Arguing the case for an EnvironmentalMarshall Plan
Leif Ohlsson, PhD, Dept. of Peace & Development Research, GöteborgUniversity, Sweden (invited roundtable panellist)
Summary:
A number of recent reports on trends in population dynamics, and researchon links between livelihoods and risks of conflict, demonstrate the needto highlight certain areas of the international development policy agenda:
• World population increases at a lower rate than just a decade ago- but the expected increase until 2050 still amounts to almost half thepresent population.
• An amount of people equal to or surpassing this entire increase willcome to live in cities in developing countries (albeit not as many in megacitiesas previously thought).
• This is a telltale sign that the traditional source of livelihoods,agriculture, no longer can absorb more people - not today, and even lessso in the future (regardless whether enough food for a still growing populationcan be produced, or not, which is another issue).
• A clear grasp of the risks of conflict in this gigantic process ofchange requires a multifacetted analysis, including an assessment of thecausal contributions of environmental factors and gendered aspects: Thebig problem demonstrably is constituted by young men, who fail to reachtheir culturally engendered, and gendered, expectations, partially as aresult of growing environmental scarcities of arable land and water forirrigation.
• The conflict-creating mechanisms in this analysis stem from loss orlack of sufficient livelihood opportunities. In such a Livelihood ConflictsApproach, the opportunity for actors of evil intent to mobilize large numberof ethnic militias in rural areas, as well as suicide bombers and terroristsin urban areas, is offered as one explanatory pathway.
• Policy conclusions include the importance of creating livelihood opportunities,rather than productivity increases in a narrow economic sense - but alsothe difficult task of getting young men to understand that they will haveto forgo some of their gendered expectations in order to create a spacefor women in the world.
• Policy challenges include designing economic incentives to achievean increased number of livelihood opportunities in rural areas in developingcountries. It is suggested that this policy challenge is best thought ofas amounting to an "Environmental Marshall Plan"; that such a plan maybe included in present Climate Change mitigating efforts; and that Europeis uniquely positioned to spearhead such a plan.
1. Population decrease in rural areas - entireincrease and more will end up in cities
The latest authoritative population forecasts point at a world populationof around 9 billion people in 2050. This means an increase of almost 3billion from today's 6.2 billion people. (1)
The rate of population increase has slowed down, for beneficial, butalso for terrible reasons. Women, particularly within the modern sectorin cities, have gained the opportunity to choose not to have as many childrenas previously. At the terrible end of the scale, the AIDS pandemic, particularlyin southern Africa, now is of the proportion that outright population decreaseseventually are expected, even in countries with very high previous ratesof population increase. (2)
Of even greater interest, however, are the forecasts for where in theworld the additional three billion people until 2050 are expected to endup. The best available knowledge today says that they will live in cities,albeit not to such a large degree in the growing megacities (more thanten million inhabitants) of developing countries as previously thoughtor feared, but rather in a large number of smaller urban areas with lessthan half a million inhabitants each. (3)
This tendency is thought to be so strong that the total rural populationof the world is even expected to diminish somewhat, from 3,3 billion peopletoday (almost half the world population at this time), to 3,2 billion peoplein 2030 (at that time a far less proportion of the total world population).
A number equal to - or in rural areas in excess of - the entire populationincrease during the next two decades thus will end up in urban areas, andalmost all of them in developing countries small urban areas. The ramificationsof this fact, which has been known for some time, are seldom analyzed.
What it means, is that rural areas and the traditional source of rurallivelihoods - agriculture - no longer can sustain even its present population;in the sense of providing jobs or wages, and a position of traditionalsocial respect.
Since the rate of rural population growth still is, and will continueto be, higher than in cities (since old patterns of patriarchal oppressionof women and an economic rationality of a large number of children stillprevale), the projected outflow, from agriculture and rural areas to themodern sector in urban areas, is in fact enormous.
