In addition to providing general theoretical context, this week’s readings see two schools of thought in the field of environmental conflict studies argue against each other. De Soysa asserts that wealth of resources and violent or greed-driven conflict are linked in certain countries; that some are indeed “cursed.” She posits that this tragic and cyclical correlation can be resolved by growth of ingenuity, capital, and good governance in poor countries. Deligiannis, on the other hand, is vehement in his criticism of De Soysa and the “curse hypothesis”, arguing that she sets up a misleading dichotomy between concepts of resource scarcity and abundance. He contends that violence resulting from abundance is still a result of scarcity, as the unequal geographic distribution of resources, even in countries that are as a whole “resource-rich” is the cause of such violence. In short, relative scarcity drives the violence, so the different research behind studies of conflict in countries of scarcity and wealth are not so opposed as De Soysa makes them out to seem. These two arguments are both well-reasoned and backed with evidence, especially De Soysa’s.
That being said, I did not find myself convinced by either author. If Deligiannis really wanted other researchers to present violence related to resource availability more realistically, he should have set the tempo and provided some practical solutions. Instead his piece, though argued thoroughly, represents another example of one researcher laying out the flaws of another without any constructive ideas; his substance is largely vague criticism of hypotheses, and he ultimately fails to convey realistic applications of his research to resolve the resource distribution problem (which is the most critical point he outlines.)
De Soysa also does not sway me, but in a different way. Unlike Deligiannis, she provides concrete solutions for her argument that security problems and underdevelopment are intertwined (a thesis that I happen to agree with, not only due to De Soysa’s impressive historical examples and extensive charts/graphs/etc., but also because of previous readings in government and environmental studies courses). However, her proposals ring a little too neo-colonialist-Kumbaya for my tastes. As much as I’d like to believe the combination of aid from richer countries, global governance organizations, and private sector CSR can solve poverty in Sub Saharan Africa and beyond, history has taught me not to be that optimistic. (And I have become far too cynical to give much credit to any scholarly work in this field that includes the subheading “Reasons for Hope”)
What interests me most in this weeks’ reading is the brief mention by Deligiannis of Benedikt Korf’s efforts into studies of greed, grievance, and war that transcends the dichotomy of abundance and scarcity. In his article “Greed and Grievance in Sri Lanka” that was published in the Journal of Peace Research, he uses the example of violence in Sri Lanka to demonstrate how complex systems of ethnic capital and bias influence political, economic, and resource gains during times of warfare. He also suggests that humanitarian aid may not be the best way to solve resource disparities that result from such violence, which is a concept that interests me, as a skeptic of many schools of humanitarianism.