The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND (seen in a photo by Dulue Mbachu, courtesy of ISN Security Watch and Flickr), has attacked Nigeria’s oil infrastructure again, this time significantly enough to cause Royal Dutch Shell to suspend its production at the damaged facility. Worldwide crude price levels rose in the wake of the attack, as well as amidst concerns that a Nigerian oil worker strike could be imminent.

The attack, which took place today in the Bonga oil field some 75 miles off Nigeria’s coast, is being described as unusually ambitious for a group that has focused mainly on the creeks and swamps of the Niger Delta. In a statement released to the media, the group explained that “the location for today’s attack was deliberately chosen to remove any notion that off-shore oil exploration is far from our reach.” Shell spokeswoman Eurwen Thomas said that the attack marked the first time MEND has managed to achieve the sophisticated planning and acquire the advanced equipment required to successfully target such a remote rig.

Though Nigeria is Africa’s biggest oil producer and a member of OPEC, most areas remain mired in poverty and plagued by pollution. Widespread resentment over inequitable revenue disbursement has spawned numerous groups agitating for a greater share of the country’s vast oil wealth. MEND is only the latest of these groups, but it has made a name for itself through attention-grabbing attacks like this one. The group’s claim to have captured an American worker was substantiated by private security officials, who said that two other workers were injured. Since the upswing in violence that began in early 2006, Nigerian rebel groups have taken more than 200 hostages.

Eleven percent of U.S. oil imports—46 percent of Nigeria’s total production—come from Nigeria, making this escalating series of attacks particularly relevant to American officials, and perhaps providing incentives to mediate talks between Nigeria’s government and Niger Delta militants, which have thus far been unsuccessful. Yet negotiations will be difficult between such polarized players. Said MEND, “the oil companies and their collaborators do not have any place to hide in conducting their nefarious activities.”

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“Often, those who are already vulnerable to threats because they are poor, illiterate, lack political power, or face gender or ethnic discrimination are the ones who find themselves in the front lines of the negative dimensions of environmental change,” writes Richard Matthew of the Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California, Irvine, in “Resource Scarcity: Responding to the Security Challenge,” a new paper from the International Peace Institute. Vulnerable populations “face water and land scarcity, are displaced into marginal ecosystems where they encounter unfamiliar parasites, experience severe weather events, lose everything to floods and mudslides, and daily eke out an existence in peri-urban areas awash with human waste.”

Researchers continue to debate the security implications of various kinds of resource scarcity, but according to Matthew, there are at least four areas of general agreement:

• Resource scarcity is never the sole cause of conflict, but is often a contributing factor;
• Migration is frequently the link between resource scarcity and conflict;
• Rapid changes in access to resources are more likely to cause conflict than gradual changes; and
• Climate change will lead to resource scarcity in many areas that are experiencing or vulnerable to conflict.

Despite these dire circumstances, Matthew believes key actions and policies could significantly reduce the likelihood that resource scarcity will lead to conflict and insecurity. He offers 14 specific recommendations for NGOs, governments, and international organizations, which include supporting “the effort in UNEP to integrate the environment into post-conflict assessment, disaster management, and peacebuilding” and mobilizing “the enormous capacity of the private sector and NGO communities…around sustainable development, conflict resolution, and peacebuilding.”

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has claimed responsibility for a May 26 night attack on a Shell oil facility. A government spokesman confirmed the explosion, suggesting “that explosives might have been used by miscreants.” Through its website, MEND claims that 11 deaths resulted from the blast, although officials deny that anyone was hurt. The Niger Delta has long been plagued by violence, including the January 2006 kidnapping of four Shell workers by MEND and the October 1998 explosion that killed more than 1,000 people in Jesse, Nigeria. These and other episodes of violence—including pipeline sabotaging and kidnapping—have regularly disrupted the Niger Delta. Anger over increased economic marginalization—in 2006, Nigeria ranked 159th out of 177 countries on the UN Human Development Index—distrust of the national government, and a lack of effective avenues of recourse for those left behind by Nigeria’s oil boom have driven violent protests against the state and international oil corporations. Moreover, local people, many of whom live on less than $1 per day, sometimes cut holes in the pipes to siphon oil, which can inadvertently cause dangerous explosions.

Earlier this month, more than 100 people were killed when a construction vehicle struck an oil pipeline in Nigeria, reports the Nigerian Red Cross. Reports indicate that this event was an accident, but the explosion nevertheless prompted the editorial board of the Abuja-based newspaper Leadership to suggest that “all those who live near oil pipelines should consider relocating to safer places,” and to condemn the “wealth-seeking, greedy soldiers and policemen who are supposed to protect us and our property from criminals.”

