Shavit Vered Baruch

We are experiencing the most profound refugee crisis in living memory. But we remain largely unaware of its true origins: environmental exploitation, forced resettlement, artificial resentments stoked into conflict. Fighting environmental oppression can provide an entry point for addressing profound challenges across societies.

I have lived in Uganda for the last year, establishing a new grassroots organization, Aniye, with a group of African activists. Our goal is to identify the root causes of the social and environmental crises contributing to discrimination,  poverty, and forced migration in East Africa, and to promote effective solutions both for those problems and for the people affected by them.  

Currently, there are around a million and a half refugees in  Uganda, originating from more than a dozen war-torn African countries. Although Uganda offers welcoming and relatively safe conditions for refugees, high levels of unemployment and poverty leave the newcomers without job opportunities or social services. We believe that in order to change this dire situation, we first need to understand the root causes of these people’s displacement and its connection to global economic systems and contemporary environmentalism.  

We are currently in the midst of what is commonly referred to as the worst refugee crisis in history, with an estimated  68.5 million forcefully displaced people worldwide. This social crisis is interrelated with environmental issues in multiple ways. First, the same economic forces that devastate the environment also directly affect human populations. Mining for coltan, a mineral used in the production of cell phones and electronics, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),  endangers gorilla populations, and is also responsible for child slavery and provoking bloodshed. Oil exploitation in the Amazon leads to deforestation and pollution, violating indigenous rights and harming both humans and wildlife.  

And while many westerners have heard about the devastation of orangutan populations by palm oil plantations in Asia, their effect on local populations is much less known. The creation of these palm oil plantations causes the displacement of local farming and indigenous communities from their ancestral lands, leading to poverty and the loss of their cultures. Second,  and contrary to common belief, many of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa are triggered by the abundance, and not the scarcity,  of natural resources. The majority of con"icts in Africa are funded, at least to some degree, through the exploitation of natural resources such as petrol, diamonds, timber, and minerals.  

The “Resource Curse” is a term used in academia to describe the phenomena of resource-rich countries making inferior advances across a variety of social and economic measures,  in comparison to resource-poor countries. The theory suggests that resource-dependent economies result in highly dysfunctional states; this contributes to the deterioration of the public sector and the promotion of further unsustainable economic policies. Armed con"icts are explained by the Greed and Grievance theory, where “Greed” refers to the interests of multiple actors such as governments, elites, and international corporations in controlling natural resources.  This is a vertical relationship, those with access to resources controlling those who do not.  

“Grievance” refers to resentment or competition between ethnicities or tribes, leading to civil wars. However, the relevance of Grievance is debatable, as an antagonism between tribes can be incited by Greed. For example, the civil war in  South Sudan is one of the most brutal wars of the present time. Rebels constantly loot and burn villages, raping and murdering their residents. 400,000 people have already been killed, and millions have lost their homes. This war is largely tribal, mainly between the Dinka and the Nuer tribes. South  Sudan is very rich in resources, possessing large oil and mineral reserves. Research shows that in the hope of ensuring their political survival and control of the country’s resources, the elite of South Sudan manipulates group identities, employing what is referred to as “psychological regulators” (fear, hatred,  resentment, and rage). Ethnic hatred can also be incited by groups in power, through deliberately a$ording inequitable access to services such as health and education, limiting political opportunities, and downgrading cultural status,  as well as through the unequal control and division of the revenue derived from natural resources.  

The exploitation of natural resources by international companies is usually done in heavily guarded areas, cleansed of local people. Oil concessions in Sudan, for example, have been advertised as sited on uninhabited lands. However,  this is because paramilitaries have systematically cleared the areas of their inhabitants. These internally displaced people find themselves looking for new lands, often resulting in territorial fights. Therefore, it has been argued, both by academics and by the South Sudanese refugees I spoke with,  that this civil war is anything but spontaneous disagreement between the tribes. The same was stated about the close to  70 di$erent rebel groups fighting each other and terrorizing the population of the DRC. The DRC is one of the most richly endowed countries, with regard to mineral resources, in the world; nevertheless, it is the second poorest country in the world according to Global Finance, and the conflict in the country is considered one of the bloodiest since World War II.  

A growing base of academic literature challenges mainstream environmental discourse by concluding that there is very weak or no evidence pointing to a direct relationship between climate-change-related phenomena, such as short-term warming, droughts or floods, and armed conflicts. Rather,  it is the conservation initiatives and climate change mitigation strategies, in the main based on neoliberal, colonialist interventions, that in fact create and aggravate social conflicts.  

“Our main goal is to better understand the real reasons behind civil bloodshed in refugees’ countries of origin, and to make this information accessible to them”

The idea of “protected areas” arrived in Africa with colonialism;  it always applied exclusively to local Africans and was often enforced violently. It is thought that this system, known as  “fines and fences,” broke the ancient equilibrium between  African people and nature, and is one of the causes of the current environmental crisis in the continent. Clashes between conservation activities and the human rights of local people are escalating all over Africa, and exclusion has been elevated to “shoot to kill” policies in many countries. The global number of “conservation refugees” is constantly growing, including the many indigenous ethnicities that have been abused and socially ruined. Some of the most notorious recent cases include the Maasai in Tanzania and Kenya, the Baka pygmies in Cameroon, and the Acholi in northern Uganda.  

An additional threat to local people is the recent land-grabbing phenomena related to Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) initiatives. International funds for carbon sequestration allow wealthy individuals, large environmental organizations, and industries to buy or secure concessions over large tracts of land, excluding local people.  They sometimes retain the original vegetation; but in many cases, the areas are deforested and replanted with intensive monocultures, such as palm oil. In this way, REDD projects devastate both local communities and the environment.  

At Aniye, we aim to bring change through various means.  We teach English and other skills to refugees in Kampala,  broadening their employment opportunities. Refugee children from families who can’t a$ord school fees are taught English,  and also get to enjoy playtime. We advocate for the protection of refugees’ legal rights, and we are involved in the campaign to end Israel’s shameful treatment of refugees, its policies in complete disregard of international treaties. But our main goal is to better understand the real reasons behind civil bloodshed in refugees’ countries of origin and to make this information accessible to them; promoting peace by explaining that the real enemy is not their neighbor, but rather the economic systems that use and abuse them.  

This is a long process: it is based on building trust between us and refugee communities, through conversations, talks, and joint activities showing them different realities; training communal leaders and activists to understand and respond to socio-environmental threats; preparing easy-to-access awareness-building materials in the local languages; presenting lectures and academic talks in local universities.