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 present conflict are as much environmental as political, stemming from problems of resource distribution in an overcrowded land, according to a draft USAID environmental profile of El Salvador.

10. South Africa reveals similar problems. The inhuman policy of apartheid is at the core of the state of political conflict in Southern Africa. One of the many' ways by which apartheid institutionalizes both conflict &ad environmental degradation is by allocating, through the 'homelands' system, 14 per cent of the nation's land to 72 per cent of the population. Young working-age blacks flee the overcultivated and overgrazed 'homelands' to seek work in the cities, where, on top of the squalor of overcrowded townships, they encounter extreme socio-economic inequality and racial segregation. They fight back, Repression intensifies;, and the victims seek refuge over the border – whereupon the South African regime widens the conflict into neighbouring states. The entire region is becoming caught up in the ensuing violence, which could well ignite wider conflict drawing in major powers.

11. In addition to the interrelated problems of poverty, injustice, and environmental stress, competition for non-renewable raw materials, land, or energy can create tension. It was the quest for raw materials that underlay much of the competition between colonial powers and the subjugation of their holdings. Conflicts in the Middle East inevitably contain the seeds of great power intervention and global conflagration, in part because of the international interest in oil.

12. As unsustainable forms of development push individual countries up against environmental limits, major differences in environmental endowment among countries, or variations in stocks of usable land and raw materials, could precipitate and exacerbate international tension and conflict. And competition for use of the global commons, such as ocean fisheries and Antarctica, or for use of more localized common resources in fixed supply, such as river and coastal waters, could escalate to the level of international conflict and so threaten international peace and security.

13. Global water use doubled between 1940 and 1980, and it is expected to double again by 2000, with two thirds of the /…