198 Scarcity and Surfeitchecks have impacted more on population demography than population
growth. The war boosted what was a trickle of economic emigrants into a
steady flow of refugees fleeing their home areas to the north. Despite hor-
rendous living conditions, their underclass status, and periodic harassment
including the flattening of shantytowns by government bulldozers, the num-
bers of internally displaced southerners accumulating in the north continue
to grow."
Structurally, the Sudan conflict is not about whether the south's resources are
sold on the market, acquired through coercion, or remain on or in the ground:
it is about arriving at an adaptive arrangement where natural wealth promotes
the welfare and progress of all Sudanese and their regional neighbours.
Environmental Governance
Governance issues are central to explaining the role of ecology in conflict in
Sudan. Important governance-related issues are the following:
The exploitation of natural resources remains skewed towards primary
resources such as land, minerals and water resources. Conflict has
emerged between exploitation of natural resources in the south to benefit
a northern dictated 'national' development policy and the livelihood needs
of southern peoples.
Competition over primary resources caused by the converging trends of
rising population and rising resource exploitation, often without the par-
ticipation of local communities in decision making, has created a struc-
tural state of resource scarcity for many.
Unsustainable patterns of resource utilisation compounded by increasing
pressure for the same resources has fostered localised degradation of land
and some natural resources. The consequence is rising competition and
conflict over increasingly scarce resources.
~m~osition of centralised administrative systems dating from the Turkish-
Egyptian rule in the 191h century onto customary systems for land owner-
ship and control.Exploitation of primary natural resources is based on the traditional eco-
nomic practices of the population in the Sudan, predominantly agro-pas-
toralists, supported by the colonial policy of resource extraction carried over
in Sudan's post-independent economy. The result is an erosion of the primary
natural resources base. According to Suliman:
"when the colonial powers introduced their market economy in Sudan
towards the end of the last century, they simultaneously restricted its
development and expansion by indigenous Sudanese in order. to maintain