Drivers Of Conflict Research Articles

The ‘silent pistol’ in Ghana’s local government system: presiding members vs. chief executives

Decentralisation and local governance aim at local economic development, but collaboration among key actors at the local level is essential in realising this objective. However, at district assembly level Ghana exhibits problematic conflicts between district chief executives (DCEs), who head the executive committee, and presiding members (PMs) who convene and preside over assembly deliberations, acting as speaker. This study aims to unpack the main causes of such unsavoury conflicts by using 13 case studies from the Ashanti Region. Both primary and secondary data were collected for the study. Primary data was gathered from a selection of 40 key informants drawn from three main groups including DCEs, PMs, and other stakeholders such as regional coordinating council members, assembly members and chiefs. The main research instrument was one-on-one in-depth interviews with participants. The study found deep-seated conflicts between DCEs and PMs, in some cases even transcending these two actors to involve a greater section of actors within the local government administration. The study noted that professional bureaucrats within the local government service are affected when allegations of affiliation are levelled against them. The study also found that the legal status of DCEs and PMs appears to be the main driver of potential conflict, although other context-specific issues were also prevalent.

The wild boar as a driver of human-wildlife conflict in the protected park lands of Nepal

Long-term success of conservation in protected areas requires the cooperation and participation from local people, especially in developing countries where local people often endure most of the cost from human-wildlife conflict. This study investigated crop damage due to wildlife in Thanapati Village adjacent to Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park, Nepal. Household interviews and field measurements were conducted between March 2009 and April 2010 to quantify the actual area damaged by crop-raiding wildlife and the associated economic loss. Of the seven wildlife groups evaluated, we identified the wild boar as the primary crop raider, which is in agreement with several previous studies in the Indo-Himalaya region. Approximately US$24,000 (9 % of the expected profit) were lost to wildlife damage annually, with c. 0.28 km2 (8 % of the farmlands) of crops damaged. We found that the local people’s assessment of the primary crop raider (i.e., wild boar) and the area damaged by wildlife to be quite accurate. Considering the ecology of the wild boar (e.g., tolerant to human activities, striving along the edge of habitats, consuming as well as trampling of crops) and the socioeconomic situation in the surrounding villages of Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park (e.g., resource-dependent economy, small farmers), we believe the solution to reduce human-wildlife conflict in this case lies in the following: (1) the use of innovative methods to deter wild boars; (2) active management of population size and carrying capacity of wild boars, possibly through regulated hunting; and (3) a fair compensation scheme or alternative economic means to offset crop damage.

The Mali Crisis and Responses by Regional Actors

Regional actors and dynamics played important roles both in underpinning the most recent crisis in Mali beginning in 2012, and in subsequent efforts to resolve that crisis and return the country to peace and stability. This paper examines the Mali crisis through a regional lens – first in terms of understanding two of the most proximate drivers of the crisis: the rebellion of the Tuaregs in combination with the emergence of Islamic extremism in the north of the country. A minority group in the north of Mali, the Tuareg have few livelihood opportunities aside from regional trade and the trafficking of contraband. The Tuareg’s mounting dissatisfaction with governance from Bamako was given added force by the return of well-armed and radicalised Tuareg from Libya following the fall of the Gadaffi regime in August 2011. The combined effects of disaffected and radicalised Tuareg rebel groups on the one hand, and Islamic militant groups, notably those emerging from the earlier Algerian conflict, set off the recent crisis in Mali. The paper then examines how the key African multilateral actors – ECOWAS at sub-regional level, the AU at the continental level – responded to the ongoing crisis. The paper suggests that although several significant factors and dynamics that have influenced or even driven the Mali crisis were regional in scope, regional efforts to establish peace and stability in Mali have been too narrowly defined or flawed in attempted implementation. It suggests that resolving the problems in Mali must take into account the complex cross-border dynamics and drivers of conflict occurring within the broader regional, i.e. Sahelo-Saharien, context.

