Narratives of Conflict, Climate, and Development: Re-envisioning Sustainability from Post-War Northern Uganda

冲突、发展和气候变化之间的关系是什么？这个问题已经成为非洲政策制定的中心议题，因为气候变化被认为是对发展的最大威胁，也是未来冲突的主要风险。以避免环境危机、促进发展与和平的名义，为适应气候变化动员了大量捐助资金。在这一主流框架中，气候变化将通过技术修复来解决，使非洲社区能够适应气候灾害。这些自上而下的政策刚刚开始在非洲大部分地区实施，包括乌干达北部，这是一个高度脆弱的地区，也是这项拟议研究的地点。但这种主流的技术方法并非没有受到挑战。因为，正如许多学者指出的那样，如果没有经济和政治上的剥夺和边缘化的历史，使某些非洲社区容易受到气候变化的影响，它就不会呈现出现在的巨大威胁。这意味着，由于气候变化适应政策试图帮助现有的社会结构适应未来的气候变化，如果这些结构以不公正、不平等和暴力为特征，那么适应政策可能会锁定结构性不平等，而正是这种不平等使非洲社区首先容易受到气候变化的影响。在乌干达北部，与许多冲突后局势一样，今天的不公正、贫困和不平等在很大程度上是战争的遗留问题，使该地区在所有发展指标上远远落后于该国其他地区。在这场冲突中，一百多万农村人口被政府强行转移到拘留营，导致了环境破坏，并留下了今天仍在继续的遗产：强行剥夺土地，大规模砍伐森林，扩大石油开采造成的污染，以及基础设施造成的流离失所，所有这些都是由乌干达军队实施的。由于可持续发展所需的资源正在被剥夺，这导致了土地获取方面的严重不平等、生计的丧失以及越来越多的不稳定的半城市人口。在这种持续的环境破坏中，广泛的气候变化适应政策正在启动——但是，如果它们忽视冲突的持续暴力遗产，而把重点放在技术修复上，它们就有可能恶化这些遗产，为未来的冲突奠定基础，并阻碍包容性和可持续发展。这就引出了本项目的主要问题：如何重新设想针对冲突后的乌干达北部地区的气候变化政策——乃至其他冲突后地区的气候变化政策——以实现和平与发展？该项目将探索两种不同的学科框架如何理解冲突、发展和环境危机之间的关系，以及如何将它们相互交流，从而在学术和气候变化政策方面产生高度创新的成果。首先，我们将采用政治生态学框架来研究乌干达北部冲突后的局势。政治生态学将冲突、发展和环境危机之间的关系理解为在很大程度上代表了国家和资本与社区之间争夺资源的斗争。其次，我们将运用历史、文学和文化研究来探索乌干达北部社区对冲突、发展和气候变化的理解，这代表了应对其构成的威胁的不同基础。社区的愿景只有通过深入了解语言和文化以及通过与乌干达北部社区的广泛接触才能实现。在乌干达北部的研究中，这些学科范式之间的创造性对话将产生我们创新的答案。

What is the relation between conflict, development, and climate change? This question has taken center stage in policymaking in Africa, as climate change is considered the greatest threat to development as well as a major risk for future conflict. Massive donor funding is being mobilized towards climate change adaptation in the name of averting environmental crisis and promoting development and peace. In this mainstream framework, climate change is to be dealt with through technical fixes to enable African communities to adapt to climatic hazards. These top-down policies are just beginning to be implemented in much of Africa, including in northern Uganda, a highly vulnerable region and the site of this proposed research. But this mainstream, technical approach has not gone unchallenged. For, as many scholars have pointed out, without a history of economic and political deprivation and marginalization that renders certain African communities vulnerable to climate change, it would not present the dramatic threat it does. The implication is that, since climate change adaptation policies seek to help existing social structures adapt to future climatic changes, if those structures are characterized by injustice, inequality, and violence, adaptation policies may be building locking in the very structural inequalities that make African communities vulnerable to climate change in the first place. In northern Uganda, like many post-conflict situations, today's injustice, deprivation, and inequality is largely a legacy of war, which has left the region far behind the rest of the country in all development indicators. The conflict saw the mass forced displacement of over a million rural people into internment camps by the government, leading to environmental devastation and a legacy that continues today in forceful land dispossession, massive deforestation, pollution from expanding oil extraction, and displacement by infrastructure, all enforced by the Ugandan military. This has led to large inequalities in land access, loss of livelihoods, and a growing, precarious semi-urban population as the resources needed for sustainable development are being stripped away. In the midst of this ongoing environmental devastation, expansive climate change adaptation policies are being inaugurated - but, if they ignore the ongoing violent legacy of conflict and focus on technical fixes, they risk worsening that legacy, setting the stage for future conflict, and foreclosing inclusive and sustainable development. This leads to the project's primary question: how can climate change policy for post-conflict northern Uganda - and, by extension, for other post-conflict contexts - be re-envisioned so that it enables peace and development? The project will explore how two different disciplinary frameworks understand the relation between conflict, development, and environmental crisis and how they can be put them into conversation with each other in order to produce highly innovative results both academically and for climate change policy. First, we will employ a political ecology framework to look at the post-conflict situation in northern Uganda. Political ecology understands the relation between conflict, development, and environmental crisis as largely representing struggles over resources between state and capital on one side and the community on the other. Second, we will employ history and literary and cultural studies to explore the community of northern Uganda's own understanding of conflict, development, and climate change, representing very different bases for dealing with the threat it poses. The community's visions are accessible only through intensive knowledge of language and culture and through extended engagement with the northern Ugandan community. It is the creative dialogue between these disciplinary paradigms as they are employed in research in northern Uganda that will produce our innovative answers.