Wells of Conflict : A Qualitative Study on How Groundwater Scarcity Affects Communal Conflict

Sammanfattning

The topic of whether resource scarcity affects conflict has for long been debated in the field of peace and conflict studies. This study aimed to understand if there is a correlation between groundwater scarcity and communal conflict by answering the research question ‘How does groundwater scarcity affect communal violence in the Arid and Semi-Arid Land of Kenya’. The independent variable that was measured was groundwater scarcity and the dependent was communal conflict. The proposed theory of the thesis leads to the hypothesis that reads as follows: A decrease of access to groundwater will increase the communal conflicts of the group experiencing said scarcity. To test this hypothesis a Structured Focused Comparison was conducted on two dyads with two communal groups each, one that had experienced communal conflict and one that had not. The results from this analysis were that no aspects of groundwater scarcity had a correlation with an increase in communal conflict, there seemed however to be some covariation between a lack of quantity of groundwater and communal conflict. Further studies need to be conducted on the topic to determine if this co-variation is part of a bigger causal mechanism.