GEOG10001 Famine: The
Geography of Scarcity
Lecture 12
Armed conflict,
food security
and course conclusion
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Outline
1. Armed conflict: definition and
recent history
2. Armed conflict and famine
3. ‘Complex emergencies’
4. Refugees
5. Conclusions and Revisions
Part 1
Part 2
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1. Armed conflict: definition and
recent history
Armed conflict: three categories
1. Minor armed conflict:
– < 1,000 battle deaths (Northern Ireland)
2. Intermediate armed conflict:
– > 1,000 battle deaths throughout course
of conflict, but less than 1,000 in any
given year, e.g. Israel – Palestine
3. War:
– > 1,000 deaths in a year, e.g. Afghanistan
•
But note: 90% deaths now are civilians
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1. Armed conflict: definition and recent history
Dupuy et al. 2017
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1. Armed conflict
• 2016: 49 armed conflicts
• 102,000 people were killed
• But most had a strong foreign element
Dupuy et al. 2017
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2. Armed conflict, hunger, famine
Famines are closely associated with armed conflict
Famines triggered by conflict:
- Somalia 2011-2012
- Cambodia 1979
- S. Sudan 2016-17
- Nigeria 1968-70
- Somalia 1991-3
- Netherlands 1944
- Ethiopia 1983-5
- Rwanda 1943-4
- Mozambique 1982-5
- India 1943
- Uganda 1980-81
- China 1943
- Combined deaths of these 12 famines: ~40 mill
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2. Armed conflict and famine
• Majority of people who are food insecure
live in countries affected by armed conflict:
– 489 million / 815 million malnourished people
– 122 / 155 million stunted children
• Progress in reducing hunger slowest in
countries affected by armed conflict. Why?
• Almost all countries with current protracted
food crisis have experienced some form of
violent conflict for most of the past 20 years
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2. Armed conflict, hunger and famine
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2. Armed conflict, hunger and famine
Armed conflicts have direct and
indirect effects on food.
Direct:
• Deliberate denial of food to opponents
and perceived supporters of opponents
• Armies appropriate food resources and
aid
• Deliberate destruction of crops and
infrastructure (farmers, NPA, Philippine
Military)
NPA
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2. Armed conflict and famine
Direct effects…
– Forced migration and
entitlements losses
– Disrupted to social
institutions and support
(e.g., health services)
– NGOs de facto gov
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2. Armed conflict and famine
Indirect effects
– Diverts public resources,
high ratio of spending on
arms relative to social
services
– Cessation of aid and foreign
investment and/or
– Diversion of aid to
immediate needs rather than
long-term development
– Diversion of labour:
conscription, death,
maiming à
Direct & Indirect: Land mines
deny access to arable land and
transport services
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2. Armed conflict and famine
Indirect effects…
– Disrupted food markets as transport impeded
and markets close
– Including disrupted international trade
– Disrupted government and agricultural policies
– degraded land, rupture of food trade,
investments etc
– militarised masculinities
– trauma
– availability of weapons
Synergistic…cumulative.. spatial.. temporal
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3. ‘Complex emergencies…’
Drive humanitarian crisis .. where there is
total or considerable breakdown of
authority resulting from internal or external
conflict and which requires an international
response that goes beyond the mandate or
capacity of any single agency and/or the
ongoing UN country program (UNOCHA
1999)
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3. ‘Complex emergencies’
• Extensive violence and mortality
• Massive displacements of people
• Widespread social and economic
damage
• Weak or non-existent
government
• Require large scale, multifaceted international assistance
• Always have an associated food
crisis.
• Multi-causal: usually greed not
grievance –often occur in places
that are resource rich
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3. ‘Complex emergencies’
• Administering aid is difficult and dangerous:
over 375 aid workers killed 1985-1998
• OCHA: 156 killed in 2013; 139 in 2017
• Generally occurs in places where governance
is weak – State is unable to impose order.
• Recent complex emergencies:
–
–
–
–
–
Afghanistan
Angola
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Sudan
- Congo
- Rwanda
- East Timor
- Eritrea-Ethiopia
- Burundi
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3. ‘Complex emergencies’
• Reminder à causes can’t be understood
independent of temporal and spatial context: e.g.
–
–
–
–
–
colonisation
trade dependency
Cold War conflicts and militarisation
debt
inequality
• Successful interventions understand the causes
and the context. à is it easy to determine cause and effect
and model ‘complex emergencies’?
