Cause and Effect
What does it mean when we say that one factor is more or less important than another in identifying the causes of social conflict? Thomas Homer-Dixon writes here on causality in complex systems, in response to Alex de Waal’s earlier post Is Climate Change the Culprit for Darfur? and to Declan Butler’s June 28th Nature article Darfur’s climate roots challenged. Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at University College, University of Toronto.
Here at the University of Toronto, we have been trying to understand links between climate change, environment and conflict for almost two decades. We’ve learned from this research that additive models of causation are rarely valid in complex ecological-human systems. Causation is almost always multiplicative (or, in the jargon of social scientists, interactive). Rather than an A+B+C relationship holding among causes, we find an AxBxC relationship.Interactivity has a number of critical implications, the most important of which is that arguments about the relative importance of one cause over another are usually a waste of time. While in an A+B+C relationship, it might be appropriate to claim that cause A is more or less “important” (or “powerful” or “significant”) than cause B or C, in an AxBxC relationship, all causes are equally important, so such claims are invalid.Much of the discussion about the role of climate change in the Darfur tragedy runs aground on this issue. Commentators and researchers adopt an implicit additivity assumption. They then argue over THE cause or set of causes of the conflict or over which factors are REALLY important and which are not.Counter-factual thought experiments (of the form, “if B had happened instead of A, then Z would have happened instead of Y”) also assume additivity of causes: the implication is that one can simply change or subtract a causal factor (in the Darfur case, climate change) and see what happens (in the thought experiment) to the dependent variable in question (in this case, conflict).Research on causation in complex systems over the last two decades suggests that such mental manipulations almost always produce erroneous and even meaningless results. The causal variables and links within complex systems are so numerous, so many of these variables and links are unknown, and so many causal relations are reciprocal and/or nonlinear that we can’t possibly know a priori the consequences of subtracting or altering only one factor. Changing one thing will have ramifying and unpredictable consequences through the entire causal network. In this case, we have absolutely no way of knowing the consequences of holding the climate constant in Darfur (whatever “constant” means).Jettisoning the additivity assumption isn’t easy for researchers, commentators, or policy makers. Researchers often stake professional reputations on the claim that one cause is key relative to all others. Commentators have a bias towards simplistic arguments in public discussions where info-glut reduces everything to sound bites. And policy makers want to know which factor is most important so they can determine where to invest their resources to produce a “solution.” But just because the additivity assumption makes people’s lives easier doesn’t mean it’s correct.In the case of Darfur, it’s pointless to ask about, or to argue over, the relative importance of climate change as a cause of the violence. But based on the evidence available, we can say with considerable confidence that any adequate description or explanation of the crisis must include climate change as a causal factor.I find Alex’s analysis in his essay on the SSRC website persuasive, and it fits well, I think, with the general framework I laid out in my Princeton book Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. But, I have a few comments on Alex’s entry along the lines of the points above.
1. In Alex’s first paragraph, he states that,
“depleted natural resources and livelihood transformations cannot on their own account for conflict, let alone armed conflict. The most important culprit for violence in Darfur is government, which not only failed to utilize local and central institutions to address the problems of environmental stress in Darfur, but actually worsened the situation through its militarized, crisis management interventions whenever political disputes have arisen. In turn, violent conflict has worsened Darfur’s ecological crisis. For many reasons, Darfur cannot now be reconstituted the way it was.”
I entirely agree with the first sentence. I’m troubled, though, by the “most important” phrase in the second sentence, for two reasons. First, it implies it’s possible in such a complex system to discriminate among causes by their relative weight or power. But the fundamental lesson of studies of complex systems over the last two decades is that such systems exhibit a disproportionality between cause and effect: small events can produce huge effects, and big events can sometimes produce virtually no effects whatsoever. Many complexity theorists believe that this disproportionality is the essence of nonlinear behavior, and the human-ecological system in Darfur (like all human-ecological systems) is clearly complex and nonlinear. I don’t think any of the evidence Alex adduces in the rest of his essay’s penetrating analysis supports the “most important” weighting claim he makes in this sentence. In fact, most of his analysis seems to implicitly acknowledge — not only multicausality — but also the impossibility of discriminating among the relative power of causes.