Nobody being born into rural areas in excess of the present populationwill be able to find a place of his [sic! - see section 2 below] own inagriculture, and some of the numbers of the rural population today willfind it necessary to join the already large migratory flow of surplus ruralpeople to urban areas.
This trend is already in full swing, and will increase as the next fewdecades unroll. This large-scale process of change is deeply conflict-riddenand poses huge challenges, both for rural and urban areas. It is a sourceof conflict-generating mechanisms today, and will continue to be so duringthe immediate next decades.
2. The problem of young men who fail to reachtheir expectations
In order to describe the conflict-generating mechanisms inherent inthis unprecedented process of change, a reasonable start is to identifywhat sections of the population will be subjected to the largest changesand the most severe restrictions in relation to their culturally engenderedexpectations; but also who, within these sections, have the greatest powerand options to act - and react - in the face of increased pressure forchange. (4a,b)
A tentative answer would be that young men, predominantly in rural areas,but also in cities, are hardest hit in relation to their expectations.They are also the ones who have the greatest option to voice their discontent.(How many women are regularly seen in TV reports of how "masses of peopletook to the streets in protest"? Not many - what you see is men, and predominantlyyoung men.)
The young men are those who expect to inherit land, or to attain oneor another coveted opportunity for livelihoods. Women may wish they hadthe same rights to such expectations, but in traditional rural culturesthey have had very little grounds so far for entertaining them.
As young men in rural areas find themselves disinherited (since theirfathers and grandfathers long ago have divided up the family property intoagricultural units that would be unsustainable if they were further divided;since there is no more virgin land to plow; and since the large commercialagricultural enterprises are quick to swallow up any good land they wishto accumulate), they have lost any chance of gaining the attributes demandedfrom "a real man". They find themselves unable to get married accordingto custom, and consequently unable to enjoy the respect of their peerswho have had better fortune.
In addition, when the modern discourse of women's rights today affecteven distant rural areas, chances are that young men's level of frustration,if anything, will increase during the present era and the next few decadesto come. (From this perspective, a fruitful area of research would be thevery obvious manifestations of hatred of women in the world, most clearlyseen in wars, but also in peace.)
3. Lack of livelihoods as a common root causeof different kinds of conflicts
Lack of livelihood opportunities within the traditional rural sector,agriculture, thus leads to a surplus of uprooted and frustrated young men,most of whom will migrate to cities, which is a main aspect of the greatprocesses of change in the world. Others will resort to alcoholism or commitsuicide. (5a,b)There will, however, always be a hefty surplus left for actors of evilintent to mobilize as foot soldiers for any particular power-seeking agendaof their own such prospective leaders may entertain. (6)
In contexts of abject poverty, loss of dignity and lack of livelihoods,the promise of land, looting, and vengeance on women (c.f. the pandemicof rape in every civil war) manifestly has proven to be sufficient to mobilizeyet another "militia" or "rebel movement", fuelling yet another civil warin yet another developing country.
Such mobilization regularly takes place along ethnic (or religious,or national, or regional) lines, since such fault lines are readily availablefor exploitation in every country. Under socially more stable conditions,they can be contained with relative ease by most societies. When the goinggets rough, however, they quickly take on an extremely divisive character,since people (read here: young men) under pressure first tend to clingto "their own", then to interprete their own plight as the fault of "theothers".
This mechanism is up and running in most, if not all, internal wars,whether they are classfied as caused by lack of renewable livelihood resources(such as land in Rwanda 1994) (7a,b),or by the availability of lootable resources (such as gold, diamonds, strategicminerals, oil or timber in West Africa, Angola, Sudan, and DR Congo) (8a,b,c).
The lootable resources may serve as a readily available source for financingcivil wars, but the foot soldiers of those wars still have to be mobilizedfrom the swelling ranks of unemployed and frustrated young men. Wars arestill fought by bands of discontented armed young men, whether their sourceof finance stems from plundering and terrorizing civilians, or from theextraction of illegal blood diamonds. (9)
Of the young men who instead seek their fortune in urban areas, farfrom all will be able to gain entrance to the modern sector in the decadesto come. What the conflict-generating mechanisms stemming from such a failurewill look like, largely remains to be seen.
