Environmental conflict between refugees and host communities in Uganda: a case study of Nakivale Settlement area, Isingiro District

Abstract

A plethora of studies reviewed on refugees and host communities has been found to cover the impact of refugees on resources in the host communities while most literature on environmental security examines the causal linkages between environmental scarcity and violent conflict. That literature is useful because it explores the causes of conflicts over resources between refugees and host communities but it gives limited account of the environmental conflict between refugees and the host communities. This research paper considers a range of local variables that shape the ways in which actors socially construct resource-use competition. The paper is premised on an assumption that any resource use competition can possibly stimulate either cooperative solutions or unproductive forms of conflict. The variables that shape actors’ relations are therefore, viewed as the determinants of the kind of outcomes that result from a resource use conflict. This assumption is anchored in the environmental conflicts that have been documented in areas hosting refugees. The subject is explored in more detail, illustrated by a case study from a Ugandan refugee settlement area. The paper finds theoretical and empirical evidence to support the view that participatory and inclusive resource management systems may enable communities to construct resource-use conflicts in ways that help to prevent unproductive conflict especially on the environment. Such forms of governance can potentially be initiated in places where environmental conflict mitigation through state institutional resources has failed. Thus, the paper generates a possibility for an end to environmental conflict that emanates from resource scarcity in refugee hosting communities.