Second, in Alex’s later analysis in the essay he argues that the government’s causal role was often one of neglect — that it DIDN’T DO things that could have prevented a further deterioration of the situation. I’m always troubled by claims that suggest a necessary cause of a particular phenomenon was the ABSENCE of a particular factor. I’m not sure what “cause” means in such cases, because there is no thing or event that is doing the “causing.” Of course, this concern of mine doesn’t hold in cases where the Sudanese government’s “militarized, crisis management interventions” worsened the situation (as Alex notes later in the second sentence), because here we had real events/policies that were causes.
2. I agree that traditional land-management and stewardship practices are sustainable — but only if population densities aren’t too high. Swidden, for instance, is sustainable if population densities are low enough to allow overused land to lie fallow and to regenerate bush cover. Surely the quadrupling of Darfur’s population had an effect on the sustainability of the region’s traditional land-use practices. I’m not sure that the implications of population growth can be limited to a “much bigger human impact” of climate and environmental change, as Alex suggests.
3. I don’t buy, I’m afraid, Alex’s “refutation” of Malthusianism. The assertion that Darfur is “overpopulated” doesn’t stand or fall on the number of deaths arising from famines in the region. In other words, a region’s population doesn’t need to collapse for the region to be overpopulated. We can quite reasonably operationalize “overpopulation” using a variety of other metrics, including morbidity, land degradation, per capita agricultural yields, trends in average income, etc
4. Note the “absent-factor-as-necessary-cause” explanation of the famine in this passage:
“The reason for famine in 1984-85 and food insecurity subsequently was technological: farmers did not apply efficient fertilizers and utilize small-scale irrigation. This was not through ignorance. Darfur’s farmers have a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit. James Morton’s study of Darfur documents examples of how rapidly Darfur farmers adopt new crops, new fertilizers and new irrigation techniques. But they need either public sector investment to make these inputs cheap and reliable, or good markets to ensure sufficient returns. In the 1980s, Darfur was deprived of both: roads were so bad and fuel prices so high that the cost of transport meant that it simply wasn’t worthwhile to produce more than could be sold locally. The economic incentives simply did not exist to expand production.”
Here, again, Alex argues that the absence of something (in this case, economic incentives arising from public sector investment and good markets) caused an event. But something that doesn’t exist — or never happened — can’t be a cause.
He more or less implicitly acknowledges this concern in the following sentences:
“If technology and market access are held constant, then drought and desertification can cause food crisis and famine. But in 1980s Sudan, the situation was often worse. Government policy and the activities of traders and commercial farmers closely associated with the ruling elites meant that rural people were often deprived of the meager assets that they possessed.”
Here we come back to real events and policies as causes. Partly for this reason, I find the next section of Alex’s essay very convincing. I wonder, though, whether the “depredations of traders and commercial farmers” were made more severe by worsening environmental scarcity. In our work we have identified a process of “resource capture” by elites that is often accentuated when key resources become increasingly scarce, because the economic rents from monopoly control of the resources rise — exactly the kind of phenomenon Alex refers to in the next sentence:
“Worst of all, a handful of major grain merchants sought to profit from speculating in the cereal market in 1985-85, withholding stocks from sale until the price climbed high.”
5. In the following passage Alex introduces temporality of causes — that is, where the causes enter the causal process in the time-line of the causal chain.
“[The] underlying causes of the famine were impoverishment associated with neglect, alongside the inadequacies of existing technology and marketing infrastructure, the immediate cause of the famine was drought compounded by the government’s denial that a problem existed.”
As I’ve noted in some of my work (including the appendix to chapter 5 in Environment, Scarcity, and Violence), the variable of temporality (or what I refer to as “proximity”) is often conflated with the variable of causal power or weight. In the above sentences Alex seems to be doing this: he makes a distinction between “underlying” and “immediate” causes (a distinction of proximity, in my terminology), at the same time that he appears to be implying the underlying causes were more important. (It’s possible, though, that I’m reading too much into this sentence.) Note, once again, the “absent factors” as causes: inadequacies of existing technology and marketing infrastructure and government inaction.