The changing water cycle: climatic and socioeconomic drivers of water‐related changes in the Andes of Peru

Water resources in high mountains play a fundamental role for societies and ecosystems both locally and downstream. Impacts of global change, including climate change, glacier shrinkage, and socioeconomic forces related to demographics, agroindustrial development, and hydroelectricity generation; pose new hydrological risks for human livelihoods. However, these hydroclimatic and socioeconomic drivers of water resource change are often poorly quantified and interconnected, while data scarcity poses challenges in these regions. Here we review the state of knowledge for two major catchments in the Peruvian Andes, which hold the largest tropical glacier mass worldwide: the Santa River (Cordillera Blanca) and Vilcanota River (Cordillera Vilcanota). Our integrative review of water resource change and comparative discharge analysis of two gauging stations in the Santa and Vilcanota River catchments show that the future provision of water resources is a concern to regional societies and must be factored more carefully into water management policies. In this context, observed hydroclimatic and socioeconomic changes represent important drivers of water availability, allocation, and conflicts over water resources. The legal framework and decentralized institutional architecture in Peru could potentially provide a basis for participatory integrative water management; however, unequal power relations, institutional fragility and increasing competition over water resources hamper these efforts. We identify several research gaps, including the need for more in situ data, cultural analyses, and a risk‐based framework that combines climate‐related hazards with human and natural vulnerabilities. Finally, this review suggests that future adaptation plans for water management should better link science, society, and policy. WIREs Water 2015, 2:715–733. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1105This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Water and Environmental Change

‘Put the wet stuff on the hot stuff’: The legacy and drivers of conflict surrounding wildfire suppression

Existing research demonstrates that wildfire events can lead to conflict among local residents and outside professionals involved in wildfire management or suppression. What has been missing in the wildfire literature is a more explicit understanding of the social dynamics that influence such conflict in rural or agricultural communities and their long-term legacy for future wildfire management. Authors conducted interviews with local residents of a southeastern Washington community in 2012 to better understand conflict surrounding management of the 2006 Columbia Complex Fire. We utilize structuration theory to demonstrate how conflict stemmed from differences in the norms characterizing the local community and the established practices of outside firefighters, the inability of these two populations to communicate in a way that established shared meanings for values at risk, and local residents' desire to contribute to suppression efforts rather that give up complete control to outside resources. The legacy of conflict during the Columbia Complex fire included increased distrust of externally based fire response and entrenched views about locals' right to protect their property. We conclude by discussing the need to account for the legacy of conflict during future wildfire events and the reasons such conflict are likely in rural or agricultural communities.

The social identity approach to understanding socio-political conflict in environmental and natural resources management

Insights from the social identity approach can be useful in understanding the drivers of dysfunctional conflict in environmental and natural resources management (ENRM). Such conflicts tend to be shaped by multiple factors including: the governance arrangements that are in place and how deliberations are undertaken; the conduct and interactions of stakeholders and the wider citizenry; and the conflict legacy, which can perpetuate a ‘culture of conflict’ around particular issues. This paper presents an integrative conceptual model of the socio-political landscape of ENRM conflict, which draws these multiple factors together. The social identity approach is then introduced as an appropriate lens through which the drivers of conflict in ENRM can be further interrogated. Key social identity mechanisms are discussed along with their contribution to the proliferation of dysfunctional conflict in ENRM. Based on this analysis, it is found that the social identity approach presents a way to understand the subtle and sometimes invisible social structures which underlie ENRM, and that ENRM issues ought to be viewed as a series of conflict episodes connected across time and contexts by the conflict legacy. The conceptual model, and its interpretation through the social identity approach, raises a number of implications for the current theory, practice and institutions involved in the wicked socio-political landscape of ENRM. These implications are examined, followed by a discussion of some opportunities to address the impact of social identity on dysfunctional conflict drawn from empirical Australian and international examples in the literature.

