Direct violence and distributive conflicts about water. The evolution of analytical debate and the proposal of a new approach

Abstract

The article pursues two objectives: a) to comparatively trace the debates on the relationship between armed conflicts or direct violence and situations of stress / water shortage or distributive confrontations (resources or shared basins, for example) surrounding water, and in doing so add to the systematization of recent approaches; and b) based on the results of the aforementioned, propose new tools for the analysis and intervention in these conflicts, taking advantage, by way of example and not of detailed analysis, of ten current and heterogeneous cases of distributive conflicts over water.

This issue became popular in the nineties of the twentieth century with striking statements that proclaimed: "the next wars would not be for oil or mineral resources but for access to drinking water." In this sense, the current paper focuses on examining the debate between 1985 and 1995, where the dominant issue was on whether water scarcity or water competition could be a direct causal factor of violent conflicts, or if it was simply a multiplier or accelerating factor linked to other causes. These contributions, while previously dominated by the omnipresence of approaches and texts based on security studies and the then so called “ecological security”, are now based on contributions from studies of the analysis, resolution and transformation of conflicts. Meanwhile, new epistemological reflections respectful of cultural and gender bias are also present, along with non-western-centric approaches.

Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, factual changes, new narratives, and novel guidelines for analysis have urged scholars to revisit the debate on the present and future relationships between armed conflict -or direct violence- and the scarcity or competition for water resources. I have just mentioned factual changes, among which I will highlight the following: significant ongoing changes in geopolitics and geo-economics; changes in the location and nature of direct violence, given that 80% of homicide deaths in the world are not related to direct violence of a clearly political nature (that is, armed conflict and terrorism), something that is linked with the strong growth of private security actors (legal and illegal) and a partial loss of the state's monopoly on the massive instruments of violence; ongoing mutations in the nature and spread of power; a progressive de-westernization of the international system and of the ways of analyzing it (international theory); the emergence of climate change and the climate emergency agenda and, in addition, the pandemics linked to recurrent zoonosis processes; and, to close this list, and returning to the topic being studies in this issue of the journal, the central position that water occupies in the 2030 agenda and in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Hence, we need new tools that allow us to analyze and better understand these conflicts related to water, in general, and also their occurrences in the major geopolitical areas of the world in the coming decades (Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean).

Regarding the new narratives and analysis guidelines, the paper focuses on the new approaches in the area of analysis, resolution and transformation of conflicts that have emerged from the consensus on liberal peace, along with contributions from political ecology specialized in distributive environmental conflicts and environmental justice. Taking into account these new epistemological reflections, including those related to identity, is important as it allows one to focus on causality, and the tools that facilitate its analysis

In addition to its introduction and conclusions, this article has three sections. The first establishes a factual starting point, summarizing the data related to fresh drinking water. Through a succinct description of ten conflicts, both intra and international, and from various continents and regions, this establishes a central thesis: the most significant conflict causation factor is not so much the lack of water, but the management and governance of water in general and its shortages. Secondly, it summarizes the analysis and the results of the debate on water conflicts, in particular on the causation links between water use and scarcity and direct violence from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s of the last century. The third section presents new perspectives, based not on security studies or ecological security, as before, but on the consolidated works of peace research, and studies on conflict analysis and transformation. Specifically, the main contributions and findings are displayed, and, also, a seminal framework to apply them to water conflicts, through three assumptions and seven theses. Finally, the conclusions insist on the need to treat these conflicts as social conflicts, showing that their specificity is linked to the management and governance of the resource rather than the scarcity itself.

In the concluding remarks, the paper highlights that the most pertinent features of any analysis and intervention in environmental conflicts, especially those that are persistent and difficult to resolve (what American literature usually calls “intractable” conflicts) do not reside in the adjective “environmental”, or “hydric”, as the mainstream suggested in the first half of the 1990s. What is really meaningful is that they are social conflicts, basically distributive conflicts, and linked to the search for fairer solutions; that is, related to the allocation, use and / or management of environmental goods.

The specificity provided by the adjective “environmental” or “hydric” exists, of course, beyond its growing importance for the contextual reasons already mentioned -such as demographic pressure, climate change or pollution and destruction of resources. However, this does not justify a differentiated treatment for these conflicts, as was the case previously. They are social conflicts, and therefore marked by cultural and contextual differences. Therefore, this means that they must be analyzed and intervened upon, in order to manage, resolve and transform them, with the same tools and techniques used for all the social distributive conflicts. We can call them "environmental”, or "hydric" if that is the case, but only if this means that we do not stop dealing with them as social conflicts. And moreover, we must not forget that like most of these conflicts, it is necessary to apply “analytical filters” to them based on knowledge of the logic of collective action, public goods and collective goods

Finally, the paper argues that these conflicts and the new analytical and resolutions framework force us to modify the famous formula of "thinking globally, acting locally". Today, to tackle them, you also have to think in a multidimensional way, and, in many cases, act globally. In doing so, the paper emphasizes the governance and governance challenges that need to be addressed.