6. I think Alex’s next section about adaptation and dislocation in response to the famine is terrific. I have no quibbles here. In fact, this kind of mediated, multicausal, and multi-stage causation is exactly the kind of process that I identify repeatedly in my work, including in my accounts of various cases in Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. The essay weaves a compelling account here.
7. I agree that the fourth hypothesis is misguided, for the reasons Alex adduces. But the failure of that hypothesis doesn’t weaken the general case that drought has been a contributing factor to the crisis in the Sudan, and more specifically Darfur, in a multicausal, interactive, nonlinear process.
8. Alex is right that it is premature to attribute the drying trend in the Sahel — and especially the drought in the mid-80s — to anthropogenic climate change. But even if the drought itself was not human-induced, it provides an instructive example of the human and social impacts of potential future anthropogenic climate change.
9. In the following sentence in Alex’s concluding paragraph, he appears to return to additivity:
“Climate change causes livelihood change, which in turn causes disputes. Social institutions can handle these conflicts and settle them in a non-violent manner — it is mismanagement and militarization that cause war and massacre.”
Here he is asserting that “mismanagement and militarization” are the true causes of the violence. I would accept that these are indeed causes, but only in a larger constellation of causes that interact with each other across time. One component of that constellation is climate.
Tad Homer-Dixon
Tad Homer-Dixon makes a number of important points in his careful and detailed posting. Let me respond to the first five — numbers 6 to 8 don’t need responses and Tad’s last point is enveloped in his first.
1. The multiplicative relationship rather than the additive relationship between factors.
This point is well taken: we are dealing with a complex system in which inputs and outputs are associated in any simple way. Big inputs can have minor effects and vice versa. (This indeed is one of the themes of my book on the political impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa — an epochal event in terms of the life chances of ordinary people with astonishingly little political fallout.)
But I don’t think that Tad’s conclusion follows — that we cannot say that one cause is more important than another. Darfur (indeed western Sudan) is a complex system that has within it many smaller (also complex) localized systems, and by comparing different localities we can come to some preliminary conclusions about what is most important. For example, environmental degradation is worse in eastern Darfur and northern Kordofan than in north-west and west Darfur, and the rainfall decline steeper, yet it is in the latter places that the violence broke out earlier and has generally been more intense. Moreover, if we look more widely at Sudan we see very similar patterns of violence (militia raids, scorched earth, forced displacement) in areas that have abundant natural resources, such as most of Southern Sudan. At a local level, there’s an empirical consistency of link between the militarization of government authority and conflict, which just isn’t there for environmental or climatic change and conflict. And the link is proximate too: it’s when military intelligence gives guns to a militia that violence tends to explode very soon afterwards. I may be guilty of using "cause" a little casually here and there, but I will defend my conclusion that mismanagement and militarization are more significant in causing the war than climate change and environmental degradation.
Tad poses another question: can neglect or failure to respond be a CAUSE of an event? Logically he is correct. But when a government has both history of acting and a responsibility to act (in this case, providing relief food), a non-action (denying a famine and failing to supply relief) is a disruption to a system and so, in Tad’s sense, an action of a sort. (This also applies to his point 4).
2. Population growth and its environmental impact.
There’s a big uncertainty here. On the one hand, Darfur’s environment seems to be more resilient than many environmental scientists have given it credit for. Every decade since the 1930s there has been some prediction of crisis which has invariably turned out to be at least premature. On the other hand, crop yields have fallen consistently if slowly and forest cover has diminished. In the 1960s there were jackals in the woods between Nyala town and Jebel Nyala — now the jebel is part of the conurbation. Then, there were forests between al Fashir and Mellit so that travelers on the backs of market lorries would get their clothes torn by the branches — now there is scarcely a tree in sight. Population growth has become a big taboo area for academic and policy inquiry. But in another 25 years there could be 12 million Darfurians (along with 140 million Ethiopians and 250 million Nigerians).
