Natural Resources and the Rural Development Challenge in Sudan: the Case of the Greater Kordofan States
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NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE RURAL DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE IN SUDAN: THE CASE OF THE GREATER KORDOFAN STATES BY MAHDI ISMAIL MAHDI OSMAN 2018 I NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE RURAL DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE IN SUDAN: THE CASE OF THE GREATER KORDOFAN STATES By MAHDI ISMAIL MAHDI OSMAN Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PhD) In the subject of ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT At the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA SUPERVISOR: PROF. S. YIRENKYI-BOATENG FEBRUARY, 2018 II III ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis could not have been written without the various forms of assistance, which I received from a number of people. I first of all owe a debt of gratitude to God who has helped me throughout my academic career to get this far. Next, I need to acknowledge the immense support of my supervisor, Prof. S. Yirenkyi-Boateng. He demonstrated immense patience in helping me to relate what appears as a simple topic to various areas of the field of philosophy, social theory, public administration, and development planning, thereby putting an academic face to the topic. By helping me to link this topic to these various disciplines, it became relatively easy for me to access the publications related to the topic as well as the research participants that I needed to consult. I would also like to thank the various administrative staff, faculties and departments of the University of South Africa whose open policy system of student admission has enabled me to pursue and complete this doctoral programme. In this connection, I do acknowledge the support I have obtained from the Dean of The College of Agriculture and Environmental Science, Prof. Margaret Linington, the college administrator of CAES, the UNISA computer data analyst, Mr. Hennie Gerber, the cartographer at the Geography Department, Florida Campus, my nephew Mr. Ismail Gasim I. Mahdi and those who assisted in the typing and binding of the thesis. IV Among the research participants whose assistance enabled me to obtain the information needed for this thesis, mention needs to be made first of the nomadic herdsmen and crop farmers in the districts of Greater Kordofan, the various government departments of the Republic of Sudan, and the academics of various universities and research institutes of the Republic of Sudan. I am also grateful to the research assistants who helped with the data collection exercise and the other stakeholders linked to the conflicts between the nomadic herdsmen and the crop farmers that this thesis is about. I also wish to acknowledge the support I have received from my wife, Sana Mohammed Elmahi, my son Marwan, and my two daughters Marwa and Maram. Mahdi Osman 2018 V ABSTRACT This study is a contribution to the research projects in Africa that are concerned with the analysis of the various conflicts that currently face the continent. Political, ethnic, religious, cultural, and other forms of conflicts have increased in number over the past five decades. The academic community has been making its contribution to the understanding and resolution of the conflicts through its research projects. The contributions of the academic community are widely acknowledged in this regard. This study is about those conflicts emanating from differences in the cultural interpretations of natural resources between crop farmers and nomadic herdsmen. The example selected belongs to those conflicts, which are entrenched in the cultural practices of rural communities. These conflicts are unique, since most of them predate the political, economic, and ethnic-based conflicts, most of which have emerged since the colonial era. Understanding these types of conflicts thus constitutes an important area of the development process of countries such as the Republic of Sudan, which already has many conflicts to contend with. The areas elected the North, South and West Kordofan States constitute some of the conflict hotspots of the Republic of Sudan in terms of the cultural- natural resource conflict dynamics. The understanding and resolution of the conflicts between the crop farmers and nomadic herdsmen in the region have the potential to offer enormous benefits to the peace needed for the long-term development of Sudan. The objectives of this study were chosen purposely to VI contribute to the research projects on the peace-conflict discourse of the Republic of Sudan. They were aimed at finding out how the cultures of the crop farmers and nomadic herdsmen of the Greater Kordofan states explain the conflicts and the efforts of the Sudanese authorities to help address them. The critical realist research approach has been selected as the framework for the study. This involved a number of steps. First, information on the nature of the current policies and plans of the government of Sudan to address the conflicts has been collected as one basic element of the challenge of development of the Greater Kordofan region. The challenge has been discussed in terms of the gap currently existing between the government’s peace building plan objectives on the one hand and the actual outcomes on the other. Next, information was collected from the relevant stakeholders on the reasons for the persistence of the conflicts between the nomadic herdsmen and the crop farmers despite the efforts on the part of the government at building peace between them. Generating information in this way led to the recommendation that the stakeholders identified in this study hold the key to the success of the attempts at building long-term peace between the crop farmers and the nomadic herdsmen of the Greater Kordofan States. The recommendations of the study are based on the idea that opportunities always exist for the stakeholders to introduce positive change in their society. Key words: Gap analysis, environmental management, livelihood-based conflicts, development policies and plans, social transformation, stakeholder analysis, critical realist research methodology, dialectics, peace-building mechanisms. VII TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION...................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT........................................................................ iv ABSTRACT............................................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................... viii LIST OF TABLES.................................................................................... xvi LIST OF FIGURES................................................................................... xviii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS................................. xxii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION............................................................ 1 1.1 Problem statement............................................................................ 1 1.2 Modeling the layers that make up the conflicts................................ 18 1.3 Situating government development policies and plans in the analysis of the conflicts.................................................................... 36 1.4 Background and context................................................................... 50 1.5 Importance of the study.................................................................... 55 1.6 Research questions ........................................................................... 59 1.7 Study objectives............................................................................... 59 1.8 Study objectives and the related concepts on the social transformation challenge.................................................................. 60 1.9 Concluding remarks......................................................................... 64 1.10 Definitions of key concepts.............................................................. 65 1.11 Limitations of the study.................................................................... 70 1.12 Organization of the study…............................................................. 71 VIII CHAPTER 2: SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROFILE OF THE STUDY REGION………………………………………………………………… 73 2.1 Introduction...................................................................................... 74 2.2 Economy and demography............................................................... 72 2.3 History.............................................................................................. 75 2.4 General characteristics and prevailing livelihood systems............... 76 2.5 Governance issues............................................................................ 80 CHAPTER 3: LITERATURE REVIEW................................................ 81 3.1 Introduction................................................................................... 81 3.2 The reductionist problem............................................................... 84 3.3 The environmental systems influences approach.......................... 86 3.4 The cultural influence approach to the use of natural resources... 88 3.5 The critical realist approach.......................................................... 91 3.6 The role of public policies and plans in conflict resolution.......... 97 3.7 Assessment of conflict resolution policy effectiveness................. 102 3.8 The analysis of gaps: variations around a theme.......................... 104 3.8.1 The critical theory research procedure in the analysis of social challenges………………………………………………………. 106 3.8.2 The Pentagon model.....................................................................