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5. Refugees
a person who "owing to a well-founded fear
of being persecuted for reasons of race,
religion, nationality, membership in a
particular social group, or political
opinion, is outside the country of her/his
nationality, and is unable to or, owing to
such fear, is unwilling to avail
her/himself of the protection of that
country.“
– 1951 Convention Relating to the Status
of Refugees
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5. Refugees
• People relocate up to six times in response to
famine and/or war.
• ~80% of refugees are women and children
– Why?
• Women particularly vulnerable in new
locations: no assets, no social support
networks.
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5. Refugees
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5. Refugees
Largest sources of refugees in 2015:
Origin
Number
Conflict
Syria
4.9 million
Yes
Afghanistan
2.6 million
Yes
Somalia
1.1 million
yes
South Sudan
800,000
Yes
Sudan
650,000
Yes
DR Congo
500,00
Yes
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5. Refugees
Refugees hosted by
poor countries,
supported by UNHCR
22.5 million refugees in 2016
55% from South Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria
Why?
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5. Refugees
Food problems.
• Lose access to land, resources, social support,
employment and income (entitlement failure)
• Food shortages in camps
• 10-15% of refugee children are malnourished
• High densities increase disease exposure
• Profiteering within camps
• Relief agencies have trouble sustaining support
over long-term.
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5. Refugees
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs):
–
–
–
–
Move within countries
Not under UNHCR mandate
Same sets of problems as refugees
Estimated 41 million at end of 2015
Country
Syria
Colombia
Iraq
Sudan
Number
7.6 million
6 million
3.4 million
3.1 million
Conflict
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
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5. Refugees
IDPs
• Do not necessarily escape the
problem that initially triggered
migration.
• US Gov survey: sexual assault
in 46% of countries with large
numbers of IDPs
• Sovereignty makes
humanitarian assistance
difficult
• Just as w refugees they are
discriminated against/ villified
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6. Conclusions
1. Armed conflict is the most common cause
of famine (but rarely in isolation from
other causes)
2. Armed conflict is a strong cause of hunger
3. Most armed conflicts occur in Africa
4. Refugees and IDPs remain vulnerable
long after the armed conflict has ended.
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Part 2
Conclusions and Revisions
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Outline
1. Conclusions
1. The three views of famine
2. Understanding famine
3. A checklist to explain famine
4. Causality: abundance theory
5. Causality: distribution, political ecology
theory
2. Further study
3. Exam
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1. Conclusions
So, why don’t (some) people get enough to eat?
• is it because there are too many people and not
enough food?
– population, production, environment…
• is it because some people can’t secure enough food?
– poverty, prices, economics, politics …
• is it because the poor’s uneven access to and use of food
is due to scaled power, political economic control, and
environmental change?
-- capitalism, poverty, prices, politics, power,
struggle, resistance, ecological degradation …
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1. Conclusions
1. To answer these questions, we examined
three views of famine
• Abundance argument
• Distribution argument
• Political ecology argument
•
Theories (system of ideas intending to
explain something; abstract accounts of
reality)
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1. Conclusions
Malthusians
NeoMalthusians
Abundance argument
• Population, food, environment
– Population growth and agricultural capacity
– Environmental change and fluctuation
• Here the issue of famine concerns the
aggregate supply of food relative to the
numbers of people, and how these factors
change.
• That is: not enough food being supplied relative to
overall size and consumptive needs of population
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1. Conclusions
Sen
Boserup
Distribution argument
• Famine as a social, political & economic creation; sees
famine as a:
– Process based in absolute, relative poverty
– Considers who suffers from famine and underlying
reasons why
• Famines and food insecurity arise from the uneven
distribution of food which is a product of economic,
social, cultural and political factors.
• Quality vs quantity; too little, too much food; the paradox
of plenty
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1. Conclusions
Political ecology argument
• Political, economic and environmental
change influences access to, use of
and control over food, food
production, and food exchange over
time and space, vice versa; (colonial,
post-colonial)
• Global, national and local politics and
economy influence food access, use
and control;
• Getting the farmers’ (emic)
perspective – struggles, resistance,
social movements
• Culturally relative
Marx
Wallerstein
Frank
Eric Wolf
Dressler J
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1. Conclusions
2. Understanding famine
Each famine is particular, understanding
requires:
• Explaining the background conditions
– long-term causes (political, economic and
environmental issues)
Explaining how the background conditions
transform into a famine event
– Short-term causes and triggers
• Synergistic, cumulative, temporal and spatial
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1. Conclusions
• Some factors are triggers
– Drought / climate change, war, policy failure..