3. Refutation of Malthusianism
My point here is the empirical one that neither famine nor war has proved a Malthusian check on population in Darfur. The deaths and delayed birth from the 1984-5 crisis were rapidly counterbalanced by natural growth, and the same is happening today, both for Darfurians in general and (less rapidly) for the groups targeted in the 2003-04 campaigns.
4. Elite resource capture
There is a very important point here that is worth exploring more: elite resource capture. On this I suspect Tad and I are in agreement. This can be elaborated into a more general argument that the crisis of rural Sudan — not just Darfur but the other peripheries as well, and not just war but also famine, dispossession and forced migration — is a contest over basic livelihoods. For rural people, the basis of a reasonable way of life consists in (a) access to land and (b) sufficient autonomy to be able to pursue a range of livelihood options including cultivating, keeping livestock, migrating seasonally, collecting wild resources, etc. The elite covets the land and is suspicious of rural communities with too much autonomy. Successive governments have mounted onslaughts on both land tenure and rural autonomy, sometimes by starving the rural areas of services and other resources (e.g. credit), sometimes by fixing the market (grain hoarding), sometimes by legalizing land confiscation, and sometimes by using force, both in peacetime (using the police to enforce land alienation or fine pastoralists for encroaching on farms) and in wartime (burning villages). In my early research in Darfur I moved towards a definition of famine that was "mass death of a way of life." Subsequently I argued that the verb "to starve" was transitive — starvation is something people do to one another. It is a short and logical step to see famine as an act of dispossessing people of their livelihoods—especially their land and their autonomy. In many parts of rural Sudan, resistance to central government came about precisely because desperate people armed themselves to defend their livelihoods, knowing that the alternative is a life of landless servitude. This was particularly the case for the Beja and the Nuba, the locus of mass land expropriation for commercial farming, and took on a different configuration in Darfur, where the focus has been on jurisdiction over land, contested between groups. It is a theme of Mohamed Salih’s academic work. Wars then become an exercise in rural people defending their livelihoods and the government seeking to dispossess them. While starvation is a weapon of war, famine and war are both the coterminous results of the struggle to control the stewardship of natural resources.
5. Immediate and underlying causes
I can see how Tad is tempted to infer that an "underlying" cause is more significant than an "immediate" one. Let me clarify: not necessarily! In my analysis of Sudan’s wars, contained in chapter 1 of my very recent War in Darfur and the Search for Peace, I challenge the "root causes" approach to explaining Sudan’s wars with a "brute causes" approach: the immediate factor can be key. Ditto for a famine.
In general I agree with Tad’s comments on Professor DeWaal’s excellent article. However, with respect to the second section of Tad’s first point, it seems that the absolute exclusion of government inaction from consideration as a potential cause of conflict is not as black and white as it appears. In DeWaal’s interesting historical overview, two key instances of inaction are mentioned. The first was an unfulfilled government promise to improve access to water resources for herders in the late 1960s. The failure to implement its promise, DeWaal argues, was partly due to dramatic changes in policy direction by successive governments. Here, the exclusion of this “non-event” as a potential cause holds: to consider the government’s failure to properly manage resources as a necessary cause of the future conflict would be to present a counterfactual argument. We accept that given the complexity of the human-ecological context in which we are conducting analysis, we can not say with any degree of certainty that better government management of water resources would have prevented conflict. Further, as Tad notes, it is also incorrect to consider the instance of inaction as part of the cause of the conflict (or in the terms we have begun to adopt, as an insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition) because there is no stimulus to identify as a cause, just a perceived void.
