Responding to the Future: Conflict and Environment over Time

1. Responding to the Future: Conflict and Environment over Time Jim Lee American University January 2006

2. Changing Nations and National Interests • The state system is fragmenting. The number of states in the world is growing due to increasing self-determination. • The global system is strengthening. States are becoming much more interdependent. • Demands due to population and development will continue to grow. • Stresses on the environment will grow. • These demands and stresses, coupled with changing national interests, will be sources for conflict. Conflict today is extremely lethal.

3. The Problem of Conflict and Environment • Conflict and environment are age-old problems. • Perspectives on the value of the environment change with time: the examples of petroleum and bird guano. • There is little systematic research and few tools available for understanding short and long-term conflict.

4. Thinking About Conflict and Environment Environment and Change in Western North America: A China Lake Story (see following map) 1. China Lake: A Lake without Water and a Place without Chinese 2. How Lake Manley became Death Valley 3. Native People in the Owens Valley and the Arrival of American Ranchers • How LA Drank Lake Owens • The Manzanar Japanese Internment Camp in World War II • Restoring Lake Owens: Defense meets Ecology

5. Map of Eastern Sierra Nevada

6. Knowledge Review Some Major Sources: Singer, Bremer, Gleick, Westing, Homer-Dixon, SIPRI Their research was used to guide thinking on the construct of the format and the cases of interest. Both mix conflict and environment indicators and issues.

7. A Dichotomous Approach to Key Issues • 1. Push and Pull • 2. Scarcity and Surplus • 3. Source and Sink • 4. Demand and Supply • 5. Animate and Inanimate • 6. Finite and Infinite • 7. Specie and Habitat • 8. General and Specific • 9. Sovereign and Non-sovereign

8. Approach to Case Studies Time periods (more discrete periods are also possible) • Ancient (to year 0) • Middle (year 0 to 1900) • Modern (1900 on) Build an Initial Inventory of Exemplar or Seed Cases based on Type • Use three dichotomous types to examine six initial case studies per time period. • Variable-oriented case study indicators that are comparable across cases • Create a kind of structured chronology.

9. Ancient Cases

10. Middle Cases

11. Modern Cases

12. The ICE Inventory • 145 Case reports reported online • All coded on the basis of 16 categories • Coding categories are almost all delimited • Coding categories are mostly nominal and ordinal

13. The ICE Coding Categories • a. Basic Attributes • 1. Abstract • 2. Description • 3. Duration • 4. Location5. Actors • b. Environment Attributes • 6. Type of Environmental Problem • 7. Type of Habitat • 8. Act and Harm Sites • c. Conflict Attributes9. Type of Conflict • 10. Level of Conflict11. Fatality Level of Dispute (military and civilian fatalities) • d. Conflict Environment Overlap12. Environment-Conflict Link and Dynamics13. Level of Strategic Interest14. Outcome of Dispute • e. Related Information and Sources15. Related Cases16. Relevant Literature and Websites

14. What the Data Reveals: One Way Breakouts • An Increase of Cases with End of Cold War

15. Durations of Conflict are a Normal Curve

16. Habitats: It’s About Water

17. The Sub-State Factor

18. The Tension Belt

19. Fatalities: Low and High Scale Events

20. Two Way Breakouts: Civil and Mid-term

21. Conflict Type and Continent: Where Matters

22. Conflict Type and Habitat: What Matters

23. Conflict Level and Type: How Matters

24. The ICE Expert Decision-Making System

25. The Conflict Sub-System

26. The Environment Sub-System

27. The Conflict and Environment Outcome

28. 21st Century Trends in Conflict and Environment and Management • 1. General Resources Demand • 2. Specific Resources Demand • 3. Pollution as Conflict Cause • 4. Localization of Conflict • 5. The Tension Belt • 6. Managing the Two Types of Tension Belt Cases