Environmental Conflict between Internally Displaced Persons and Host Communities in Iraq
Publisher: Oxford Journals: Journal of Refugee Studies
Author(s): Kubilay Kaptan
Date: 2016
Topics: Governance, Humanitarian Assistance
Countries: Iraq
The environment, population and conflict thesis remains major to existing environment and security arguments. Throughout the 1990s, a huge increase in scholarship and policy focus was committed to unraveling the linkages amongst the three parameters. While it can very easily be asserted that both the analysis and policy communities have made substantial improvements, the academic results and policy instructions continue to be the subject matter of intense discussion. This article explores an assumptive method for the environment–conflict connection that views a collection of local parameters. The variable of resource management regimes is explored in more detail, illustrated by a case study from an Iraqi Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp. The article finds theoretical and empirical evidence to support the view that participatory and inclusive resource management regimes may enable communities to construct resource-use conflicts in ways that help to prevent unproductive conflict. Such forms of governance can potentially be initiated in places where the state is failing to mitigate conflict through its own institutional resources. Thus, there may be an opportunity to respond to the ‘ingenuity gap’ that Homer-Dixon identifies as a key linkage between scarcity and conflict.