African Environmental and Human Security in the 21st Century By ...

comparative case studies of Niger and Chad using a multilevel and interdisciplinary systems approach. In chapter 2, Associate Professor Steven Burgess examines the linkages among ethnic conflict and four different types of environmental security threats in the Horn and East Africa. He relates these conflicts to well-known theories of how environmental degradation and scarcity are linked to political conflicts. U.S. Marine Major Mark Deets, a former defense attaché in Senegal, the Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau, analyzes the root causes of the continuing low-level conflict in the Casamance region of Senegal. Major Deets found that desertification was one of several drivers of continued low-level conflict. He concludes that unless there are major changes in the region, such as the increased use of the Casamance region as a transit area for smuggling people, arms, and drugs, the conflict is likely to continue at a low level of intensity for the foreseeable future.

The last in-depth case study in this section (chapter 4) is by Dr. Anthony Turton, a well-known expert on water issues in southern Africa. Dr. Turton discusses the factors and empirical evidence in South Africa that led him to hypothesize that “when the expectations of society for resource allocation exceeds the capacity (or willingness) of the government to deliver, then mass violence could result.” In his analysis, Dr. Turton notes that water is already the single most important resource that constrains future development potential in the country. He ties the modern struggle over water to the country's brutal past struggles to control and allocate valuable resources, such as water and mineral wealth, before and during the apartheid era, and to the breakdown of water sanitary procedures since 1994, including increased evidence that decanted water from mines now contains radioactive and heavy metal concentrations that are flowing into rivers and into industrial and home water supplies and may already be causing adverse human health effects.¹ Dr. Turton had planned to discuss the need for more research on the harmful effects of growing water pollution in South Africa in a speech he was invited to make at a plenary session of South Africa's Center for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR) in November 2008. Shortly before his presentation, Dr. Turton was prevented from delivering the speech by his superiors and was later released from his employment