Establishing an Enduring Peace: A way forward in Darfur

Joshua Owens, MPA


For over five years, peace talks between Darfur rebel groups and the Government of Sudan (GoS) have failed to yield a substantive agreement. Low-level fighting and lawlessness continues, and recent developments indicate a potential relapse into serious conflict. Over the summer major clashes erupted along the North-South border between GoS and Southern-aligned groups (the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement – North, or SPLM-N) in Kordofan, which was not allowed to secede with the rest of South Sudan. In November SPLM-N and the main Darfur rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice for Equality Movement (JEM), united to establish the “Sudanese Liberation Front,” with the aim of launching coordinated military attacks across Sudan and forcefully overthrowing the Bashir regime. According to a recent International Crisis Group report, “...the growing war on multiple fronts poses serious dangers for the country, for its future relationship with the Republic of South Sudan and for the stability of the region as a whole."

To build enduring peace, the international community must first realize that the current mediation strategy of facilitating negotiations between insurgent groups and the GoS is fundamentally flawed. Peace talks have failed because they have neglected (1) traditional tribal leaders and (2) building civil society. My reflections are based on my two-year experience as a development program manager in rebel-held territory in the heart of Darfur – near the fighting lines between Darfuri rebels and GoS forces (together with their Janjaweed allies). While there, I worked on a UNDP project to study and address root causes of ongoing conflict and recognized these pitfalls in the peace-building process.

1. Breakdown of the Traditional Leadership Structure
According to local accounts, a strong tribal leadership structure facilitated relatively stable relations between African and Arab tribes in Darfur for decades before the war. Tribal elders led this structure, and it provided the mechanism for maintaining the balance of power equilibrium between tribes and mediating occasional conflicts.

However, during the 1990s, a new group of young, political activists emerged from the African tribes (Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit) to protest their enduring socio-economic marginalization under Arab hegemony from Khartoum. As this group (Sudanese Liberation Movement or SLM/SLA) amassed support from neighboring Chad and the people in the isolated tribal areas of Darfur, the balance of power shifted from legitimate tribal elders to young insurgent leaders.

When the SLM finally militarized and attacked Sudanese Armed Forces in early 2003, the GoS responded by arming Arab tribes in Darfur and authorizing them to eradicate African tribes. This intervention further disrupted the delicate balance of power that had long existed between Darfuri tribes.

Nevertheless, peace talks are framed primarily as a negotiation between the GoS and rebel groups. Though these insurgents purport to represent the best interests of the African tribes, their primary concern is their own survival. SLA and JEM present unreasonable demands in peace talks and perpetuate the conflict because peace would deprive these young, zealous rebels of their raison d’être and the basis of their authority. Rebel groups continue to wield considerable power and maintain popular support only because local populations are wholly dependent on them for protection.

Therefore, effective peace negotiations and reconciliation must also engage the traditional tribal leaders. These elders are the only legitimate representatives of the best interests of the tribes, and their continued exclusion will undermine any settlement attempt.

2. Shoring Up Civil Society
Second, in order to facilitate long-term peace-building, the international community must help these areas build strong, village-level civil society institutions. According to conventional social science definitions, civil society is the space that (a) exists between the family and the state, (b) connects different families and individuals, and (c) is independent of the state. (Varshney 2001) Civil society organizations are modern and voluntary and generally take the form of cultural, social, economic, or political associations. For example, in Darfuri villages, we attempted to establish agricultural extension networks, community water and health committees, women’s trade groups, and English classes.

Most scholars of conflict agree that civil society play an important role in mitigating violence because these associations connect people from diverse backgrounds, build trust and reciprocity, and facilitate the exchange of view on public issues. In Darfur, building civil society now is vital for peace-building for two reasons: First, civilian-led organizations will help offset the power and voice of armed rebel groups and promote the legitimate leadership of civilian tribal leaders. Second, these organizations can facilitate the ethnic reconciliation process in Darfur by gradually establishing links with civil society groups in rival tribes with similar interests.

Conclusion
Taken together, these steps will help resolve the impasse of negotiations over Darfur. Though international attention has shifted in the past year to the plight of South Sudan, this lingering crisis in the country is no less important.