For more on the politics and conflict surrounding oil in Nigeria, see this article by Kenneth Omeje, a research fellow at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, which examines Nigeria’s experience with oil extraction, the paradoxical circumstance of simultaneous resource scarcity and abundance, and the violent outbursts spawned by perceived government mismanagement of the country’s oil reserves.

Growing demand for palm oil is contributing to civil strife in Colombia, argue the authors of “Fuelling Fear: The human cost of biofuels in Colombia,” a report published by U.K. NGO War on Want (video here). Global demand for the crop has doubled in the last decade, largely due to the increasing use of biofuels, and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has made increasing biofuel production one of his administration’s priorities. The United Kingdom is one of the largest consumers of Colombian palm oil, which is also a common ingredient in baked goods and cosmetics. “[I]t is now time to question the role played by the UK government and other investors in propagating further violence and bloodshed against the Afro-Colombian communities,” insists Sue Branford, chair of War on Want, in the preface of the report.

“There is an emerging pattern of displacement and human rights violations against Afro-Colombian communities connected to palm oil cultivation,” states the report. The U.K. is accused of turning a blind eye to the land grabs, forced evictions, and other disturbing impacts palm oil cultivation has had on these communities. War on Want estimates that as much as 70 percent of the population of a mountain range in Nariño, located in the southwest corner of the country, has been forcefully evicted from their lands by paramilitaries since October 2007.

After a few years left out in the cold, environmental security came home to a warm welcome at this year’s International Studies Association conference in San Francisco, drawing large crowds to many star-studded panels. Water, climate, energy, and AFRICOM were hot topics, and the military/intelligence communities were out in force. Many of the publishers indicated they were seeking to acquire titles or journals on environmental security, given the scarcity of books on the topic currently in the works. Demographic security even got a few shout-outs from well-placed supporters.

Climate change and energy security panels dominated the program. Chaired by the National Intelligence Council’s Mathew Burrows, “Militarization of Energy Security” featured contributors to the edited volume forthcoming from Daniel Moran and James Russell of the Naval Postgraduate School—including original resource conflict gadfly Michael Klare, who claimed that lack of oil itself isn’t the problem, but that efforts to extract less accessible supplies would provoke violence in places like Nigeria, Venezuela, and Siberia. The intense discussion contrasted the approaches of China and the United States to ensuring energy security; Moran pointed out that China sent “bankers and oilmen” into Africa, whereas the United States created AFRICOM. “If the Chinese had created a military command in Africa, there wouldn’t be a dry seat in the Pentagon,” he added. David Hamon of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency observed that BP has a “security regime to protect their interests that would make a military blush.”

At “Climate Change, Natural Disasters, and Armed Conflict,” Clionadh Radleigh put the kibosh on the fearmongering predictions of waves of transnational “environmental refugees.” Similarly, Halvard Buhaug explored weaknesses in the reported links between climate change and conflict, calling for more rigorous research on this currently trendy topic. Christian Webersik’s research found links between negative rainfall and higher incidences of conflict in Somalia and Sudan, but he cautioned against using this relationship to predict climate-induced conflict.

A flood of panels on water, conflict, and cooperation took advantage of the conference’s West Coast location to call on water world heavies Aaron Wolf and Peter Gleick, who participated in a lively standing room-only roundtable chaired by ECSP’s Geoff Dabelko. Despite the obvious interest in the topic, publishers in the exhibit hall didn’t have much to offer on water and security.

AFRICOM drew some heat, especially from a panel of educators from military academies who explored peace parks and other “small-ball” approaches to conflict prevention. All the panelists were generally supportive of AFRICOM’s efforts to integrate nontraditional development work into the military’s portfolio—which, as discussant and retired U.S. Army Col. Maxie McFarland pointed out, it is already doing “by default” in Iraq and Afghanistan. McFarland cautioned, however, that “just because the Army can do it, doesn’t mean you want them to do it.” Air War College Professor Stephen Burgess predicted that the groundswell of climate change awareness would push the next president to include it in his or her National Security Strategy.

Rich Cincotta’s demographic security panel attracted significant interest—no small feat on the last day. The Department of Defense’s (DoD) Thomas Mahnken said that demographic trends and shocks are of “great interest to us in the government”—particularly forecasting that could identify what countries or regions the DoD should be worried about—particularly China and India (good thing demographer Jennifer Sciubba is on the case in his office).

