Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict: The Case of Rwanda
by Valerie Percival and Thomas Homer-Dixon
Part 2
The preceding account has shown that environmental scarcity was correlated with conflict in Rwanda. But to establish environmental scarcity's causal role, it is not enough to demonstrate that high levels of environmental scarcity were accompanied by conflict. To avoid spurious claims about causation, we must analyze all factors contributing to the Rwandan conflict and the interaction of environmental scarcity with these factors.
We propose four hypotheses specifying possible links between environmental scarcity and violent conflict in Rwanda. The first focuses on high levels of grievance caused by high population growth and decreased food production; this grievance caused increased levels of frustration, aggression, and conflict. The second highlights how state institutions were weakened and how the state became increasingly unable to manage the transition from authoritarian rule. According to this hypothesis, the 1989 famine, continuing food shortages, and population pressures were partly responsible for this weakening of the Rwandan state. The third emphasizes the development and manipulation of ethnic identity by elite groups in order to maintain popular support for the regime within the Hutu community.
The fourth hypothesis synthesizes the first three by identifying elite insecurity as the central variable. The insecurity of Hutu elites increased because of internal and external pressures for democratization and the concessions of the Arusha Accords, both of which occurred in the context of falling coffee prices, structural adjustment, the civil war, and environmental scarcity. The Arusha Accords weakened key segments of the Habyarimana regime; these groups then tried to retain control of the state by harnessing popular support and frustration after the death of Habyarimana. Each hypothesis is discussed in detail below.
Land scarcity was severe; little new land was available for cultivation in an overwhelmingly agricultural society. The majority of the population was young, and a strong social norm existed that couples needed access to wealth, for example, a plot of land, before they married. The lack of land, combined with few nonagricultural employment opportunities, created resentment and frustration within this large segment of Rwandan society. The population was therefore easily mobilized;78 there were reports of increased rivalry and conflict among neighbors over land.79 The structural adjustment program both reduced government aid programs and increased the price of imported goods, such as food,80 while poor economic conditions reduced alternative employment opportunities for youth in urban areas. Frustration was further intensified by increased corruption in the Rwandan government81 and the unresponsiveness of both opposition parties and government agencies to the problems of rural society.82 In the context of ethnic cleavages, these grievances were easily channeled into an ethnic conflict. (Figure 1)
The level of grievance among the population was indeed high, and government propaganda did attempt to create and capitalize on popular fear by stating that the Tutsi, in the form of the RPF, were going to seize land. This was a significant threat. The land belonged to the state, and an RPF-dominated state put in place after the implementation of the Arusha Accords could have forced Hutu farmers off their land.
Although many Rwandans felt aggrieved, grievances do not automatically translate into violence. Three conditions are necessary to establish a relationship between deprivation-induced grievance and violence. It must be shown conclusively, first, that deprivation was increasing; second, that this deprivation was increasing the level of grievance; and, third, that the aggrieved participated in the violence.83 The first two conditions held in Rwanda, but the third did not. The southwest experienced the greatest scarcities, and the population's ability to sustain itself was clearly decreasing. The political opposition was based in the south. However, the area remained relatively quiet for the first few weeks after the death of Habyarimana. Only when the militias from the north moved in and began their systematic killing of all Tutsi and opposition leaders84 did violence overtake the south. There is no conclusive evidence that large numbers of Rwandans - especially those experiencing the most severe effects of environmental scarcity - participated in the killings. And for those who did participate in the south, there is substantial anecdotal evidence that peasants were coerced to participate in massacres by militias and local authorities.85
The second hypothesis focuses on the transition from authoritarian rule. Regime legitimacy - the government's moral authority - declined because of the 1989 famine, the specter of further food shortages in 1994, and the regime's general inability to meet the needs of rural society. Farmers refused to participate in the central government's one-day-a-week umuganda labor system to build roads, dig erosion ditches, and plant trees. Much of this work was seen as useless;86 the advice of local farmers, often the best experts on soil and farming due to the diversity of Rwanda's geography, was not heeded.87 The Rwandan government had prided itself on Rwanda's food self-sufficiency, yet the rural food crisis and the failure of its own development strategies combined to undermine popular support for the government.88 Moreover, these events occurred at the same time as the international trend toward democratization brought pressures from donor countries for similar measures in Rwanda.89