Some, but far from all, of the archaic and patriarchal patterns of traditionalrural societies are transformed in the urban and modern context. Peoplewho succeed in urban areas become more of adherents of the modern; theyhave fewer children, and their children get better education. In the bestof cases, women gain better opportunities for a decent life. Men mighteven change their ways more readily. External values and cultural pattersare adopted, for better or for worse.
But urban concentrations still provide ample opportunities for actorsof evil intent to exploit the failure of young men to attain what, in theurban context and during the decades ahead, will count as necessary inorder to become "real men". The suicide bombers of the Middle East growout of urban areas; quite probably they also stem from families who havemoved to the city relatively recently. Political and religious extremismthrive among the inflow of surplus rural people to large cities, whetherCairo, Islamabad, or Herat.
Thus, the young men who have come to believe that they have been robbedof their birth-right, by difficulties to gain access to livelihood opportunities,in rural areas will fill the ranks of militias and rebel movement, andin urban areas of suicide brigades and terrorist cells.
If this seems like an overly simplified analysis, it is well worth pointingto the corroboration by recent and independent research efforts (see section5below). At the very least, an explanatory effort along these lines hasthe advantage of accomodating and paying proper attention to some of themost powerful processes of change going on in the world today and for theforeseeable future.
4. An Environmental Marshall Plan - and teachingyoung men to make space for women
A large number of cases, selected from the daily flow of news from UNand humanitarian sources, can used to underpin the underlying analysis,or hypothesis. The difficult part is to capture the main elements of theoverarching policy challenges.
One such thread, relevant to policy formulation, is that the restorationof depleted renewable environmental resource, vital for livelihoods (soiland water) will require a lot of manpower. Apart from the fact that thisis a worthwhile and indeed necessary goal in and by itself, it would alsoresult in a number of urgently needed jobs and livelihood opportunities,for both men and women.
Such efforts would provide welcome relief from the pressure drivingyoung men to urban areas, thereby creating the grounds for mobilizing militiasin rural areas, and terrorist cells in an urban context. Not least important,it would create greater scope for sustainable livelihoods, resulting inrural areas being able to support more, not less, people in the future.
The mechanisms for accomplishing this, however, largely run counterto prevalent narrrow economic rationality. At present, high premium ispaid to increases of productivity per invested dollar. From environmentaland social points of view, premium should be paid to sustainable increasesof productivity per hectare of arable land, since that would promote sustainableresource utilization and furthermore is best accomplished with larger inputof labour, as opposed to capital.
The idea would be to combine the urgent need for restoring depletedenvironmental resources, with the equally urgent need of creating livelihoodopportunities. I suggest that this might well be thought of in terms ofan "Environmental Marshall Plan", since it would require some form - byno means unproportionally high, though - of capital transfers from richto poor countries. (10)
To make this a win-win solution, some credible mechanism of financingthe proposed scheme will have to be found. Fortunately enough, such mechanismsof capital transfer are aldready built into the present international effortsto curb emissions causing climate change. (11a,b)The fact that climate efforts at the present moment largely are promotedby European countries by no means should be seen as a draw-back, but ratheras a most appropriate way of paying back some of the debt from the historicMarshall Plan, which helped safeguard European democracies after the SecondWorld War.
The other thread of the policy conclusions is slightly harder, boothto formulate and realize, since it is so seldom elevated to the inner spheresof "high politics". It runs parallell to the concentration within the internationalcommunity on human rights, and more particularly women's rights, and itis about the necessity of young men in the world coming to grips with thefact that they can no longer expect to attain the same patriarchal andprivileged position as their fathers and grandfathers may have enjoyedwithin their own traditional societies.