Egypt, Iran, and the Hizbullah Cell: Using Sectarianism to “De-Arabize” and Regionalize Threats to National Interests

This article argues that anti-Shi'ism is simply one component in a strategy to justify and enforce Egypt's security policies and regional leadership goals. An examination of Egyptian press coverage of the 2009 discovery of a Hizbullah cell in Egypt illustrates a process through which Shi'ism is initially identified as a sectarian threat, but then de-Arabized through linkage with Iran. Despite being an Arab organization, Egyptian media portray Hizbullah as a challenge to the Arab world's stability, more than a Shi'i challenge to Sunnism or a security threat. This indicates that Egypt's traditional foreign policy of defending Arab interests is more important than sectarianism in conceptualizing threats to its security.Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, media and governments in Egypt and other Arab states have regularly represented Iran as a source of regional instability.1 This representation has been a factor in a number of recent conflicts, including the sectarian violence that followed the American invasion of Iraq in 2003,2 the demonstrations in Bahrain in early 2011,3 and the ongoing Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.4 However, such a straightforward sectarianism-driven narrative overlooks that prior to the Arab Spring there had been shifts in the regional power configurations that suggested the rise of Middle Eastern powers, notably Turkey as well as Iran.5 The 2005 election of hardliner Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who championed more assertive policies in the region, and his disputed reelection in 2009, compounded Arab governments' pre-existing concerns regarding the extent of Iran's geostrategic objectives. Yet while there has been an academic and policy focus on Iran's relations with the Gulf states,6 and on assessing the likelihood of a Shi'a revival7 less attention has been paid to the changing relations between Egypt and Iran in this context.8 This article begins to address this gap, which is critical in light of the reconfigurations of relations in the region since the recent Arab uprisings9 and the emerging narratives of threat and insecurity.10 Egypt and Iran, two of the oldest nation-states in the region, have a long history of cooperation and conflict, and as the two most populous nations in the Middle East, shifts in their relationship, and the historical dynamics underlying them, have the potential to impact the international relations of the region.One explanation for portraying Iran as a threat to the established order in the region has been the sectarian divide between an officially Shi'i Iran and a mainly Sunni Arab world. In his 2006 book The Shia Revival, Vali Nasr delivered a bold warning about potential sectarian tensions in the Middle East:In the coming years Shias and Sunnis will compete over power, first in Iraq but ultimately across the entire region. Beyond Iraq, other countries will (even as they embrace reform) have to cope with intensifying rivalries between Shias and Sunnis. The overall Sunni-Shia conflict will play a large role in defining the Middle East as a whole and shaping its relations with the outside world.11This study of Egyptian perceptions of Iran as a regional threat reconfigures Vali Nasr's emphasis on the Sunni-Shi'i divide, which he argues is the primary driver of regional relations and conflict. In contrast, this analysis indicates that it is not simply Iran's Shi'i identity, but that it is predominantly its identity that underlies the Egyptian government's and media's framing of apparent Iranian challenges to its sovereignty and regional leadership. Notably, its relations with Iran operate in the context of the established narrative of Egypt as an Arab leader and the vanguard of Arab unity, which since the 1980s has meant promoting political stability in the Arab world.12To investigate the operation of a Sunni/Shi'i narrative in popular public discourse in Egypt and to examine how anti-Shi'a sentiments are ultimately transformed into a perceived threat to the Arab world from a non-Arab Other, this article examines Egyptian newspaper coverage following the discovery of a covert Hizbullah cell in Egypt in April 2009 and compares the coverage to previous reportage on the organization. …

