With the demise of the Cold War, conflicts induced by environmental decline are putting a new face on war at the end of the 20th century, according to a global conservation study group.
"Ecological deterioration will eclipse ideological conflict as the dominant national security concern of countries throughout the world," said Lester Brown, president of Worldwatch Institute.Wars and civil strife over pollution on a Pacific island, diminishing resources in Africa, land scarcity in Latin America and water shortages in the Middle East provide the latest evidence of the new trend, he said.
In a report, "Fighting for Survival," the institute said that conflicts attributed to ethnic differences often have environmental roots. It argued that the number of wars resulting from growing populations, environmental decline and the ready availability of weapons will rise sharply in the next century.
"The combination of these three elements is provoking political and economic strife in many countries, which often leads to an unraveling of society," said Michael Renner, author of the report, released over the week-end.
An example of an environmentally induced conflict is the struggle for secession in the Pacific island of Bougainville, in which some 1,000 people have died in the past seven years.
Fighting erupted when rebels demanded independence from Papua New Guinea after a dispute over massive pollution by what was then the world's largest copper mine. The mine, at Panguna, has been shut since the violence escalated. Thousands of civilians have fled their villages and have taken refuge in government camps.
"Other internal conflicts are often conveniently, but also misleadingly, termed ethnic conflicts," Renner said.
In Rwanda, one of the world's most cramped countries, population growth put immense pressure on the land, the report said. Over-cultivation diminished soil fertility, cutting harvests by a third between 1990 and 1993. Resulting economic desperation allowed Hutu extremists to play up ethnic tensions, culminating in a murderous rampage against minority Tutsis in which 500,000 civilians died in 1994.
"There is, of course, an ethnic element in conflicts . . . in the Bosnias, Rwandas and Somalias of this world," Renner said. "But focusing on some ancient hatreds that nobody can do anything about tends to mask the underlying environmental and social stress factors."
Another war with a prominent environmental component is the one in Sudan, where displacement of subsistence farmers because of soil depletion has contributed to the fighting between the Muslim-led government and the Christian and animist south, the report said.
In the Mexican state of Chiapas, land scarcity and soil exhaustion has pushed peasants into the rain forests, provoking confrontations with loggers. Zapatista rebels, mostly indigenous peasants, staged an armed uprising in 1994 to demand land reform.
In Nigeria, protests in Ogoniland over extensive pollution by the oil industry led to massive, violent repression by the military government. This included the hanging last year of author Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other environmental activists.
Political confrontations between nations because of environmental problems also are on the rise, the report said.
A serious diplomatic dispute has broken out between NATO allies Spain and Canada over the depletion of fisheries around Newfoundland.
Clashing claims on the Euphrates River have spawned tensions between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Ethiopia's plans to divert some of the upper Nile River for irrigation and hydropower could yet bring that country into confrontation with Egypt, the report suggested.
Worldwatch, based in Washington, is financed by the United Nations, private foundations and worldwide sale of its publications.