This paper examines pastoral conflicts in Dassanech area, Southern Ethiopia, against the background of environmental change and food insecurity. The study reveals a relationship between environmental stress and the escalation of inter-ethnic pastoral conflicts in the area. Nevertheless, pastoral conflicts in Dassanech are complex and strongly challenge the idea of a direct causal link between concrete environmental factors and specific conflict incidents. Socio-cultural and economic factors cause or trigger conflicts independently or in conjunction with ecological processes. Furthermore, infrastructure and large-scale agricultural development project are likely to influence the social configuration in the Omo River basin and therefore, possibly, also local conflict dynamics. The paper argues that local social and cultural factors play an important role for conflict action, and that, therefore, the study of resource conflicts must not be reduced to economic, agricultural, and ecological aspects.

Recently, the academic and political debate on resource scarcity and conflict has been revitalized against the background of global trends like climate change and the growing commercial pressure on land. Scholars widely agree that resource scarcity causes or influences conflict via social and political mediation mechanisms. But the respective understanding of social mediation fundamentally depends on theoretical and ontological perspectives. We argue that conflicts over land are indeed distributive conflicts over a scarce resource. But they cannot be understood regarding only the materiality of the resource because the conflicts are embedded in specific social relations. We examine local conflicts over land in the Comoé region, South Western Burkina Faso and illustrate how local citizenship is negotiated in these conflicts. Control of and access to land as well as social categories of citizenship and belonging are linked to each other in a mutually constitutive relationship.