Honor and Humiliation in Apuleius’ Apologia

Apuleius’Apologiahas consistently drawn scholarly attention as an example of soaring rhetoric from the Second Sophistic and for being the only remaining account of a trial for illegal magic from the early Empire. This study opts for a different approach. It uses theApologiaas a window into the culture of Roman provincial high society by examining Apuleius’ motivations for demanding his accusers bring formal charges against him, as well as the social factors that pushed the preceding conflict to such a dramatic climax. The main contention of this inquiry is that the actions of both Apuleius and his enemies reveal the paramount importance of honor as a cultural driver of conflict, and particularly its vocalization in the parry and riposte of insults and humiliation that ultimately resulted in a theatrical courtroom confrontation. The results of this micro-study in Roman provincial life should thus provide a useful complement to both Ifie & Thompson’s excellent paper onRank, Social Status and Esteem in Apuleius(1977-1978) as well as J.E. Lendon’s magisterialEmpire of Honour. The Art of Government in the Roman World(1997). It also adds a practical dimension to Lateiner’s detailed analysis of Apuleius’ literary strategies of humiliation and embarrassment in hisMetamorphoses(2001).

Humiliation and the Political Mobilization of Masculinity

Islamist rhetoric about the humiliation of Islam and American rhetoric about national humiliation have been energized by disparate events in recent years, from the photographs of American soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia to the invasion of Iraq, the “Innocence of Muslims” video to the attacks on 9/11. At the same time, there’s been an explosion of scholarship on humiliation as a driver of international conflict and political violence in general, and in relation to the bodies and minds of Muslims in particular. The link between humiliation and Muslims is thus a co-production between Islamists who continually invoke it and scholars from various disciplines and regions who regularly posit it. Yet there’s been very little analysis of humiliation in Islamist discourse; minimal effort to anatomize the ways in which this experience of humiliation is constructed to necessitate particular kinds of retaliatory action; and no attempt to theorize more broadly about patterns and discontinuities in how different rhetorics construct humiliation. This article takes up the following questions: What is the substantive content of humiliation in such rhetoric and analysis? Do these different rhetorics of humiliation articulate the same understanding of it, as an act and an experience? What does close analysis of Islamist discourse on humiliation in comparative perspective reveal about the political stakes and affective resonances articulated and energized by it in this particular moment in history? Finally, what do the answers to these questions say about the reach and limits of the dominant account of humiliation as the violated dignity or injured self-respect of a generic individual?

Mechanistic understanding of human-wildlife conflict through a novel application of dynamic occupancy models.

Crop and livestock depredation by wildlife is a primary driver of human-wildlife conflict, a problem that threatens the coexistence of people and wildlife globally. Understanding mechanisms that underlie depredation patterns holds the key to mitigating conflicts across time and space. However, most studies do not consider imperfect detection and reporting of conflicts, which may lead to incorrect inference regarding its spatiotemporal drivers. We applied dynamic occupancy models to elephant crop depredation data from India between 2005 and 2011 to estimate crop depredation occurrence and model its underlying dynamics as a function of spatiotemporal covariates while accounting for imperfect detection of conflicts. The probability of detecting conflicts was consistently <1.0 and was negatively influenced by distance to roads and elevation gradient, averaging 0.08-0.56 across primary periods (distinct agricultural seasons within each year). The probability of crop depredation occurrence ranged from 0.29 (SE 0.09) to 0.96 (SE 0.04). The probability that sites raided by elephants in primary period t would not be raided in primary period t + 1 varied with elevation gradient in different seasons and was influenced negatively by mean rainfall and village density and positively by distance to forests. Negative effects of rainfall variation and distance to forests best explained variation in the probability that sites not raided by elephants in primary period t would be raided in primary period t + 1. With our novel application of occupancy models, we teased apart the spatiotemporal drivers of conflicts from factors that influence how they are observed, thereby allowing more reliable inference on mechanisms underlying observed conflict patterns. We found that factors associated with increased crop accessibility and availability (e.g., distance to forests and rainfall patterns) were key drivers of elephant crop depredation dynamics. Such an understanding is essential for rigorous prediction of future conflicts, a critical requirement for effective conflict management in the context of increasing human-wildlife interactions.