The four general stages of the movement toward democratization are the decline of authoritarian rule, the transition from authoritarian rule, the consolidation of democratic institutions, and the maturing of democratic political order.90 Successful democratization requires the negotiation of pacts among the elites; hybrid regimes - in which old institutions are combined with new ones - usually oversee the transition periods.91 Hybrid regimes are often not resilient, which creates a high potential for reversion to authoritarian rule. Adam Przeworski establishes some conditions for a successful transition:
If reforms are to proceed under democratic conditions, distributional conflicts must be institutionalized; all groups must channel their demands through democratic institutions and abjure other tactics. Regardless of how pressing their needs may be, the politically relevant groups must be willing to subject their interests to the verdict of democratic institutions. . . . Reforms can succeed under two polar conditions of the organization of political forces: the latter have to be very strong and support the reform program, or they have to be very weak and unable to oppose it effectively.92
In early 1994, Rwanda entered a period of transition from authoritarian rule. The Arusha Accords provided for the establishment of a hybrid regime, yet many members of the army and government would have lost their privileged positions within the state under the democratic arrangements outlined in the Accords. At a critical moment in the transition, when the previous regime had lost all legitimacy yet the democratic institutions of the new regime had not fully developed, a coup d'état occurred. Although it is not known precisely who killed President Habyarimana, most experts have concluded that an elite within the Rwandan government - led by the leaders of the two main militias - assassinated him as part of a broader strategy to retain the power and wealth that came with control of the state. These elites tried to garner support within the Rwandan population by exploiting ethnic cleavages; all Tutsi were identified as members of the RPF and targeted for death by the militias and army.
However, the explanation provided by the second hypothesis is incomplete: it is not clear that there were strong links among environmental scarcity, declining regime legitimacy, the transition from authoritarian rule, and the outbreak of conflict. The regime's agreement to undertake a transition to democracy was mainly a reaction not to its declining legitimacy, but to the RPF invasion and civil war. Internal pressures for democratization, caused only in part by environmental scarcity, were important, but the regime appeared largely able to maintain control of the state apparatus when faced with domestic appeals for democratization. However, the Arusha Accords threatened members of the Habyarimana regime, in particular the army and militias, as power and wealth would have been shared with the RPF.
In a context in which ethnic affiliation mattered, environmental scarcity created conditions that increased competition between Hutu and Tutsi. Cross-national research shows that cases of severe ethnic conflict share the following characteristics: institutionalized group boundaries and stereotypes, an experience of ethnic domination by one or more groups, the strong perception by one group that the opposing ethnic group has external affiliations, and ethnically based parties with no significant interethnic coalitions.93 Rwandan ethnic relations exhibited all of these characteristics: colonial rule institutionalized interethnic boundaries, and these boundaries were thickened by Hutu regimes after independence; the Tutsi were the most powerful ethnic group in the pre-independence period, and independence was seen as a Hutu revolution; civilian Tutsi were perceived to have strong affinities with the RPF; and General Habyarimana's ruling party and militias were controlled solely by Hutu.
The scarcity of environmental resources, combined with other factors, created a context within which ethnic affiliations mattered. Ethnic identity was one means that Hutu elites used to establish and maintain control over resources, including environmental resources such as cropland. Economic opportunities for the Hutu elite had been squeezed by the country's general economic crisis due to the structural adjustment plan, the economic strain suffered from the civil war, and the collapse of coffee prices. The importance of access to environmental resources increased as alternative economic options disappeared. Ethnicity was the key to this access, which for the Hutu elite was threatened by the Arusha Accords.
This explanation also appears inadequate. Anti-Tutsi attitudes were reportedly much stronger among more educated Hutu than among the mass of the Hutu population. Environmental scarcity therefore clearly did not increase the salience of ethnicity among the majority of Rwanda's population, or even among those who were most severely affected by the scarcity. Instead, ethnicity was most important among members of the elite who were least affected by scarcity. A careful review of the evidence shows that ethnic affiliations became salient among the elite, because the predominantly Tutsi RPF threatened the regime's hold on power. Moreover, ethnic divisions were not the only cleavages in Rwandan society: regional cleavages were important, especially under President Habyarimana's rule. Being a Hutu was not enough. One had to be a Hutu from the president's northwestern region or share the sentiments of Hutu extremism,94 which explains the large number of moderate Hutu targeted by the militias. A hypothesis centered on the multiple forces contributing to elite insecurity provides a more powerful explanation of the genocide.
We believe that the most plausible explanation of the recent conflict, outlined in Figure 4, is a combination of the three hypotheses above. Elite or regime insecurity plays a central role in this synthesis.
