Journal of Land Use Science
ISSN: 1747-423X (Print) 1747-4248 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tlus20
The impacts of warfare and armed conflict on land systems Matthias Baumann & Tobias Kuemmerle To cite this article: Matthias Baumann & Tobias Kuemmerle (2016) The impacts of warfare and armed conflict on land systems, Journal of Land Use Science, 11:6, 672-688, DOI: 10.1080/1747423X.2016.1241317 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2016.1241317
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Published online: 08 Oct 2016.
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Date: 01 November 2016, At: 09:09
JOURNAL OF LAND USE SCIENCE, 2016 VOL. 11, NO. 6, 672–688 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1747423X.2016.1241317
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE
The impacts of warfare and armed conflict on land systems Matthias Baumann
a
and Tobias Kuemmerlea,b
a
Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany; bIntegrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany ABSTRACT
ARTICLE HISTORY
Land-use decisions can change abruptly in response to shocks, and warfare and armed conflicts are among the most drastic and globally frequent shocks. Yet, our understanding of where armed conflict affects land systems, how land-use patterns are impacted, and how far-reaching and persistent these changes are, is partial. We used a spatially detailed dataset on armed conflict and a literature review to explore these questions. A number of key insights emerged from our study: (1) warfare and armed conflict affect land systems mainly in more densely populated areas, regardless of the dominating land use; (2) warfare and armed conflict can impact land systems in major ways, but these effects are diverse and not unidirectional; (3) warfare and armed conflict primarily affects land systems locally, but can forge telecouplings; and (4) although the impact of warfare and armed conflict is often immediate, it can instigate long-lasting land-use legacies.
Received 5 August 2016 Accepted 21 September 2016 KEYWORDS
Warfare; armed conflict; case studies; land-use change; land-cover change; deforestation; agricultural abandonment; re-cultivation; remote sensing
Introduction Understanding what drives people’s land-use decisions is important to understand how land systems may evolve in the future and for identifying effective policies to steer land systems towards desired outcomes (Meyfroidt, 2015; Rounsevell et al., 2012; Turner et al., 2013). Much research in this context has focused on how gradually changing drivers affect transitions between broad land-use regimes (Foley et al., 2005; Rudel et al., 2005), including population change (Jepsen et al., 2015; Vanacker, Govers, Barros, Poesen, & Deckers, 2003; Vesterby & Heimlich, 1991), economic development (Bičı́k, Jeleček, & Štěpánek, 2001; Rounsevell et al., 2006), technology diffusion, or climate change (Hanewinkel, Cullmann, Schelhaas, Nabuurs, & Zimmermann, 2013; Pielke, 2005). Many drivers of land-use change, however, can shift abruptly too, sometimes leading to drastic and widespread land-use change. For example, economic crises can trigger illegal logging (Sunderlin, Angelsen, Resosudarmo, Dermawan, & Rianto, 2001), waves of deforestation (Zak, Cabido, Cáceres, & Díaz, 2008), and shifts from cash crops to food crops (Sunderlin et al., 2000). Revolutions and the institutional overhaul that typically follows, for instance when economic or land reforms are implemented, can also result in marked episodes of land-use change, such as in case of the breakdown of the Soviet Union (Baumann et al., 2011; Schierhorn et al., 2013). Similarly, technological breakthroughs, such as the discovery of the Haber–Bosch process or the development of genetically modified (GMO) soybean variants can lead to rapid land-use change (Lambin & Geist, 2006; Rudel et al., 2009), as can technological disasters such as the reactor meltdown in CONTACT Matthias Baumann
[email protected] Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu
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Chernobyl (Hostert et al., 2011). Finally, policy interventions, such as the EU’s nitrogen directive in 1991 (Levers, Butsic, Verburg, Müller, & Kuemmerle, 2016), the accession of a country to an economic trade zone (Corbelle-Rico, Butsic, Enríquez-García, & Radeloff, 2015), or agricultural subsidies for biofuel productions (Suttles, Tyner, Shively, Sands, & Sohngen, 2014), may result in rapid land-use change. While these examples highlight the importance of shock events, our understanding of their effects on land-system change still remains limited (Ramankutty & Coomes, 2016). This is unfortunate given that such shocks are fairly frequent – especially at broad spatial scales and over longer time periods (Jepsen et al., 2015; Ramankutty & Coomes, 2016). This lack of understanding limits our ability to predict future land use (Müller et al., 2014). Moreover, understanding shock events is important because they have the potential to shift land systems to alternative states (Dearing, Braimoh, Reenberg, Turner, & van der Leeuw, 2010; Ramankutty & Coomes, 2016). Despite this, research on regime shifts in land systems, and the shock events that contribute to them, is lagging behind (Jepsen et al., 2015; Müller et al., 2014; Ramankutty & Coomes, 2016). Warfare and armed conflicts (hereafter: armed conflict) are among the most drastic shocks that can impact societies and thus land systems. Casualties, both among those fighting and among civilians (Slim, 2007), the displacement of people fleeing from unsafe areas (Paasche, 2012), humanrights abuses, and the destruction of local livelihoods (Justino, 2011; Seddon & Hussein, 2002) are just some of the grave consequences of armed conflict, and a wide body of literature exists assessing the causes and outcomes of armed conflicts for societies. Armed conflicts can also have drastic environmental outcomes (Dudley, Ginsberg, Plumptre, Hart, & Campos, 2002; Machlis & Hanson, 2008), including biodiversity