On the surface policy efforts in this area would seem counter-intuitive- more space for women in the world would seem to mean less space for men,and thus increased frustration among the already discontented young men.And that is in fact true - a desirable change within the zero-sum gamebetween the sexes does mean a negative outcome for men, but that is alsothe very definition of increased equality.
5. Empirical corroborating evidence: The PAIreport on "Security Demographic"
A meticulously researched and well-reasoned report from Population ActionInternational provides corroboration for the "Livelihood Conflicts" hypothesisadvanced above.
The report, "The Security Demographic: Population and civil conflictafter the Cold War" (12),finds a strong link between internal conflicts & strife, and threestress factors:
• A youth bulge in the population (the problem of which is further specifiedas young men).
• Scarcities of renewable resources of land and water, important forlivelihoods.
• Strong migratory flows to cities (resulting from lack of livelihoodopportunities in the agricultural sector).
A fourth stress factor, the demographic consequences of HIV/AIDS, ishypothesized to further aggravate some of the previous stress factors,although this is not yet possible to corroborate.
Based on calculatons of widely available data, the report finds thatcountries in the late stage of demographic transition (lower birt-rates,higher expected life-span) were less likely to outbreaks of civil conflictsduring the 1970-2000 period. For high-risk countries, that risk decreasedas overall birth and death rates declined. This decline could be quantifiedto a decline from more than 40 percent likelihood of conflict in the earlieststage of demographic transition, to less than 5 percent in the latest.
The demographic factor most closely associated with the likelihood ofcivil conflict during the 1990s were a high proportion of young adults(or more specifically, young men), aged 15 to 29 years, and a rapid rateof urban population growth. Countries where young adults comprised morethan 40 percent of the adult population were more than twice as likelyas countries with lower protortions to experience an outbreak of civilconflict. States with urban population growth rates above 4 percent wereabout twice as likely to sustain the outbreak of a civil conflict.
Countries with low availability per capita of cropland and/or renewablefresh water were 1.5 times as likely to experience civil conflict.
These findings, and the meticulous way in which they have been researchedand calculated, constitute an urgent invitation to researchers and policy-makersto search for explanatory mechanisms and proper policies to amelioratethe stress-factors identified in the report.
Comments:
• One such attempt at identifying the explanatory causal pathways isthe "Livelihood Conflicts" hypothesis. Here, explanations based on scarcitiesof renewable resources (land & water) are combined with explanationsbased on plundering of natural resources. The common factor is positedto be lack of livelihood opportunities, in socities where the agriculturalsector no longer can absorb still growing populations, resulting in migrationto cities. The abundance of frustrated young men is deemed to be the factorenabling actors of evil intent to mobilize discontented sections of thepopulation.
• An attempt to capture the policy challenge following from this explanationis made by suggesting that it might well be formulated as the need foran "Environmental Marshall Plan". Such a plan would outline how the globallyrecognized need to regenerate depleted ecosystems might be combined withthe urgent need to create livelihood opportunities. Not only would theimmediate scarcity of livelihood opportunities be ameliorated; it wouldalso lay the foundation of future sustainable livelihoods and ecosystems.
a) Stress factor 1 in the PAI report: A youth bulge
Roughly half of all states where young adults comprised 40 percent ormore of all adults experienced civil conflict sometime from 1990 to 2000.That incidence is 2.3 times higher than countries below this high-riskbenchmark.
The probable causal mechanism, it is argued, stems from the frustrationof young men in those societies, who find it impossible to attain the positionin society that cultural norms have led them to expect, due to disproportionallylarge unemployment within their age-group.
Policy measures recommended include the widely recognized need for employmentgeneration, and increased opportunities for women. (13)
Two comments are called for here:
• The report crucially stresses policy efforts to increase employment-generation.The correlation between a high proportion of young males in the adult populationand civil conflict during the 1990's is strong. The "Livelihood confict"hypothesis is further corroborated by the fact that youth unemploymentin developing countries typically is three to five times larger than thatof adults.
