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as agriculture and industry or between geographic
entities such as urban centres and
rural areas. Most of the conflicts are strongly
asymmetrical, having further-reaching consequences
for one party than for the other.
Natural resource scarcity neither automatically
leads to conflicts, nor does it represent an
absolute limit to development. Here, the way
in which societies are able to adapt to this
scarcity is of vital importance. In other words,
whether resource scarcity leads to conflicts or
not is a question of management.
Management goals to overcome resource scarcities
include the sustainable use of renewable
resources and the replacement of non-renewable
resources by developing alternatives.
Thus, processes might be initiated aiming at
economic and societal development, political
changes, technological innovations and, finally,
the improvement of resource-use efficiency.
It has been shown that the conflict potential with regard to natural resource scarcity
is manifold, entailing consequences of high complexity. Also, adverse effects in one
particular sector might be the symptom of a conflict in another. Most notably, this
applies to ecological devastation the real causes of which are usually of economic,
political or social origin. Consequently, rather than solving the problem, rehabilitating
the environment might lead to a shift of the symptom. ZEF aims to elucidate
developmental problems from different sides and therefore carries out its research on
these issues in an interdisciplinary approach. The common objective of its projects in
this area is to develop concepts for a sustainable use of resources. They cover research
on ecological, economic, technological and institutional constraints that impair
sustainable resource use. Projects deal with
● the development of fire-free alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture in the
eastern Amazon,
● the optimisation of water allocation in the Volta basin, and
● the development of concepts for the ecological and legal-administrative restructuring
of land and water management in the Aral Sea region (see Box 4).
3.1 Fire-free alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture
in the eastern Amazon
More than a century ago, the first settlers occupied the region east of the Brazilian
city of Belém, close to the mouth of the Amazon River, and since then smallholder
agriculture has been practised there. Traditionally, fallow periods of several years
play a key role in the farming system to maintain soil productivity. The land is prepared
for cropping by slashing and burning the bush fallow. Burning is a cheap,
simple, and fast way to remove fallow biomass. At the same time, the remaining ash
fertilises the following crop. The great disadvantage of this type of land preparation,
however, is the loss of nutrients and organic matter by volatilisation during burning.
Research
Bush chopper at work
In the Eastern Amazon, land
preparation for cropping is
done by slashing and burning
the bush fallow, a cheap, simple,
and fast way to remove
fallow biomass. Its disadvantage
is the loss of nutrients and
organic matter by volatilisation
during the burning.
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