The emphasis on prediction and forecasting stood out from the general trend of ISA panels, which mostly focus on analysis of current or past events. Mathew Burrows called for government and academia to “push the frontiers” on forecasting even further—particularly on the impacts of food security, water shortages, and environmentally induced migration.

Despite the warm, fuzzy feelings for environmental security, there were few panels devoted to general natural resource conflict, and none to post-conflict environmental peacebuilding (Michael Beevers contributed one of the few papers to explicitly address the topic).

What’ll be next year’s hot topics? Submit your proposals by May 30 for the 2009 ISA Annual Conference in New York City.

To download any of the papers mentioned above, visit the ISA’s online paper archive.

For more on ECSP at ISA, see “Environmental Security Is Hot Topic at the 2008 International Studies Association Conference.”

Concerned Ghanaian officials believe the country’s discovery of domestic oil reserves last year represents “perhaps the greatest managerial challenge” since its independence, reports IRIN News. Though oil revenues could boost Ghana’s sagging economy and improve its infrastructure, there are real fears that mismanagement could destabilize the country and exacerbate social inequalities. Francis Ackah, engineering manager of the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC), confessed that the country currently lacks the “know-how” to manage the resource constructively.

In an attempt to avoid the “resource curse,” Ackah confirmed the government’s desire to implement the “Norway model” of resource revenue management, which deposits oil funds in a national petroleum fund at the central bank, hires external managers to invest the money, and uses the revenue to fund social services.

Ghanaian President John Kufuor warned that “oil sometimes proves the undoing” of countries blessed with reserves. Other oil-rich African countries—such as Nigeria, Chad, and Angola—have been plagued by insecurity and underdevelopment. Nigeria has been plagued by rebel attacks on strategic oil pipelines.

The complex relationships between natural resources and political stability are gaining prominence in the political science community, as evidenced by three articles on those connections in the May/June 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs. As each article argues, more effective international approaches are needed to combat inequitable benefit distribution, population pressures, and infrastructure underdevelopment.

Michael Ross’ “Blood Barrels: Why Oil Fuels Conflict” explores the paradox that in an increasingly peaceful world, oil-producing countries are plagued by a unique level of violence. Developing countries that produce oil are twice as likely to suffer internal rebellion as those that do not. “Oil alone cannot create conflicts,” he says, “but it both exacerbates latent tensions and gives governments and their more militant opponents the means to fight them out.” He calls for a four-fold solution, with provisions including increased transparency in oil-producing governments and international assistance for countries in managing their revenue responsibly and equitably.

In “The Trouble With Congo: How Local Disputes Fuel Regional Conflict,” Severine Autesserre argues that international peacekeeping efforts have missed the “critical fact that today local conflicts are driving the broader conflicts, not the other way around.” She argues that the international focus on elections as the mark of a peaceful nation is misplaced and can do more harm than good. “The international community must fundamentally revise its strategy” for addressing local grievances, especially those around land ownership, Autesserre says. Her take-home message: “Think local, act local.” In ECSP Report 12, John Katunga offers his perspective on resources and conflict in the DRC.

Former U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios writes in “Beyond Darfur: Sudan’s Slide Toward Civil War” that land and resource management issues are of primary importance in Darfur. He also criticizes international aid efforts for missing the mark; rather than focusing on resolving the ongoing crisis in Darfur, he writes, the United States should work to enforce the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005. Because the CPA has been ineffectively applied, many issues continue to contribute to instability. For instance, tensions over oil revenue are working against the emergence of stability in Sudan. The revenue-sharing agreement outlined in the CPA has not been consistently implemented, and until this happens, Natsios writes, the outlook for Sudan is not promising.

Natural resources, conflict, and human security were front and center at a premier forum for philanthropists focused on global issues last month. Five hundred experts and funders gathered in Redwood City, CA, at the annual Global Philanthropy Forum (GPF) to tackle a range of connected challenges under the rubric of “Human Security, Conflict, and the Responsibility to Protect.” I caught up with an old friend and social entrepreneur, Juan Dumas, executive director of Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano (FFLA), an NGO based in Ecuador. Juan and his colleagues work closely with a broad range of stakeholders in facilitating peaceful resolutions to natural resource conflicts. Resting on the premise that natural resource management is conflict management, their work prioritizes resolving these disputes in a peaceful manner. In this podcast interview, Juan highlights FFLA’s activities and lists some specific actions funders must take if they wish to make a real difference in supporting efforts to break the links between natural resources and conflict.