When we look at DeWaal’s next instance of government inaction, however, things seem to become more complicated. The 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement commits the government to a development policy that would see, among other things, better management of water resources for Arab herders that are currently forced into competition with black farmers. However, the Sudanese government has thus far failed to implement the policy. At first glance it would seem that again it would be incorrect to label the government’s inaction as a cause of conflict because it did not take action that could have prevented conflict. However, when you take into consideration the intentions and interests behind the Sudanese government’s actions, it becomes possible to see the inaction as a stimulus and thus as a cause. It has been arguably clear for some time that the Sudanese government’s participation in multilateral negotiations to end the conflict has been largely about prolonging a situation in which genocide can continue unencumbered by the presence of foreign intervenors. By choosing to enter into then drag its feet on the implementation of the Peace Agreement with the intention of ensuring the continuation and exacerbation of conflict-causing factors, it seems that, indeed, the government’s inaction can be just as easily seen as an intentional action and thus a potentially important cause. In the same way that the government’s policy of providing support to the Janjaweed is a causal stimulus, so too is the government’s maintenance of a structure in which its desired outcomes can occur.
If we tentatively accept that inaction can in certain cases be studied as a cause, it raises the methodological question of how we identify such causes as distinct from regular instances of inaction that lead to counterfactual arguments. In other words, how do we differentiate between government non-action, which cannot have causal effect, and government policy to not act, which I am arguing can have causal effect. To a certain degree, this may be a question of semantics. We might, for example, re-name the second instance of inaction “government obstructionist behaviour” where an explicit policy stimulates the exacerbation of environmental and economic pressures contributing to conflict. Another important consideration seems to be the intentionality behind inaction: whether it is a policy decision or merely a void. This, however, seems to rest heavily on our ability to know policymakers’ intentions.
There are a few comments I would like to make, mostly in regards to the argument of the use of “cause”, however, I will start by discussing the first section. This part I see as the butterfly effect. Firstly, I agree that simply using an additive perspective on such a complex system or situation like Darfur is absurd. In fact, no additive view on any country could provide results because everything is so intertwined that removing any type of variable like poor climate (i.e. a worsening climate that is not conducive to high yield or even sustainable agriculture) is impossible. Although, I’m in opposition to the statement “we can say with considerable confidence that any adequate description or explanation of the crisis must include climate change as a causal factor”. I’m assuming that climate change is a causal factor of violence, which I disagree with, at least not directly. I think that climate contributes more to the lack of resources needed to sustain such a large population and when competition for resources occurs in such a highly populated area, violence can erupt, making climate an indirect factor. Once again, there are many different complicated factors within climate and the production or availability of resources that have an affect on violence.
My other comment, or perhaps even question, is about the use of “cause”. Although cause might be the wrong word semantically, but for the general public who are trying to learn and expand their horizons by researching Darfur and many other places, the word “cause” is perfect. If anthropologists are to appeal to the understanding of those who are interested but may not be familiar with the terminology, then by all means, use the terms necessary for their understanding. Literally, yes, I agree that “cause” cannot really apply to the government’s lack of involvement when it comes to aiding Darfur or it’s relief. However, perhaps to some, the cause could lie more within the government’s intentions, they know that there is a serious problem at hand, yet they don’t do anything to address that problem, which can CAUSE some tension with the people that could later result in violence. This also applies to the comment of the lack of public sector investment and a good market being a cause. Being put under such pressure to survive, perhaps depending on those investors and a good market, could cause some problems with making profits or even just enough to survive. This would therefore put more stress on the people and their economy, which could then result into violence.
When contemplating the probable causes for the extensive disputes in Darfur, just as Homer-Dixon believes, pinpointing a particular additive cause is simply unrealistic and illogical. The disputes in Darfur are the result of so many factors, those of which the effects multiply because of the harshness of the conditions. Homer-Dixon makes a great statement regarding the issue at hand, by saying that “in the case of Darfur, it’s pointless to ask about, or to argue over, the relative importance of climate change as a cause of violence.†After making this statement, he voices that climate change is definite, valid example of the crisis in Darfur. Hearing someone say that it is pointless to ask or argue over this subject is so relieving – professors, students, politicians, environmentalists, anyone – strictly want to discuss the importance of climate change to violence, or whatever the issue. All global issues – global warming, inequalities, famine, civil war, poverty – need to be discussed for a solution, not to find the possible cause, or the implications for future generations. Intelligent people, who could potentially help the problems, are spending hours simply discussing the issue, or arguing over the causes, instead of finding a solution to the specific problem. The crises in Darfur could very well be caused by climatic changes – however, in this case, who cares? Darfur needs aid instead of scholarly individuals contemplating the topic.
