How many shoes…? Reflections on conflict, conflict resolution and environment

Abstract

Posing the question ‘How many pairs of shoes do you have?’ in any group setting, educational or otherwise routinely generates a number of responses - guilt being one of the most common as the style and branding of shoes has become a status symbol in many societies. Guilt also because so many of us have more shoes than we can possibly wear and because they then represent that other characteristic of society (especially in the West) - waste. A simple survey of the volume of water required to manufacture a pair of shoes (7,000 litres per pair of leather shoes1) reveals another dimension of that culture: continuing waste of key resources. If the initial question on shoes is extended to include daily behaviours based on waste (e.g. water, food, energy, clothes etc.), then the discussion moves up a notch. Why is waste such a core feature of our lives and why do we engage in it so readily and habitually? Is waste simply a matter of personal responsibility or does it have systemic relevance and meaning? Where does personal responsibility and culpability begin and end and how do we mediate the conflicts that arise accordingly? In what ways does our embrace of waste represent a deeper malaise or challenge in the context of climate change, environmental degradation and a globalisation based increasingly on inequality? In what ways are the resource or environment conflicts of today different or more urgent than those of previous colonial and imperial eras? Such questions and the debates they generate represent a fundamental challenge to both the theory and practice of conflict resolution, one that the discipline simply must address.