Decentralization as a Post-Conflict Strategy: Local Government Discretion and Accountability in Sierra Leone

Summary Sierra Leone has made progress in recovering from a decade-long civil war, in part due to decentralization. As a post-conflict stabilization strategy, decentralization has been effective in satisfying the desire for more equitable political representation, and three rounds of peaceful elections have strengthened democratic norms. However, more needs to be performed to strengthen local governments in order to address regional horizontal inequity. Solely political decentralization is not sufficient in addressing regional differences in pro-poor service delivery, which was a key driver of conflict. It requires broader commitment to establish a functioning local government system, including central government subscription to the tenets of administrative and fiscal decentralization. Though Sierra Leone has remained stable in terms of political violence, recent data show that the nation has not made great strides in addressing weak and inequitable social service delivery. This paper argues that this stagnation is a product of the incomplete nature of the post-conflict stabilization strategy of decentralization and that correcting this failure will require strong commitment from the central government to implementing the full measure of the existing legal framework for decentralization. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Context-aware Decision Support Tool for Assessing and Mitigating Drivers of Civil Instability

Military planners and decision-makers face a number of challenges with the shift towards operating within diverse, multi-dimensional, and unconventional environments. Leaders require a deeper understanding of the broader social and civil context in which operations occur, including the underlying factors that contribute to instability and the drivers of conflict. This understanding is often derived through the analysis of textual data. Both traditional and non-traditional sources – such as news articles, blog entries, and tweets – represent a vast amount of data that can be brought to bear on problems ranging from measuring the progress of missions to forecasting important changes in the environment. The volume and velocity of this data requires processing tools that can help users understand the concepts and events being discussed. Additionally, these data are inherently ambiguous, and the automated processing techniques necessary for aggregating and analyzing data may introduce further uncertainty. The validity and veracity of data, sources, assumptions, and conclusions must be carefully considered prior to action. Planners and decision-makers require new, data-driven tools that aid in selecting the best course of action through interactive exploration and assessment processes. In this paper, we describe an ongoing research and development effort to create a context-driven, web-based tool that aids planning and decision-making by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the civil component of operational environments. This tool allows users to rapidly find, organize, and assess complex data across multiple phases of civil information management. This includes: (1) researching and assessing civil vulnerabilities; (2) developing plans to address identified vulnerabilities; and (3) tracking ongoing trends and progress towards goals and objectives. Our tool assists the user in each phase by collecting, processing, and recommending data and analyses that are contextually relevant to their task. By offloading data collection, supporting data organization, and providing personalized recommendations, our tool allows users to focus their efforts on verifying, interpreting, and assessing the information needed to recommend the best course of action.

Violent Conflict and Forced Displacement in the Horn of Africa: Government and Donor Policies and Programs in Search of Durable Solutions

The Horn of Africa (HOA) is currently engulfed in entangling and shifting cross border conflict, resulting in at least four major forced displacement situations. These conflicts emanate mainly from the Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea and involve large numbers of refugees as well as internally displaced persons (IDPs). Globally, there are an estimated 54.7 million displaced persons. More than a quarter (27%) of the globally displaced, are in Sub-Saharan Africa, with about 8.7 million or over half (58%) of those in the HOA. On the one hand, forced displacement in the Horn places additional stresses on already weak local and national institutions and marginalized, underserved host communities. Services are often perceived to only benefit the displaced as opposed to receptor communities leading to envy and local conflict. On the other hand, displaced persons also have skills and assets that could be harnessed and utilized to benefit the local economy in pursuit of durable solutions. The complex cultural, social, and political nature of the region is compounded by an ongoing set of development challenges, including: demographic shifts; imbalanced service provision; the threat of pandemic diseases; and increasing contestation over scarce natural resources, especially water and grazing areas. This article examines the underlying drivers of violent conflict, the impact on both the displaced and the receptor host communities, and the effectiveness of government and donor policies and programs. The research methodology included a literature review, field-based participant observations, and a series of in-depth key informant and focal group interviews in HOA refugee camps, host communities and major cities. The search for a new paradigm shift from care and maintenance to resilience and self-reliance is underway. Given the now “protracted†nature of the displacement, the old encampment humanitarian approaches of care and maintenance are now giving way to a rethink from a development perspective by governments and donors alike. Finally, from a prevention perspective, stemming forced migration at its source by improving security, governance, and livelihood opportunities in countries of origin are key to managing the displacement challenge. Regional integrated area development can convert fragile border areas which now serve as shock absorbers for conflicts within these fragile states to prosperous change agents opening avenues of cross border trade and development

