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Sudan, a nation of 36 million people wracked by conflict for 34 of the last 45 years, has generated some four million displaced people during the course of its war. It is estimated that over two million Sudanese people have died as a result of fighting and related starvation and disease. Most conventional analyses have focussed on the identity-based dichotomies to explain the conflict. This paper identifies how environmental and ecological variables contribute to the war and how it is waged in Sudan.The paper’s analysis is guided by a hypothesis linking five ecological variables to the conflict cycle. The authors expect that competition for scarce resources will emerge as a causal factor. They also anticipate that an important determinant will be the struggle to exploit and control the ecological sources of surplus value - oil in particular.The analysis of the Sudanese conflict cycle begins with an overview of the Sudan conflict, tracing the system’s history, underlying pattern and distinctive features. This in turn reveals systemic elements and cyclical dynamics of the Sudan conflict system, which can then be used to guide policy interventions.Turning to the environmental analysis, the paper explores the interaction between people and their environment in Sudan, illustrating how natural systems shape the north-south divide. It then examines the patterns of resource consumption and management, revealing how a topdown approach to resource management has deepened the fissures in the Sudanese society.The paper finds that:there are clear environmental and ecological determinants of the conflictthe Nile River system created a natural division leading to the polarisation of African-Arab identitiesthe government has manipulated this advantage to its benefit, and the violence arising out of the disunity of the southern movement has played into its handsthe population in the contested border zones - the Abyei Dinka, the Nuba, and perhaps Shilluk to the west - that has suffered most directly from the warthe beneficiaries of the war are the elites on both sides who camouflage their struggle to control critical natural resources through ideologies of identity and resistancethe most valuable of these commodities by far is the Bentiu oil.The paper identifies specific areas for policy and legal reform, and these are:decentralisation of significant economic and political powers to lower levels of governmentcommunity empowerment over land and natural resourceseconomic diversification in south Sudan to decrease dependence on subsistence productionequity as a guiding principle in allocating rights to land and resources, and the distribution of economic benefitsdevelopment of a comprehensive land and natural resource development and use plan through participatory, inclusive and public process.
