Conflict and Environmental Security in Somalia

Political and Environmental Instability in Somalia

Scientific Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Africa, grade: A+, , course: Environmental Security, language: English, abstract: The contemporary era of international relations is characterised by increased political and economic interconnectedness and interdependence between states and non-state actors. Globalising and managing trade and commerce processes through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank promoted global industry, big businesses, and multinational corporations that depend heavily and more than ever before on the exploitation of natural resources such as oil, gas, and minerals and compete over securing their fair share of power-generating resources whether they are hydel, thermal, or nuclear. In the developed world, overuse of natural resources coupled with the disposal of massive amounts of industrial wastes in dump sites can have long-lasting detrimental repercussions on human health as well as the natural environment. Whereas the industrialised countries of the Global North are attempting to find new ways of recycling industrial wastes and developing alternative sources of energy through the use of advanced technology, developing and underdeveloped countries in Africa such as Somalia, Mali, and Ethiopia struggle to maintain the few and scarce natural resource available to them for current as well as for the future generations. Inter or intra-state conflicts in such countries worsen the severity of environmental issues, chiefly droughts. Often, the scarcity of natural resources in these countries becomes an environmental issue with social, economic, and political dimensions, hence, threatening the stability of the state and acting as 'Pandora's Box' by causing crises of different kinds to emerge and impact populations locally and regionally. Somalia as an underdeveloped African country represents a quintessential example of how a correlative relationship between political instability and environmental issues can cause the entanglement of a state into a vortex of interrelated crises leading to more instability, both political and environmental.