The idea of an Environmental Marshall Plan combines the need for employmentgeneration with the equally widely recognized need for regenerating depletedecosystems. This means that current obligations under international conventionssuch as the Kyoto Protocol could and should be used to generate financialmeans to generate employment among youth in developing countries.
• The immediate conclusion from the insight that unemployed young menin developing countries form a base for political mobilization by actorswith a power-seeking agenda of their own, would seem to lend increasedurgency to attempts to generate employment for young men. Other concerns- human rights and gender equality, plus long-term social development concerns- however dictates that employment-generating efforts should be equallyor even more directed towards young women.
This may be the most difficult point to find support for, on the ground,in each and every instance. Precisely because of this, it is also an areawhich urgently needs more attention from policy-making circles.
b) Stress factor 2 in the PAI report: Rapid urban growth
Countries with rapid rates of urban population growth were about twiceas likely as countries below a high-risk benchmark of 4 percent annualgrowth to experience civil conflict in the 1990s.
Factors that have made industrial world cities prosperous - ethnic diversity,a middle class, and proximity to political power - are potential sourcesof volatility for many rapidly growing cities in the developing world.A high proportion of youth, a trait of many of these cities, adds anotherconflict risk factor to the rapid growth of urban areas. Policymakers shouldstrongly consider programs that strengthen urban governance, stimulatejob creation, and foster ethnic-community relations. (14)
Comments:
• From the perspective of the "Livelihood conflicts" hypothesis, theimportant point to highlight here is that 40 percent of urban growth resultsfrom in-migration. Rural-to-urban migration is fuelled by better job prospectsin cities, shortage of agricultural work in rural areas, and flight fromdrought or warfare.
• A large proportion of these push-factors, including warfare, can bedirectly or indirectly linked to lack of livelihood opportunities withinthe agricultural sector, and/or environmental causes. This, in turn, underlinesthe urgency of an Environmental Marshall Plan, promoting both employmentin rural areas, and environmental regeneration.
c) Stress factor 3 in the PAI report: Competition for land and water
Countries in high or extreme demographic stress categories for croplandor renewable fresh water were about 1.5 times as likely to experience civilconflict in the 1990s as countries that did not fall into these categories,suggesting a weak association between worsening scarcities of these criticalresources, by themselves, and an increased likelihood of civil conflict.
Evidence from case studies cited in the report suggests that the majorsources of vulnerability to civil conflict that are associated with declinesin available cropland and fresh water have been generated by the decreasingcapacity of rural areas to maintain secure livelihoods and absorb growinglabour forces.
Policy prescriptions suggested in the report include strategies foreasing tensions over cropland and fresh water that include formalizingand enforcing unambiguous property rights, training resource managers andfunding management and extension programs, pricing agricultural productsfairly, and investing in programs that slow population growth. (15)
Comment:
• Although the correlation between critical resource scarcity of landand water, and the likelihood of conflict, is deemed to be weak, the reportimportantly finds that the major sources of vulnerability to civil conflictthat are associated with declines in available cropland and fresh waterhave been generated by the decreasing capacity of rural areas to maintainsecure livelihoods and absorb growing labor forces - which is the "Livelihoodconflicts" hypothesis.
d) Stress factor 4 in the PAI report: HIV/AIDS
In sub-Saharan Africa, where the hiv aids pandemic has hit hardest,countries are experiencing debilitating rates of illness and death amongtechnicians and professionals in the private sector, in public servicesand in the military.
These losses threaten to erode the functional capacity of some of theworld's weakest states and could significantly hamper their abilities todevelop economically, and to respond to chronic domestic discontent andsudden crises. (16)
Comment:
• A policy-problem only recently identified - not discussed in the PAIbut necessary to take into account when elaborating the idea of an EnvironmentalMarshall Plan - is the scarcity of labour in AIDS-stricken rural agriculturalhouseholds. As soon as a family-member falls ill or dies in HIV/AIDS, theproduction of that family unit is effectively halved - despite the prevalentunemployment in the surrounding society.