Brian Job, in his recent work on the insecurity dilemma95 faced by developing states, emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between the state and the regime when analyzing conflict in the developing world. The state has two sets of relations with its environment: external relations with other states and internal relations as its constituent institutions organize, regulate, and enforce interactions among groups within its territory. The norms of international law guarantee that the external relations of the state are rarely threatened, but control of internal relations is often contested by various segments of society.
The regime is the set of individuals that has gained control of the state's internal relations. In developing societies, the regime usually lacks the support of a large share of the population: it represents the interests of a specific ethnic, economic, or military group. The distinction between the internal and external aspects of the state is crucial to our understanding of the Rwandan case: it was the Habyarimana regime, not the Rwandan state, that faced threats to its security. The regime did all it could to maintain its grip on power. According to Job,
[Regimes] are preoccupied with the short term; their security and their physical survival are dependent on the strategies they pursue for the moment. Consequently, it is rational for regimes to adopt policies that utilize scarce resources for military equipment and [humanpower], to perceive as threatening opposition movements demanding greater public debate, and to regard as dangerous communal movements that promote alternative identifications and loyalties.96
In Rwanda, regime and elite insecurity was principally generated by the civil war and the Arusha Accords. Even though environmental scarcity's role was limited, it was not insignificant. Environmental scarcities, particularly as they affected food production, undoubtedly increased grievances within the Rwandan rural population and generally weakened the legitimacy of the regime. Scarcities limited the opportunities for wealth creation and for achieving economic and social status within Rwandan society. But there were other significant factors at work: the civil war, structural adjustment, the fall in coffee prices, and Rwanda's position as a landlocked country with little chance for economic diversification also boosted grievances and weakened regime legitimacy. These pressures threatened the preservation of the regime. Rising external and internal demands for democratization compounded elite insecurity by eroding its control of such institutions as the army, the police, and the bureaucracy.
Although the structural adjustment measures, declining food production, and the general economic malaise had hurt the majority of Rwandans, the elite and the armed forces were two groups that did not suffer directly. The army increased from 5,000 to 35,000 soldiers in only 2 years.97 The Arusha Accords provided for a reduction in the size of the armed forces and for integrating the RPF and the army into a new national force. The Accords also provided for the creation of a transitional government until the elections were held. This government would include not only members of the RPF, but also members of domestic opposition groups. Therefore, the power and privilege of the regime and the army were threatened in a context of general scarcity; those displaced by the Accords would have had few economic or political opportunities in either rural or urban areas.
To maintain its hold on power, the regime began its two-track policy (as indicated in Figure 4): it negotiated with the RPF, and it undermined the potential transfer of power to the RPF by fomenting anti-Tutsi and anti-RPF animosity in the general population. However, the impending implementation of the Arusha Accords - guaranteed by Habyarimana's final trip to Arusha - was the death knell for the regime's control of the state.
Members of the regime shot down the president's plane in retaliation for his soft stand at Arusha and seized the state.98 They attempted to gain the support of the population by targeting members of opposition parties and Tutsi as RPF sympathizers who had to be eliminated for national security.99 But they underestimated the lack of popular support for their strategy and the military strength of the RPF.100
The Rwanda case tells us important things about the complexity of causal links between environmental scarcity and conflict. Scarcity did play a role in the recent violence in Rwanda, but, given its severity and impact on the population, the role was surprisingly limited. The role was also not what one would expect from a superficial analysis of the case. Although the levels of environmental scarcity were high and conflict occurred, the connection between these variables was mediated by many other factors. This complexity makes the precise role of environmental scarcity difficult to determine.
The Rwanda example teaches us key lessons for the future study of cases exhibiting a strong correlation between environmental scarcity and violence. If we had focused our analysis solely on environmental scarcity and the social effects it produced, then its contribution to the conflict would have appeared powerful. But by carefully tracing the effects of environmental scarcity and by seriously analyzing competing explanations of the conflict, we determined the best explanation of both the conflict and environmental scarcity's role.
If researchers are to understand complex conflicts like the Rwandan genocide, they must be acutely aware of the issues motivating the conflict's actors. They must not only examine what people do and what physical environment they do it in, but also why they do it. A conflict motivated by different political issues could have occurred in Rwanda in which environmental scarcity played a central role. Although the recent violence occurred in conditions of severe environmental scarcity, because the Arusha Accords and regime insecurity were the key factors motivating the Hutu elite, environmental scarcity played a much more peripheral role.
The Environment, Population and Security papers are maintained by the Peace & Conflict Studies Program at the University of Toronto. We welcome your comments.
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