RENEWABLE RESOURCE SCARCITY, INSTITUTIONS, AND THE SUPPORT OF VIOLENCE

The deliverable constitutes a working paper report (under task 5.2) testing hypothesis about the relationship between access to scarce or declining resources, poverty and inequality and violent conflicts. Impacts of climate change and the depletion of ecosystem services may have a broad range of social consequences, including violent conflict due to increased resource scarcity afflicting the livelihood security of vulnerable populations. In the literature on resource depletion, climate change, poverty and the support of violence, there is a lack of clarity about what affect the support for violence. NTNU and UCPH will analyse different drivers to identify potential explanations for the support of violence in a setting where livelihoods are highly dependent on ecosystem services likely to be affected by depletion as well as climate change. The analysis also investigates how different institutional contexts moderates the effects of poverty on the support for violence. NTNU and UCPH apply data from the data set constituting Deliverable 5.1 to investigate these inter-related questions. The findings from this analysis will yield valuable insights into how institutions work in rural areas in East Africa and how they can be supported in resolving conflicts in an agricultural and pastoral setting that is vulnerable to resource depletion. Deliverable 5.9 is presented in the form of a working paper report. The manuscript will subsequently be further developed into a publishable article in an international peer-reviewed scientific journal