Resource, policy, and conflict case study of the Senegal River Valley

Abstract

This thesis examines the 1989 conflict between Senegal and Mauritania. Through rigorous process tracing, this research unpacks the causal mechanism that impacted cycles of peace and conflict in the Senegal River Valley between 1960 and 1989. This dissertation addresses the governmental response to environmental scarcity as a cause of social conflicts exacerbated by rainfall deviation from mean rainfall. In contrast with much of the research written on the 1989 Senegal Mauritania conflict, this paper connects different aspects of the environmental and social dynamics as they lead to conflict and to violence. With much of the research in the impacts of water conflicts done on an international scale, this thesis focuses on the sub-national context. Using research on rainfall deviations and the propensity for conflict, this thesis examines the connection between historic social dynamics and identity formation to climate variability. The result is a take on a historic conflict that combines environmental research and social conflict theory. As this thesis demonstrates, the 1989 conflict was an ecologically driven conflict that developed out of intra-national, inter-ethnic conflict based on government-induced asymmetric, ethnic distribution of scarce, renewable resources. The Beidan elites in the Mauritanian government perpetuated their hegemonic rule through institutionalized despotism and a patronage system. They eliminated traditional resource management strategies and created disincentives for common peace. Escalatory factors on the latent social effects of ecological disaster in Mauritania culminated in the eruption of international, violent conflict with Senegal based on the cross-national affinity of the Hal-Puular ethnic group. The propensity for violence in the intra-national conflict in Mauritania was increased by several escalatory factors including a history of identity-based grievances, perceptions of simple scarcity/zero-sum conflict, scale, and rainfall deviation from the mean. By looking at this historic conflict, I demonstrate the robust relationship between environmental change, exclusionary resource policies, and social conflict.