loss where protected areas become havens for insurgents or are left unguarded, where rebels plunder natural resources during times of conflict (Gleditsch, 1998; Hanson et al., 2009; Irland, 2008), or where fighting affects natural ecosystems directly (e.g. defoliation with Agent Orange during the Vietnam War (Dudley et al., 2002; Rustad, Rød, Larsen, & Gleditsch, 2008)). On the other hand, nature and wildlife may benefit from armed conflict, for example where human pressure decreases in contested areas or areas contaminated with landmines (e.g. North/South Korea Demilitarized Zone (Kim, 1997)). While generally believed to have important effects on land use change, research on how armed conflicts affect land-use decisions and thus land-use patterns is scarce. This is unfortunate, considering that the few existing studies suggest that these effects can be drastic (Machlis & Hanson, 2008), long-lasting (Baumann, Radeloff, Avedian, & Kuemmerle, 2015), and far-reaching (Binns & Maconachie, 2005). Assessing how armed conflicts affect land systems should also be a priority because armed conflicts are, sadly, relatively frequent (Gleditsch, Wallensteen, Eriksson, Sollenberg, & Strand, 2002). For example, in 2014, there were 40 wars ongoing globally. This is the highest number since 1999 (Pettersson & Wallensteen, 2015), affecting regions on four continents in both in the temperate zone and the tropics. In total, 259 wars have taken place since World War II (Pettersson & Wallensteen, 2015). Moreover, some regions have been particularly war-ridden, such as the Congo Basin, the Middle East, or the Caucasus, suggesting the potential for long-lasting or repeated effects on land systems. We carried out a systematic review of how armed conflict affects land-use decision making and landuse patterns, and thus land systems. Specifically, we sought to answer three interrelated research questions: (1) Which land systems are predominantly affected by armed conflict? (2) How does armed conflict affect land-use patterns? (3) What are the mechanisms through which armed conflict affects and restructures land systems? To address these questions, we first compiled a database incorporating information on land systems, as well as spatially explicit information of armed conflict events. We then conducted a
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literature review on studies that established a relationship between armed conflict on the one hand and land-system change on the other. We synthesized the findings of these studies with regards to the types of land-use/cover change, its proximate drivers, and the causal mechanisms behind these land system changes. Based on these findings we assessed past research efforts into the effects of armed conflicts on land systems and identified key research issues.
Methods We used the Georeferenced Event Dataset from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP GED, version 4.0 (Croicu & Sundberg, 2015; Sundberg & Melander, 2013)) to explore which land systems are primarily affected by armed conflicts (research question 1). This database contains all individual conflict events defined as ‘an incident where armed force was used by an organized actor against another organized actor, or against civilians, resulting in at least 1 direct death at a specific location and a specific date’ (Sundberg & Melander, 2013). The UCDP GED distinguishes between three types of conflicts (state-based, non-state, and one-sided conflict1), and in its current version (i.e. 4.0) contains conflict events for the period 1989–2014 for Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and for 2005–2014 for the Americas and Europe (Sundberg & Melander, 2013). Identified conflict events are obtained from global newswire reporting, global monitoring of local news performed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and secondary sources such as local media reporting or reports by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and international governmental organizations (IGOs). All entries in the database underwent a rigorous quality assessment, and are consistently coded (Sundberg & Melander, 2013). The database also contains information on the accuracy of the conflict location, ranging from 1 (i.e. exact location known) to 7 (i.e. conflict coordinates estimated (Croicu & Sundberg, 2015; Sundberg & Melander, 2013)). We downloaded the entire UCDP GED database and evaluated the location of conflict events in two ways. First, we counted the number of conflict events per country considering all events of precision category 1–6 (i.e. events that have the precision at the country-level). Second, we selected conflict events of precision categories 1 and 2 (i.e. the location of the event is estimated with at least 25-km accuracy). We overlaid these conflict events onto two maps depicting key aspects of land systems. First, we compared conflict in relation to anthropogenic biomes (hereafter: anthromes (Ellis & Ramankutty, 2008)), which characterize human transformation of terrestrial biomes based on global patterns of human population and land use/cover (Ellis, Klein Goldewijk, Siebert, Lightman, & Ramankutty, 2010). Second, we compared conflict locations to the global landsystem map by van Asselen and Verburg (2012), which characterizes land systems based on land use/cover, livestock density, and agricultural intensity. Both maps were generated using a hierarchical, expert-based classification scheme, represent the year-2000 situation, and have a spatial resolution of 5 arc-minutes. For each conflict event, we extracted the anthrome and land system it fell into and counted the number of fatalities resulting from the conflict events. We then summarized the total number of conflict events and fatalities per anthrome and land system, and calculated the share of conflicts per anthrome and land-system type. We divided this share by the global share of an anthrome and land system. The resulting values indicate whether conflicts in a specific anthrome or land system occur more often (values >1) or less often (