• Some factors are fundamental
– Who dies is always a matter of access to food, political
economy, power and control
• Some factors may be common
– Tend to occur in poor countries with:
• Uneven political economies
• Low and fluctuating levels of food production, elite
hording, shift to markets
• High share of workforce in agriculture w limited
access/ use of suitable land
• Crucial, political ecological convergence
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1. Conclusions
3. Causal relations: abundance theory
Population
increase
Environmental
conditions
Social stress
Environmental
degradation
Overly linear
cause and effect?
Formation of
marginal groups
How easy is it demonstrate
/ prove?
Trigger
FAMINE
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1. Conclusions
Multidimensional
4. Causal relations: distribution/ political ecology theory
Colonial history
& position in
world economy
More realistic?
Colonialism,
MNCs/ TNCs/labour,
World economy
Internal sociopolitical, economic
structures, ecological
degradation
Formation of
marginal groups
Elites, Land
ownership, access,
use, gender,
entitlements, local
knowledge resistance!
Population growth
Technology
Envtl degradation
Trigger
FAMINE
Foregrounding
political economy
Climate, war
repression,
trade, changes in
entitlements
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1. Conclusions
Interventions and solutions depend on which
argument you believe (based on your political
economic persuasion?):
• Abundance argument:
– Control population growth
– Increase food production
• Distribution argument:
– Poverty reduction
– More equitable & accountable social,
economic and political systems at all scales
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1. Conclusions
• Political ecology argument:
– Understanding and disrupting how global, national
and local politics and economy influence food
access, use and control;
– Getting farmers’ (emic) perspective: Work from
‘bottom up’, grass roots, culturally relative solutions
– see struggles, resistance, social justice and
sustainability as solutions (e.g. agroecology)
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2. Further study
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Development Geography
Semester 2
- GEOG 10003 Global Youth*
Semester 1
- GEOG 20010 China in Transition
- GEOG 20012 Post-Conflict Development
& Difference*
- NEW! GEOG Fertility, Mortality and
Social Change
- GEOG 2003 Environmental Politics and
Management
Semester 2
- GEOG 20011 Global Inequalities in the
Anthropocene*
- NEW! GEOG Spatial Analysis in
Geography
* = no prerequisites
40
Health and Human Sciences
Semester 2
- SCIE 10004 Human Sciences: Cells To
Societies*
Semester 1
- NEW! GEOG Fertility, Mortality & Social
Change
Semester 2
- SCIE 20002 Human Sciences: Tech,
Nature & Society
- GEOG 20013 Health Geography*
- GEOG 20011 Global Inequalities in the
Anthropocene*
- NEW! GEOG Spatial Analysis in
Geography
* = no pre-requisties
41
Fertility, Mortality, and
Social Change
GEOG 20016; Semester 1
2020
An introduction to
demography: the scientific
study of human
populations.
Debates and policy challenges
around demographic dividend,
population ageing, immigration,
marriage and family change,
fertility and reproductive health,
gender and work, urbanisation,
poverty and inequality,
population and politics, and
population and environment.
3. Exam
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3. Exam
Structure of the exam:
• 25 multiple choice questions @
1.2 marks each
• Login via LMS – ‘Quizzes’ tab.
• You have 75 minutes to complete
the exam once you have logged
in – the exam will shut down at
75 minutes
• You cannot pause the exam in
any way – so make sure you are
ready to go.
• June 22, 2023
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3. Exam
It is an ‘open book’ exam w an ‘honesty policy’:
• do not talk about the exam with other students
• do not collaborate with anyone else
• do not view another person’s answers
• do not permit anyone else to see your answers
• do not make written notes of the questions or of your
answers
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2. Exam
Content:
• The exam tests your
understanding of the major
themes of the course.
• Questions are based on
materials in lectures and
readings
• Questions test your knowledge
of principles and processes.
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2. Exam
Example Content
famines
hunger
population
food supply and demand
food production
environmental processes
natural resources
cases of collapse
poverty
gender
trade
entitlements
Green Revolution
aid
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2. Exam
Example
What is dependency theory?
a) a theory about the relationship between
women and men in rural households
b) a theory about the effects of social protection
on rural productivity
c) a theory about the dependence of food
importing countries on food trade
d) a theory about the effect of colonialism and
trade on under-development
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GOOD LUCK!
It has been a wonderful journey!
The future is yours to define and live!
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