Theories of the deep: combining salience and network analyses to produce mental model visualizations of a coastal British Columbia food web

Levine, J., M. Muthukrishna, K. M. A. Chan, and T. Satterfield. 2015. Theories of the deep: combining salience and network analyses to produce mental model visualizations of a coastal British Columbia food web. Ecology and Society 20(4):42.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08094-200442

Peacebuilding Made Simple?

Conflict Assessment and Peacebuilding Planning: Toward a Participatory Approach to Human Security. By Lisa Schirch. Boulder, CO: Kumarian, 2013. 229 pp., $22 paperback (ISBN: 978-1-565-49579-1). Lisa Schirch's ambitious handbook tackles complex challenges of contemporary peacebuilding in an accessible format. By providing “easy-to-use conceptual frameworks for seeing and learning about the complex, dynamic conflict system” (p. 1), Schirch's volume sets out to respond to problems of “untested assumptions and lack of assessment” (p. 1), and of coordination and harmonization among diverse peacebuilding actors, by contributing “more coherent terminology and foundational concepts linking academic sources and practitioner tools” (p. 2). All this and more is wrestled with through a “whole of society” approach that engages both government and civil society (p. 27) and can be applied at multiple scales from local urban or remote communities to policy-making elites at national and global levels (p. 2). To advance this ambitious agenda, Schirch advocates a broad systems approach that attends to the interplay of conflict drivers and “mitigators” through self-reflexive conflict assessment research, peacebuilding design and planning based in theories of change, and a welcome focus on monitoring and evaluation. The handbook is also borne of recent debates and preoccupations in the peacebuilding field, as reflected in its focus on human security, advocacy of local participation, and attention to questions of culture …

Conflicting messages? The IPCC on conflict and human security

Violence seems to be on a long-term decline in the international system. The possibility that climate change would create more violent conflict was mentioned in scattered places in the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2001 and 2007 respectively. The empirical literature testing for relationships between climate change and various forms of conflict has undergone a major expansion since then. The report from Working Group II of the Fifth Assessment Report contains a much more careful assessment of the climate change-conflict nexus. The Human security chapter reports high agreement and robust evidence that human security will be progressively threatened as the climate changes. But as far as the impact on armed conflict is concerned, it paints a balanced picture, concluding that while individual studies vary in their conclusions, ‘collectively the research does not conclude that there is a strong positive relationship between warming and armed conflict’. The chapter also argues that climate change is likely to have an influence on some known drivers of conflict, and this point is reiterated in other chapters as well as the Technical summary and the Summary for policymakers. A chapter on ‘Emergent trends …’ has a somewhat more dramatic conclusion regarding a climate-conflict link, as does the Africa chapter, while a methods chapter on ‘Detection and attribution’ dismisses the climate-change-to-violence link. The entire report is suffused with terms like ‘may’, ‘has the potential to’, and other formulations without any indication of a level of probability. Overall, the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC does not support the view that climate change is an important threat to the long-term waning of war. Still, the report opens up for conflicting interpretations and overly alarmist media translations.