Separating the Tree from the Forest: Tackling deforestation independently to make progress on climate change

Jessica Duncan, MPA


In early 2007, there was a palpable sense of a growing global consensus on the need for a multilateral climate change agreement. US presidential candidates were discussing their plans for domestic legislation, many European nations had already enacted ambitious policies, and the Chinese government had declared pollution – carbon emissions included – as a top priority. However, the 2008 financial crash and the resulting credit crunch, falling gas prices, and a return to protectionism quickly wiped out both capital and political will for the climate change agenda. At the time, commentators said it would take a year for the economy to bounce back and climate change would again return to the docket. President Obama and others spoke of the opportunity presented by clean energy industries to foster, rather than limit, American economic growth.

Four years since that cautiously optimistic time, and few of the predictions have come true. Indeed, climate change has all has absolutely disappeared from Washington. While American politics on energy have often been fickle, European’s sudden silence on climate change is more surprising. Across the globe, it appears that multilateral environmental agreements couldn’t be further from political leaders’ priorities.

In this political and economic context, what is the most productive next step to foster international climate change consensus? If we assume that something should be done on climate change but realize carbon pricing simply will not be implemented in the current economic climate, what do we do?

Way Ahead: Divide and Conquer
The most influential forum for climate policy, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), should take areas of growing consensus and separate negotiations and policies on these issues from the broader UN international climate change process, e.g. deforestation and technology transfer policies. (This article will focus on the former.) While far from ideal, this pragmatic division of labor will enable the US and other major emitters to invest in components of the climate policy that do not threaten their domestic economies in such a rough economic time. They can work aggressively on these areas until their domestic politics and economies better align to allow stronger mitigation policies in the future.

With regard to deforestation policy, in recent rounds of UN climate talks there has been remarkable convergence of international opinion on its importance, including the launch of the United Nations’ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) program to better coordinate UN efforts to combat climate change by providing incentives to decrease deforestation. However, these promising developments have been overshadowed by the lack of movement in other areas of climate change policy and by the ongoing turbulence of the global economy. Overall, leaders have been prevented from doing all they can in this area because of a larger stalemate around carbon pricing and binding emissions cuts. A division of the international negotiation process that tackles deforestation policy separately will capitalize on positive developments even when countries remain at different ends of the table on other issues.

What can be done on deforestation alone?
Deforestation accounts for an estimated 20% of global carbon emissions each year. Slowing emissions from the destruction of forests will help keep global emissions at sustainable levels even if there is delayed action on more contentious areas of mitigation. While it may take decades to stop reliance on fossil fuel, it is possible to slow or halt deforestation far sooner. Reforestation also presents a very cost-effective opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with far greater returns on each dollar invested than most other mitigation options. In addition, deforestation should be separated from the broader climate agenda because it has potential to alter regional and international economic and political landscapes by giving developing countries, from Indonesia to Congo to Brazil, massive value in their forests. If these new carbon assets are managed correctly, so that current incentives are reversed and forests are more valuable left standing than cut down, carbon sinks – reservoirs that store carbon, removing it from the atmosphere – could become a tremendous resource for the populations of these developing nations. However, if they are poorly regulated, carbon sinks could feed corruption, giving governments leverage which could disrupt geopolitical relations and even potentially drive conflict. It is vital for the international community to establish sound deforestation policies now since it will be far harder to reform them down the line.

Summary
The UNFCCC should separate deforestation policy from a broader post-Kyoto agreement for the following reasons:

• Effective international regulation in these areas is essential to cut global greenhouse emissions at the scale and with the urgency dictated by science – it’s more important than ever to protect carbon sinks since we have been unable to cut carbon emissions.
• Regulation of these areas will provide opportunities for developing nations to profit from the climate agenda rather than be burdened by it.
• As deforestation policy helps emerging economies become more invested in the international climate agenda, these nations may become more willing and able to take on binding emissions reductions targets.

Success on reforestation will not only cut global emissions in the near-term, but it will also – perhaps even more importantly – feed back into, strengthen, and drive progress on a more comprehensive global environmental negotiation in the future.