Interview with Pablo Lumerman, Executive Director at the Argentinean branch of Partners for Democratic Change International, Fundación Cambio Democrático

ECC: Dear Pablo, with your study “Climate change impacts on socio-economic environmental conflicts”, you put a focus on climate change’s potential security implications for Argentina. What kind of conflicts might occur in your country in light of climate change forecasts?

Pablo Lumerman (PL): Actually, there is an inherent relationship between climate change impacts, the conflicts they produce, and human security in Argentina. This is so because those impacts cause socio-environmental vulnerability rates to rise in an economically disadvantaged population. In Argentina, the most commonly identified conflicts are related to changes in the use of land and to water stress, specifically to their direct impact on production activities. For example, in some regions, production patterns are altered due to changing rainfall rates. However, other conflicts are also expected, such as those arising from environment-related migration (environmental refugees), from natural disasters, and from a reduction in the country’s hydroelectric power generation capacity, among others. All of these conflicts put water and food security in jeopardy and result in the weakening of state capacity in marginal areas, where organized crime networks may regain ground, and thus pose a threat to the whole population in terms of human security.

ECC: Is the overall discourse on climate change and security, as it was also discussed in July in the UN Security Council, relevant for policy makers in Argentina? Have there been examples of natural resource-related conflicts in the past?

PL: As far as we are concerned, in Latin America climate change is not on the political agenda relating to security. The interest policy-makers have in the subject is still rather small and it is mostly linked to economic and socio-environmental factors instead of security or defense. Violent conflicts do not arise due to a lack of natural resources but due to organized crime networks, which generally operate in urban areas and for resources which are not affected a priori by climate change impacts (for example, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and other smuggling).

However, this relation should be addressed more in-depth, especially in countries such as Colombia, where an armed conflict is still taking place, or Guatemala and Mexico, where the state is increasingly undermined by organized crime networks. This may be due to structurally weak institutions, poorly capable of addressing violent conflicts arising from the competition for natural resources. In Latin America the stress is put on population vulnerability, dependence on natural resources, and limited institutional and social capacity to adapt to new climate conditions.

As for the second question, conflicts related to the use of and access to natural resources have always existed, because they are essential to life and to the development of communities. However, we could say that in the last years, these conflicts have intensified for several reasons, such as the increase in investments for projects relying on non-renewable natural resources extraction. These are low-intensity conflicts, where social actors will generally not arm themselves and clash in fatal battles, but which effectively contribute to creating an increasingly tense atmosphere which could result in future violence.  

ECC: One of your recommendations is related to strengthening early warning systems and to design policies for adapting to climate change including a conflict-sensitive approach to environmental conflicts. Can you elaborate on the implementation of your suggestions and give examples?

PL: Early warning systems combine fast transmission of data with the activation of institutional warning mechanisms so that previously-trained social actors can react dialogically and strategically in order to prevent the damaging effects of certain conflict events. Along with adaptation policies designed for forecasted impacts (land planning), the objective is to prevent, neutralize or reduce negative effects of these predicted scenarios by helping societies to adapt their production systems to the new low-carbon models of production, in order to considerably reduce socio-environmental vulnerability. In this context, according to the conflict-sensitive approach, the challenges and conflicts arising from climate change cannot be resolved single-handedly, and neither by the use of force nor just by market regulation policies. This is why it is important to include a series of guidelines oriented to prevent and/or address conflicts and decision-making processes constructively. Those guidelines include cross-disciplinary, cross-sector, and cross-level citizen participation, as well as the development of legitimate, clear, and trustworthy information; the use of democratic dialogue as a consensus building tool; and an active state, capable of coordinating different interests, promoting dialogue, and consolidating consensus-building mechanisms for the planning and application of public policies. The Climate Change Act recently passed in Brazil is one example of such an approach.  

The publication on the impact of climate change on socio-environmental conflicts in Argentina is available here.

For further information on the Fundación Cambio Democrático (in Spanish), please see http://www.cambiodemocratico.org/

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, 6/2011