I think that both Alex de Waal and Thomas Homer-Dixon make some crucial points on the subject of violence in Darfur, which is indicated by their agreement on certain points. I do, however, agree with Homer-Dixon’s point that it is improbable to attempt to point out a most important cause when concerned with the violence and social unrest of Darfur, or of any other societies for that matter. Regarding Alex de Waal’s response to Homer-Dixon, I do not think that Homer-Dixon is implying that in any particular area one cause may not have more of an impact than another, but is stating that it is improbable to attempt to identify one most important cause in such a dynamic and complex society. As he stated in his response, “Cause and Effectâ€, the idea of non-linear behavior and disproportionality between cause and effect in such societies implies that it is completely possible for one cause to have a greater effect than another. I believe this is central to Homer-Dixon’s argument that one cause cannot be deemed most important in complex societies when other causes of much significance can be observed, but that different causes can have different degrees of effects.
The crisis and situation in Darfur is undoubtedly a complex puzzle to piece together. Homer-Dixon and De Waal perform excellent examinations into the causal effects of the tragedies that are unfolding. I would like to specifically address the post by Homer-Dixon.
I must firmly disagree with the following statement:
“Here, again, Alex argues that the absence of something (in this case, economic incentives arising from public sector investment and good markets) caused an event. But something that doesn’t exist — or never happened — can’t be a cause.â€
I understand that, technically, “nothing†happened and that therefore since “nothing†occurred it can not produce a viable effect. However, not doing anything positive is equally as harmful as doing something negative in an already depleted situation. Since the government chose NOT to act on behalf of its countrymen, I feel they are a feasible factor in the continuation of the downfall in the Darfur region.
Returning focus to De Waal, I concur with the following conclusion:
“Climate change causes livelihood change, which in turn causes disputes. Social institutions can handle these conflicts and settle them in a non-violent manner — it is mismanagement and militarization that cause war and massacre.â€
Climate is a key factor in the survival of man. When a man’s climate turns on him, his entire existence is spun upside down. Nonetheless, government and other such institutions have been established to cope with such circumstances. When these establishments are mismanaged and regrettably militarized, chaos will shortly follow. Such is what happened and is ongoing in Darfur.
Conclusively, now that the causes and effects have been researched, analyzed and hypothesized, the next logical step is to act. One can only write so many papers, at a certain point, one must leave the crowd and start playing in the “game.â€
Alex de Waal’s recognition of government as a culprit for the armed violence in Darfur is not only completely accurate, but also refreshing. While the environmental conditions and depleted natural resources obviously present issues and challenges that require immediate attention and action, it is the government that provides the basis for such action and should be the focus of adaptation in itself. The situation in Darfur is so often oversimplified and analogous relationships between climate change, degradation, and conflict are much too quickly concluded. By constructing such quick conclusions and therefore narrowing strategies and recommendations, climate change is often cited as the sole reason for degradation and conflict and is therefore the only focus in assembling models for recovery. This, in turn, ignores the fact that other variables may be present in the equation, such as human interaction and its effect upon both degradation and violence. Although climate change may present an opponent that many find overwhelming, the issues within human interaction are those that can be addressed and improved by social institutions. While climate change is no doubt an intimidating adversary, social conflicts must be recognized as an additional variable and therefore present an opportunity for optimism. These disputes can be easily settled and solved non-violently, but it is the government that must undergo remodeling to do so. We must begin rebuilding from the inside of Darfur and its government and social infrastructure before we can successfully address the larger and more daunting challenges presented by climate change. Consequently, when possible solutions are suggested – such as the employment of the underground lake for water reserves – we can be confident that such recommendations create advances rather than catalysts for even more conflict and violence.