6. Linking the idea of an Environmental MarshallPlan to Climate Change mitigating efforts
After the Second World War, the U.S. stayed in Europe, and they madevery sure that the "German danger" would not reappear. The classic MarshallPlan is widely recognized to have been instrumental in creating the presentpeaceful Europe.
An Environmental Marshall Plan - creating sustainable livelihoods, reconstructingdegraded ecosystems, while addressing AIDS issues and gender gaps - couldvery well be Europe's way of paying back the historic debt we owe to theoriginal Marshall Plan; while at the same time providing an example oftrue global leadership, and an alternative for the future.
Such a plan would fit very well into the present Climate Change mitigatingefforts, under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, sincethis would allow for the necessary transfer of capital to create the economicincentives required to allow people to work with rehabilitating their localenvironmental resources, rather than being forced to migrate to cities.
The Environmental Marshall Plan could also be seen in the light of Europe'sefforts to fulfill their part of the UN Millenium Development Goals.
Summing up in ten points, the main contribution of this piece is tosuggest that:
1. Loss of livelihoods, or an inability to provide enough livelihoodopportunities, merits studying as a root cause of conflict.
2. Agriculture as an economic sector can no longer absorb the stillgrowing number of people coming aboard during the next decades.
3. Part of agriculture's inability to provide an increased amount oflivelihood opportunities is due to environmental degradation (in turn causedby the pressure on environmental resources to provide livelihoods).
4. A number of internal conflicts, often regarded as "ethnic", are betterexplained as "livelihood conflicts".
5. Such livelihood conflicts have a particular gendered aspect - weshould acknowledge that the problem is frustrated young men as immediateagents of conflicts, while young women most often instead are the firstvictims of such conflict.
6. These conflicts are in no way deterministic - it takes actors witha power-seeking agenda of their own to mobilize the frustrated young men;and there are ways and means and policies whereby such actors and the riskof conflict could be mitigated.
7. Conflict-prevention policies should be built on reconstructing degradedenvironmental resources important for livelihoods in agriculture, and theyshould go against the conventional economic wisdom and strive to maximizethe number of people gainfully employed, rather than maximizing the productivityof investments.
8. On a more generalized level, the policies sought for bear a strongkinship to the classic Marshall Plan.
9. Such a "Global Environmental Marshall Plan" importantly have to addressthe special needs brought on by the HIV/AIDS crisis; and it has to addressthe gendered aspects of livelihood conflicts.
10. The Global Environmental Marshall Plan could be Europe's way ofpaying their historical debt for having achieved maturity and peacefulrelations. It would also be a poignant statement at the present junctureof international affairs.
(1) UN Population Division, WorldPopulation Prospects, The 2002 Revision, New York 2003. Review &link to original study in EDC News April 2004 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/PopDynamicsEgero1.html].
(2) UNAIDS/WHO, December 2003 AIDSEpidemic update. Review & links to original studies in EDC NewsApril 2004 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/PopHIVAIDS.html].
(3) UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs PopulationDivision, "WorldUrbanization Prospects: The 2003 Revision", 2004-03-25. Review &link to original study in EDC News April 2004 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/PopUrbanUN2003.html].
(4a) Ohlsson, Leif, 2000, LivelihoodConflicts - Linking poverty and environment as causes of conflict,Stockholm: Sida, Environmental Policy Unit. PDF-file of full manuscriptversion [http://www.padrigu.gu.se/ohlsson/files/Livelihoods.pdf].
(4b) See also section on "Genderedaspects of livelihood conflicts", EDC News March 2001 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/Gender-LivelihoodConfl.html].
(5a) British researcher Chris Dolan aptly has termed this"Theproliferation of small men". See EDC News April 2004 [http://www.edcnews.se/Reviews/Dolan2003-Smallmen.html],reviewing: Dolan, Chris, 2003, "Collapsing masculinities and weak states- a case study of Northern Uganda", pp 57-83 of "Masculinities Matter!",edited by Frances Cleaver, Zed Books.
