Growing Unrest

The report argues that agricultural and marine resources, often dismissed as secondary in conflict analysis, can fuel violence through the taxation of trade, the destabilizing effect of price volatility, and competition over essential inputs like land and water. Through case studies in Côte d’Ivoire, Somalia, and Central Asia, it demonstrates how rebel groups and warlords extract funds from cocoa, bananas, and fisheries. It also highlights how commodity dependence and price shocks undermine political stability and how the pursuit of thirsty crops like cotton exacerbates interstate tensions over water sharing. The authors provide fourteen policy recommendations, including the use of UN sanctions on agricultural resources and increased transparency in trade.

• Agricultural and marine commodities can be used to fund conflict through informal taxation and extortion by rebel groups and warlords, even when they do not control the means of production.
• In Côte d’Ivoire, both the government and the 'New Forces' (FN) rebel group used cocoa revenues to fund military operations; the FN is estimated to have taxed cocoa exports for US$30 million per year since 2004.
• Somali warlords funded their militias by controlling the export of bananas and, more recently, by issuing false fishing licences to foreign companies, generating millions of dollars over a decade.
• High dependence on volatile agricultural commodity exports increases a country's risk of conflict by undermining fiscal management and rural livelihoods.
• Agricultural commodities act as proxies for scarce natural resources; for example, the demand for cotton in Central Asia increases tensions over transboundary water sharing between upstream and downstream states.
• In Central Asia, the dependence on a cotton monoculture is linked to political repression and the potential for social upheaval, particularly in Uzbekistan where the state maintains top-down control and uses forced labour.
• Rapidly rising food prices for staple crops like wheat and rice in early 2008 triggered widespread protests and violent riots across Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
• Conflict has a devastating impact on agriculture and fisheries, with estimated losses to agricultural output for developing countries totaling US$121 billion between 1970 and 1997.

APA

Crawford, A., & Brown, O. (2008). Growing Unrest. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/growing_unrest_resources.pdf

Chicago

Crawford, Alec, and Oli Brown. Growing Unrest. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2008. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/growing_unrest_resources.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Crawford |first1=Alec |last2=Brown |first2=Oli |title=Growing Unrest |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=June 2008 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/growing_unrest_resources.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{crawford2008growing, author = {Crawford, Alec and Brown, Oli}, title = {{Growing Unrest}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2008}, month = jun, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/growing_unrest_resources.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }