Land acquisition: a means to mitigate water scarcity and reduce conflict?

ABSTRACT

In recent years there has been a surge in land investments, primarily in the African continent, but also in Asia and Latin America. This increase in land investment was driven by the food pricing crisis of 2007–2008. Land investors can be identified from a variety of sectors, with actors ranging from hedge funds to national companies. Many water-scarce countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are among these financiers, and primarily invest in Africa. Recognizing the potential for “outsourcing” their food security (and thereby also partly their water security), Middle Eastern countries such as Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have invested in land for food production in Africa. The extent to which this is happening is still unclear, as many contracts are not yet official and the extent of the leases is vague. This paper investigates the land investments and acquisitions by Middle Eastern countries. It also seeks to analyse what effect, if any, these investments can have on the potential for conflict reduction and subsequent peacebuilding in the Middle East region as the activity removes pressure from transboundary water resources.

EDITOR D. Koutsoyiannis ASSOCIATE EDITOR K. Aggestam     

A progressive line simplification algorithm

An application of line simplification considering spatial knowledge is described. A method for identifying potential conflict regions, in order to avoid the self-intersection of generalized, lines, is also discussed. Further-more, a new progressive line simplification algorithm is presented. From the view point of spatial cognition, a spatial hierarchical structure is proposed, and its application to construction of spatial knowledge related to a line is explained.     

Localized versus wide-ranging effects of the post-Soviet wars in the Caucasus on agricultural abandonment

Wars are frequent and can affect land use substantially, but the effects of wars can vary greatly depending on their characteristics, such as intensity or duration. Furthermore, the spatial scale of the effects can differ. The effects of wars may be localized and thus close to conflict locations if direct mechanisms matter most (e.g., abandonment because active fighting precludes farming), or wide-ranging, e.g., farther away from conflict locations, if indirect mechanisms predominate (e.g., no access to agricultural inputs). Our goal was to quantify how the very different wars in the Caucasus region during post-Soviet times most likely affected agricultural abandonment at different scales. We analyzed data on conflict locations plus Landsat-derived land-cover data from 1987 to 2015, and applied matching statistics, difference-in-differences estimators, and logistic panel regressions. We examined the localized versus wide-ranging effects of the different wars on permanent agricultural abandonment and inferred to direct and indirect mechanisms that may have resulted in agricultural abandonment. While permanent agricultural abandonment was overall surprisingly limited across the Caucasus, up to one third of abandonment was most likely related to the wars. Among the wars, the war in Chechnya was by far the most intense and longest, but its effect on abandonment was similar to the less intense and relatively short war in Abkhazia. 47 % and 45 % of agricultural abandonment was related to each war, respectively. The reason was that the effect of the war in Chechnya was more localized, and abandonment occurred near conflict locations, in contrast to Abkhazia, where the effect was wide-ranging and abandonment occurred farther away from conflict locations. In contrast, the war in South Ossetia showed no significant effect on abandonment, and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh had the surprising pattern that abandonment was higher where no war had occurred. For each of the wars, abandonment was predominately related to the nearest conflict locations, but in Abkhazia additional conflict locations within 10 km further increased the probability of abandonment. We infer that the direct mechanisms of the war such as bombing, and active fighting most likely resulted in a localized effect close to conflict locations in Chechnya and in Nagorno-Karabakh. However, in Nagorno-Karabakh subsidies for new settlers after the war, (i.e., a positive wide-ranging effect), potentially reduced the amount of abandonment there. In contrast, negative wide-ranging effects such as refugee movements and post-war restrictions on their return is related to broad-scale abandonment in Abkhazia. In summary, permanent agricultural abandonment was not necessarily higher in a war with a high overall intensity. Instead, the effect of a given war varied in scale, and was related to the relative importance of direct and localized versus indirect and wide-ranging mechanisms, including postwar events and policies, which is likely the case for other wars, too.     

Conservation science and policy should care about violent extremism

Protected areas are increasingly prone to violent extremism spillover, with dramatic consequences for both local people and wildlife populations. Due to the influence of violent extremist groups, science and policy generally fade away. We outline the case of the W-Arly-Pendjari complex of protected areas in West Africa (Burkina Faso, Benin, and Niger), 62% of which is currently under the control of violent extremist groups. The last large population of West African elephants may soon disappear if no action is taken. We discuss the roles of conservation science and policy in protected areas under violent extremism spillover, namely (i) maintaining and reinforcing international support, (ii) authentically engaging local communities in conservation and management strategies, and (iii) planning long-term conservation and security strategies.     

Globalized conflicts of discourse: the type of conflict of proxies*

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The Upper Adriatic borderland: From conflict to harmony

The paper presents an overview of the Upper Adriatic as a contact area between different cultural, social, economic and political entities, producing potential conflicts in the last century. The first part of the 20th century represented a classic example of geopolitical conflict through two World Wars and their related Peace Conferences that deeply impacted the region. Conflicts arising from the mid-century solution of the Trieste question transformed the Upper Adriatic into a laboratory of contemporary political geographic transformation. Changing geopolitical patterns have also modified the political, social and ethnic construction of the Upper Adriatic. The process of creating new international boundaries in the region ended in 1991 with the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. Through these geopolitical transformations in the Upper Adriatic, new political geographic attitudes evolved. Early on, Ratzel's geopolitical principles of defining borders as power barometers between neighbors dominated. More recently, attitudes have reflected modern integrative ideas with a focus on looking for harmony and the elimination of international conflicts. Greater attention has thus been given to the political geography of `everyday life', inter-ethnic relations, and cross-border contacts. Hence, `new' borderlands of the Upper Adriatic are more receptive to integration because they seek to overcome conflicts caused by the division of traditionally homogeneous spaces as local level political and ideological hindrances disappear. The region divided among Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia is becoming a new and special type of European borderland in the new century.     

可持续发展代际公平的初步研究

可持续发展概念自诞生以来,已经越来越得到社会各界的关注,其基本思想已经被国际社会广泛接受,并逐步向社会经济的各个领域渗透,成为当今社会的热点问题之一。按照国际社会广泛接受的概念,可持续发展是指既满足当代人的需要,又不损害后代人满足需要的能力的发展。显然,这里就提出了一个代际之间的关系问题。文章初步研究了可持续发展与环境冲突问题及代际公平的解决。     

GIS空间数据库的"一库两用"策略研究

GIS有两种普遍的应用需求:空间分析和数字制图,但两种需求对空间数据的要求不完全一致,导致空间数据在同一GIS中无法充分共享。该文探讨能够同时满足两种需求的GIS构建方法。分析地理空间数据存在的冲突,引入"一库两用"思想,建立空间分析型数据模型;利用专家系统机制实现空间分析数据向数字制图数据的转换,转换过程中补充的信息源于专家知识库。该研究有助于解决GIS中数据不一致问题,使GIS更实用、功能更完善。     

空间冲突的演变特征及影响效应——以长株潭城市群为例

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