(5b) Mesquida, Christian & Neil Wiener, "YoungMen and War: Could We Have Predicted the Distribution of Violent Conflictsat the End of the Millennium?", review of a meeting at the EnvironmentalChange and Security Project (ECSP) at the Woodrow Wilson Institute, WashingtonD.C., 22 June 2001, in PECS News vol. 3/Issue 2, Fall 2001. See EDC NewsFebruary 2002 [http://www.edcnews.se/Reviews/Mesquida-Wiener2001.html].
(6) Ohlsson, Leif, 2003, "Therisk of Livelihood Conflicts and the nature of policy measures required",in Kittrie, Nicholas N. et al. (eds.), Seeds of True Peace: Respondingto the Discontents of a Global Community, Washington DC: The Eleanor RooseveltInstitute for Justice and Peace, Carolina Academic Press. PDF-file of manuscriptversion [http://www.padrigu.gu.se/ohlsson/files/Livelihoods-Roosevelt.pdf].
(7a) Ohlsson, Leif, 1999, "Howenvironmental scarcity paved the way for genocide in Rwanda", Chapter4 in Ohlsson Leif, 1999,Environment, Scarcity, and Conflict - A studyof Malthusian concerns, Dept. of Peace and Development Research, Universityof Göteborg. See EDC News January 2001 [http://www.edcnews.se/Reviews/Ohlsson1999.html#4-Rwanda].
(7b) Gasana, James, 2002, "RememberRwanda?", WorldWatch Magazine, September/October, pp. 24-33. Detailedreview & discussion in EDC News October 2002 [http://www.edcnews.se/Reviews/Gasana2002.html].
(8a) WorldBank research on "The Economics of Civil War, Crime and Violence",see EDC News August 2002 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/WorldBankEcoviolence.html].
(8b) Harvardresearch on "Economics and Conflict" - new portal, see EDC News September2002 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/HarvardEcoConflict.html].
(8c) Keen, David, 1998, TheEconomic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper 320, London:International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). See EDC News January2001 [http://www.edcnews.se/Reviews/Keen1998.html].
(9) "Theeconomic logic of militia livelihoods", EDC News January 2001 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/MilitiaEconomy.html],built on Ohlsson 2000 (4).
(10) "Livelihoodconflicts and the need for a Global Environmental Marshall Plan", EDCNews March 2003 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/EnvMarshallPlan-1.html].Built on Ohlsson 2003 (6)
(11a) "Carbonsequestration as a tool for environmental rehabilitation in the Sahel",EDC News March 2003 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/Carbonseq.html].
(11b) "Youthget livelihoods through reconstructing degraded environment - Cape Verde",EDC News March 2003 [http://www.edcnews.se/Cases/CapeVerdeLivelihoods.html].
(12) Population Action International, December 2003, "TheSecurity Demographic: Population and civil conflict after the Cold War".See EDC News April 2004 for an extensive review with links to originalreport [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/SecDem-Report.html].
(13) PAI report (12): Youthbulge, see EDC News April 2004 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/SecDemStress1-youth.html].
(14) PAI report (12): Urbangrowth, see EDC News April 2004 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/SecDemStress2-urban.html].
(15) PAI report (12): Environmentalscarcities, see EDC News April 2004 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/SecDemStress3-lw.html].
(16) PAI report (12): HIV/AIDS,see EDC News April 2004 [http://www.edcnews.se/Research/SecDemStress4-HIVAIDS.html].
Contact details:
Leif Ohlsson,Padrigu, Box 700, SE-405 30 Goteborg, Sweden [Leif.Ohlsson@padrigu.gu.se].
Personalresearch web-site (CV, etc) [http://www.padrigu.gu.se/ohlsson/eng.html]
EDC News,Environment & Development Challenges, electronic newsletter & website,commissioned by the Environmental Policy Unit at Sida, the Swedish InternationalDevelopment Cooperation Agency [http://www.edcnews.se/].