Resilience at the periphery: Insurgency, agency and social-ecological change under armed conflict

Abstract

Armed conflict has played an increasingly important role in the transformation of key social and environmental systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Accelerated resource flows and environmental change dynamics intersect with conflict processes in ways that are substantial and yet inadequately understood. Drawing on research along the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan's embattled province of Nangarhar, we employ a coupled systems approach for understanding the ways in which social-ecological processes shape and are shaped by armed conflict. Based on field surveys, geospatial analysis of land and forest change, and participatory research among local communities, government agencies and military actors, we identify several causal processes linking conflict and dynamics of social-ecological change in the context of multiscalar geopolitical processes. We focus attention on four interrelated elements: (1) transitional modes of resource governance relating to armed militia groups and state intervention, (2) forest changes related to illegal logging and trade networks, (3) the erosion of upper-montane rangelands through encroachment and changing pastoral responses to conflict, and (4) significant land use changes in the agricultural sector toward the cultivation of opium poppy. Our research highlights the importance of center-periphery relations, the problematic nature of local agency, and the ways in which local social-ecological elements-here, particularly, timber and opium-become political objects within competing narratives of (in)security and ongoing state formation. Highlights  We employ a resilience-based approach to analyze change under armed conflict  Positive conflict-environment feedbacks drive system change toward threshold  State margins and porous boundaries serve as sites of innovation and local resilience  Opium and timber extraction emerge as politically-charged social-ecological objects  Agency enables resilience, intersecting problematically with narcotics and insurgency

Land-System Changes and Migration Amidst the Opium Poppy Collapse in the Southern Highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico (2016-2020)

“…We use all bands with 10 and 20 m resolution from the Copernicus Sentinel 2 system for our first method of data generation. 2 This represents a higher spatial resolution than other scientific studies that have analyzed land-system change related to illegal crop cultivation with open access imagery, which have mainly used Landsat at 30 m. Examples of these studies include coca in South America (Bradley & Millington, 2008a , b ; Chadid et al, 2015 ; Dávalos et al, 2011 ; Rincón-Ruiz et al, 2016 ; Salisbury & Fagan, 2013 ) and poppy in Afghanistan (Ingalls & Mansfield, 2017 ; Mansfield, 2016 , 2017 ).…”

Unraveling complex relations between forest-cover change and conflicts through spatial and relational analyses

“…Recent studies have analyzed the relation between land-use change and environmental conflicts by using complexity approaches (Hanaček and Rodríguez-Labajos 2018) or spatial analysis (Simmons 2004, Durán et al 2011. However, the combination of the two approaches is still in its early stages (Ingalls and Mansfield 2017). By integrating spatial and relational analyses, we found diverse patterns of relations between FCC and conflicts in the Meseta Purépecha that were nonetheless interrelated and driven by the process of avocado production.…”

“…Hanaček and Rodríguez-Labajos (2018) used https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol24/iss3/art3/ various theoretical frameworks and network analysis to study the interrelations among land-use and management changes, cultural ecosystem services, and diverse causes, effects, and outcomes of environmental conflicts. Ingalls and Mansfield (2017) applied a coupled-systems and resilience approach using diverse causal mechanisms to explain social-ecological transformations in a region under armed conflict. However, these studies have either scarcely used spatial or quantitative information or they have analyzed it using statistical tools.…”

Contested Territory: Ðiện Biên Phủ and the Making of Northwest Vietnam. By Christian C. Lentz

“…Lentz's historic narrative has immediate relevance today. Governing mountainous peripheries remains a core concern in ongoing processes of state formation in mainland Southeast Asia (Peluso and Lund 2011;Dwyer et al 2016), Central Asia (Goodhand 2008;Ingalls and Mansfield 2017), and many other areas (Korf and Raeymaekers 2013). Framing these spaces as resource frontiers as well as places of poverty and insecurity provides both incentive and legitimacy for rendering them legible and obedient to state power.…”