From Collaboration to Conflict: A Study of Environmental Scarcity in Lake Victoria

Sammanfattning: The worsening environmental degradation is a growing concern for politicians around the globe. Some scholars argue that there is a causal link between environmental degradation and violence, others say that collaboration is a much more likely outcome. Lake Victoria used to be a perfect example for those who criticized the link between environmental degradation and violence, because even though it suffered from severe environmental degradation there were only very few reports of violence. Today that is however not the case, because in 2004 Ugandan officials landed on the small Island of Migingo, where they hoisted the Ugandan flag. Kenya considered the Island to belong to their territory and in May 2009 the Kenyan parliament called for a military intervention to secure Migingo Island. This thesis seeks to understand this rapid shift from collaboration to conflict? The theory of framing analysis, from the interpretive camp, will be used to construct different security framings in the environmental scarcity discourse. This thesis claims that the shift from collaboration to conflict is connected to a new dominant framing of the issue. The conclusions are drawn from interpretations of policy documents and the domestic media.