The Dynamics of Conflict in Southern Thailand

The prolonged insurgency in Southern Thailand has claimed thousands of victims since the outbreak of major violence in 2004. Drawing on a unique data set covering all violent incidents since 2004, a hotspot analysis shows that the bulk of the violence is concentrated in clusters of sub-districts forming hotbeds of conflict. Drivers of conflict are identified through a comparative analysis of the hotspots of violence with less violent areas. The analysis shows that identity manifested in language use and religious practices (rather than international borders, infrastructure, and physical geography) influence the prevalence and patterns of violence.

Ethnicity and the distribution of welfare: Evidence from southern Kyrgyzstan

Economic disparity between ethnic groups is sometimes supposed to be the main driver of ethnic conflict. Understanding the extent and the sources of such disparity is then important to help formulate policies that aim at avoiding further conflict. This paper analyzes economic disparity between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan. These groups were involved in violent clashes in the recent past. Using household survey data from 2005, we show that, in contrast to the public perception, Kyrgyz households have slightly higher expenditure than Uzbek households in urban areas and about the same level in rural areas. The gap in urban areas is mostly due to smaller households and higher education among the Kyrgyz. We also find that Uzbek households are better off than Kyrgyz households in terms of the value of housing property. We argue that the house value gap can be explained by the Uzbeks having larger houses, which are home to larger families and serve as a basis for running small businesses.

Carnivores, culture and ‘contagious conflict’: Multiple factors influence perceived problems with carnivores in Tanzania’s Ruaha landscape

Resolving human-wildlife conflict is a conservation priority, but effective mitigation requires in-depth understanding of the complexity and relative importance of conflict drivers. We conducted 262 semi-structured interviews with villagers around Tanzania’s Ruaha National Park. The surveys provided data on respondents’ perceived problems with wildlife, knowledge, reported killing of carnivores, and their socio-economic characteristics. 98.5% of people perceived a problem with wildlife, and respondents viewed large carnivores as significantly more problematic than other species, due to the threats they posed to livestock and humans. Despite this, only 7.3% of people admitted to having killed any large carnivores. Depredation was widespread, having affected 61.1% of households, but was less important than other forms of stock loss – monthly recall data revealed 1.2% of stock were predated, compared to 9.1% lost to disease and 2.8% to theft. Although experience of depredation significantly predicted negative attitudes towards carnivores, it was not the most important factor. The study raises the possibility of ‘contagious conflict’, where perceived problems with one group of species were strongly associated with perceived problems with others. Furthermore, factors such as ethnic group and religious beliefs were significant predictors of perceived problems. This study suggests that effective conflict mitigation should involve measures to improve attitudes towards a broad range of species, rather than a single taxon, and that action should be taken to also address the social and cultural drivers of conflict, rather than merely focusing upon reducing wildlife damage.

Resolving Human‐Bear Conflict: A Global Survey of Countries, Experts, and Key Factors

AbstractHuman‐bear conflicts cause annoyance, financial losses, injuries, and even death to people. In poorer parts of the world, conflicts with bears can affect local economies. Retaliation against bears may threaten the future of small, isolated populations. Our survey of the world's bear experts revealed that the problem is worsening in terms of severity of conflicts and their impact on bear conservation on all four continents inhabited by bears. However, the main drivers of conflict, and its manifestations, differ among bear species. We reviewed human‐bear conflict management plans from which we identified 10 categories of mitigating interventions that together comprise a ubiquitous bear conflict management toolbox. Within this toolbox, the peer‐reviewed literature indicates heavy reliance on education and physical barriers for conflict mitigation. In customizing these general approaches to local circumstances, it is important to be mindful of starkly varying geopolitical and social circumstances. There is a pressing need to improve transfer of knowledge from places with active empirical research on mitigation (especially North America), and adapting methodologies to other parts of the world. We saw little evidence of evaluation and adaptive management in the conflict plans. Failure to mitigate conflicts may reduce society's tolerance of bears and diminish conservation efforts.