Thomas Homer-Dixon’s response to Alex de Waal’s post, Is Climate Change the Culprit for Darfur, identifies the invalidity of the tendencies of many researchers to claim causal links between social issues. As I agree with Homer-Dixon in the sense that these links are mostly riddled with inaccuracies and that no single factor is the “culprit,†it is important to note the intentions of these statements. It is an unfortunate effect that in many instances policy makers and those associated with the media favor overly simplistic deductions drawn from in-depth research on regions such as Darfur. These are then taken on as the mainstream view and consequently, other factors regarding regional struggles are ignored. Perhaps criticism should be placed on those who attempt to find a simple-solution to a very convoluted situation. The current state of Darfur is extremely complex and identifying causal links to violence is essential if positive change is to be made. I agree with Homer-Dixon that no one factor is more important than another or that it is possible to “know a priori the consequences of subtracting or altering only one factor.†But, it is vital to fully understand all the inter-workings of a social construct such as those within Darfur before appropriate steps should be made to counter violence. However, when dealing with a multifaceted complex, there must exist a starting ground from which to step. It is fundamental to identify these causal links first, if one wants to see the larger picture. Unfortunately, violence and resource depletion do not wait until accurate research has been conducted and appropriate policies have been drawn. Research is playing catch-up to the constant changes of societies and the seemingly never-ending additions of factors and consequently, inaccuracies run rampant. It is essential not only for research to break down such intricate situations but also for those interpreting them to understand that for a complex problem there must be a complex cause and solution.
I believe that Alex de Waal and Thomas Homer-Dixon both make excellent points in their articles. However, I tend to agree with more of Thomas’s arguments. I agree that we should not label the absence of something as the cause of the problems in places like Darfur. For example, arguing that the absence of governmental aid or economic and market security, should not be labeled as the cause for all the environmental conflicts which may then relate to the civil conflicts. The presence of situations is what causes the occurring events. A single event will cause a domino effect of events. For instance, the continual droughts put pressure on the land which will lessen crop cultivation. When crop production is low there is less cash crops being produced to supplement an income. With a lowering income the people widen the poverty gap line creating more impoverished communities, and high poverty increases stress which may cause civil conflicts between different social groups.
Homer-Dixon makes a good point in addressing the issue that the true cause of violence cannot be explained by a single event. Changing climate, land mismanagement, and large increases in population are many of the causes that lead to the domino effect towards violence. These changes all require people to change the way that they live which adds a significant amount of stress to their lives, increasing the possibilities for violence.
I appreciated Alex da Waal’s article, “Is Climate Change the Culprit for Darfur?” I felt that he adequately illustrated the complexity of the conflict in Darfur, and he was careful to emphasize the intricacy of the variables’ relationships and interactions, despite Tad Homer-Dixon’s criticism that he took some variables into account more than others. de Waal carefully reached back in time to pull information that may have an effect on the current conflict. He emphasizes population growth as a factor that magnifies the stress on limited resources, which are diminishing due to climate change. He also notes that the government lacked the capacity to respond to the famine of 1984-5, and as failed nomads developed violent livelihoods, raiding cattle in the Darfur region, the government still failed to intervene. de Waal identifies climate change as only one factor that is responsible for the conflict, and I feel that he is right in prioritizing weak government as a related variable. Though the government’s failure to respond is not necessarily a cause of conflict, the general failure of the nation-state in the Sudan is certainly an integral factor related to the conflict.
I agree with Homer-Dixon that there is no one factor that is more important or more responsible for the violence in Darfur. Climate change, the government, famine, and many other factors all were a necessary part of the escalation to violence. I agree that this complex of a system is best understood multiplicatively and thus requiring that each cause was of equal importance to the end result. It helped me to look at a mathematical example. Take 5 x 20 x 8 = 800, none of the multipliers (5,8,and 20) are more responsible for the end product (200) than any other one. To assume that 20 is more important because it is a larger number is absurd. Regardless of its size, it alone cannot account for the equation equaling 800. I think this analogy works as a parallel from complex issues arising from many causes. Although De Waal would like to charge Darfur’s government as the “main culprit†for its country’s violence, the idea that there is even a “main culprit†is flawed in such a system.
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