As we have seen and read about in
class, the nature of piracy off the coast of Somalia is somewhat controversial.
The articles by Gettleman, Waldo, and Bueger eschew the idea that the Somali
pirates are merely motivated by profit and introduce the narrative of the
Somali pirates as a type of coast guard, protecting the waters from illegal
fishing. Hansen acknowledges this narrative as well, while still identifying
greed as the primary motivation for Somali pirates.
However, one point that is not
argued is Somalia’s status as a “failed state.” A failed state is one which can
no longer carry out basic governmental functions such as education or security
(Global Policy Forum). The Fund for Peace, a nonprofit which studies and
indexes weak and failing states, has proposed a few guidelines to better
identify a failed or failing states. A failed state can be characterized by
·
“loss of physical control of its territory, or
of the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force therein,
·
erosion of legitimate authority to make
collective decisions,
·
an inability to provide reasonable public
services, and
·
an inability to interact with other states as a
full member of the international community.” ("Index FAQ").
The Fund for Peace bases its
Failed State Index (FSI) on twelve separate measures and ranks those measures
out of ten, resulting in a ranking score out of 120. The Fund’s twelve measures
for its Failed State Index are broken down into three subcategories of social,
economic, and political and military indicators. In 2013 Somalia had a score
over 9.0 for ten of the twelve categories, and Somalia has been number one on
the Fund for Peace’s FSI for the last five years (2009-2013).
I found the breakdown of indicators used by the Fund for
Peace interesting. The Fund’s indicators focus most strongly on political and
military indicators, which comprise six of the twelve measures. I wanted to
know if the Fund for Peace acknowledged any environmental reasons for Somalia’s
status as a failed state. What I found was that although they are not
explicitly identified as “environmental” factors, the Fund does include some
environmental indicators in its twelve measures for the FSI.
As mentioned above, the Fund
divides its twelve FSI measures into subcategories. Environmental factors do
not comprise their own category, but several environmental factors are included
under other categories. The social indicators category includes the measures
“Mounting Demographic Pressures”, “Massive Movement of Refugees or Internally
Displaced Persons”, and “Chronic and Sustained Human Flight.” These all sound
very similar to the phenomenon Homer-Dixon termed “ecological marginalization.”
Ecological marginalization describes the process whereby people living in
resource poor areas move into other resource poor areas, which puts increased
strain on the resources and causes them to dry up more quickly. Although
chronic and mass movement of people within a state can be caused for different
reasons than scarcity, these factors do seem to connect well to the idea of
ecological marginalization.
It was gratifying to identify some
environmental factors in the FSI’s measures. Like the articles by Gettleman,
Waldo, and Bueger, which focused on concerns of illegal fishing, the FSI
measures represent an environmental take on what can cause a country to become
or continue to be identified as a failed state. I think it would be beneficial
and quite interesting for political scientists interested in the environment to
include a few explicitly environmental measures as part of the FSI. To start,
the Fund for Peace could add a measure for drastic changes in level of
rainfall, which we previously learned can be linked to increases in violence
(Hendrix & Salehyan). By adding this or other environmental metrics, the
Fund for Peace could get a fuller picture of what creates and sustains a failed
state like Somalia.
References
"Failed States Index FAQ." Failed States Index FAQ. The Fund for Peace, n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
"The Failed States Index 2013." The Fund for Peace. The Fund for Peace, n.d. Web. 01 May 2014.
"Global Policy Forum." Failed States. Global Policy Forum, n.d. Web. 01 May 2014.
Hendrix, C.S, and I Salehyan. "Climate Change, Rainfall, and Social Conflict in Africa."Journal of
Peace Research. 49.1 (2012): 35-50. Print.
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