al.  Beyond Environmental Scarcity: Causal Pathways to Conflict , 1998 .

[12]  S. Hastenrath,et al.  The dramatic retreat of Mount Kenya's glaciers between 1963 and 1987: greenhouse forcing , 1992 .

[13]  Thomas F. Homer-Dixon,et al.  The Ingenuity Gap: Can Poor Countries Adapt to Resource Scarcity? , 1995 .

[14]  N. P. Gleditsch.  Conflict and the environment , 1997 .

[15]  S. Ndegwa,et al.  Environmental Scarcity and Conflict: A Contrary Case from Lake Victoria , 2002, Global Environmental Politics.

[16]  Ken Conca,et al.  Green Planet Blues: Environmental Politics From Stockholm To Rio , 1995 .

[17]  T. Malthus.  An essay on the principle of population, as it affects the future improvement of society , 2006 .

[18]  Thomas F. Homer-Dixon,et al.  On the Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict , 1991 .

[19]  T. Homer-Dixon.  Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases , 1994 .

[20]  Nils Petter Gleditsch,et al.  Armed Conflict and The Environment: A Critique of the Literature , 1998 .

[21]  P. Collier,et al.  Greed and Grievance in Civil War , 1999 .

[22]  R. Mcnamara.  The essence of security , 1968 .

[23]  S. Lonergan,et al.  State-of-the-art review on environment, security and development co-operation , 1999 .

[24]  David Rieff,et al.  The Coming Anarchy , 2000 .

[25]  Margareta Sollenberg,et al.  To Cultivate Peace: Agriculture in a World of Conflict , 1999 .

[26]  M. Levy.  Is the Environment a National Security Issue? , 1995 .

[27]  L. R. Oldeman,et al.  World map of the status of human-induced soil degradation: an explanatory note. , 1990 .

[28]  G. Brundtland,et al.  Our common future , 1987 .

[29]  Leif Ohlsson,et al.  Environment scarcity and conflict : a study of Malthusian concerns , 1999 .

[30]  G. K. Chandler.  A National Security Strategy for a New Century , 1998 .

[31]  Guenther Fischer,et al.  Global Agro-ecological Assessment for Agriculture in the 21st Century , 2002 .

[32]  J. Simon.  The Ultimate Resource , 1983 .

[33]  Peter Wallensteen,et al.  Armed Conflict 1946-2001: A New Dataset , 2002 .

[34]  Vipin Gupta.  New Satellite Images for Sale , 1995 .

[35]  G Baechler,et al.  Why environmental transformation causes violence: a synthesis. , 1998, Environmental Change and Security Project report.

[36]  D. Way,et al.  GLOBAL DATABASE FOR GEOSPATIAL INDICATORS , 2002 .

[37]  Ernest Koh,et al.  UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs , 2006 .

[38]  Daniel C. Esty,et al.  State Failure Task Force Report: Phase II Findings , 1999 .

[39]  S. Bernstein,et al.  Liberal Environmentalism and Global Environmental Governance , 2002, Global Environmental Politics.

[40]  T. Homer-Dixon.  Environment, Scarcity, and Violence , 2010 .

[41]  M. Giordano,et al.  Sharing waters: Post‐Rio international water management , 2003 .

[42]  Paul R. Ehrlich,et al.  Termination of Pregnancy bill , 1966 .

[43]  P. Sutton.  Modeling population density with night-time satellite imagery and GIS , 1997 .

[44]  Jon Barnett,et al.  Destabilizing the environment—conflict thesis , 2000, Review of International Studies.

[45]  A. Elhance.  Hydropolitics: Grounds for Despair, Reasons for Hope , 2000 .