The Impact of Civil Strife on Communities and Ecosystems

When social order collapses – whether through riots, strikes, ethnic violence, or armed insurgency – the consequences rarely stop at the political or economic level. Civil strife reshapes communities, disrupts food systems, overwhelms healthcare infrastructure, and leaves ecosystems damaged for decades. Understanding what civil strife actually is, where it has occurred, and what it leaves behind is essential for grasping the full scope of this man-made hazard.

What is civil strife?
Global examples of civil strife
Ethiopia: conflict and chronic hunger
Somalia: three decades of collapse
The Balkans: ethnic conflict and environmental contamination
Consequences for public health
Consequences for the environment
The cycle of strife and environmental degradation

What is civil strife?

Civil strife refers to any form of internal social or political conflict that disrupts the normal functioning of society. It ranges from urban riots, labor strikes, and civil unrest to full-scale armed insurgencies, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and prolonged internal wars. Unlike natural disasters, civil strife originates within human societies – often driven by political exclusion, ethnic tension, economic inequality, or competition over scarce resources.

Research by Canadian scholar Thomas Homer-Dixon showed that environmental scarcities – whether from ecological constraints, resource depletion, or sociopolitical inequalities – were becoming a direct, independent cause of civil strife and ethnic violence, pushing societies into self-reinforcing cycles of dysfunction and conflict. This connection between resource stress and civil unrest is now well-documented globally.

Civil strife disrupts every dimension of civilian life. Farmers cannot reach their fields. Supply chains break down. Schools and hospitals close or are deliberately targeted. Displaced populations lose livelihoods and homes. Government institutions weaken or collapse entirely, removing the structures that communities rely on for safety, health, and environmental management.

Global examples of civil strife

Ethiopia: conflict and chronic hunger

Ethiopia offers one of the most sustained examples of how civil strife amplifies humanitarian crises. The country has endured decades of political conflict layered over climate shocks, with each compounding the other. Studies show that armed conflict in Ethiopia disrupts food production, transportation, and distribution at every level, heightening the risks of food insecurity and starvation. Agricultural activity declines, infrastructure is damaged, and aid programs are blocked or defunded.

The armed conflict that began in northern Ethiopia in November 2020 significantly reduced the effectiveness of food security programs in the Tigray region. Research published in PMC found that around 41% of children in Ethiopia’s conflict zones are acutely malnourished, with acute malnutrition heightening the risk of illness and requiring urgent intervention. According to WHO, the number of Ethiopians needing humanitarian assistance grew from 16.8 million in 2022 to 21.4 million by 2024, driven primarily by internal armed conflict, disease outbreaks, and food insecurity.

Somalia: three decades of collapse

Somalia’s trajectory illustrates how sustained civil strife can permanently alter a country’s food and ecological systems. The International Rescue Committee reports that Somalia now produces less than half the food it did before three decades of civil conflict began, leaving the country dangerously reliant on imported grain. When the Russia-Ukraine conflict disrupted global wheat supplies, Somalia – importing over 90% of its wheat – was acutely exposed.

According to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, conflict and displacement in the Horn of Africa have fueled disease outbreaks including cholera, measles, malaria, and dengue fever, with flood-affected areas of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya seeing a surge in water and vector-borne illness. The WHO has stated plainly that the food crisis in this region is also a health crisis. Humanitarian access is further constrained by the al-Shabaab insurgency, which controls large portions of southern Somalia and has been documented burning food deliveries and destroying water sources.

The Balkans: ethnic conflict and environmental contamination

The breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s produced some of the most destructive civil strife in post-war European history. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the collapse of Yugoslavia and the ethnic wars that followed resulted in the death and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, requiring NATO military intervention and years of international peacekeeping. The Bosnian War and the Kosovo conflict became synonymous with ethnic cleansing and the deliberate targeting of civilian populations.

Beyond the human toll, the Kosovo conflict left measurable environmental damage. A Council of Europe report on the environmental impact of the war in Yugoslavia identified four major environmental hot spots – Pancevo, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, and Bor – where bombing of industrial sites released mercury, dioxins, and PCBs into soil, water, and air. Downstream countries like Bulgaria and Romania faced the threat of transboundary pollution along the Danube River. The use of depleted uranium in munitions added another layer of long-term contamination, affecting the respiratory health of nearby populations.

Consequences for public health

Civil strife consistently produces the same cascade of public health failures: healthcare systems are damaged or destroyed, medical supplies run out, and access to clean water collapses. Research on Ethiopia’s conflict found that healthcare facilities are directly targeted, denying communities access to life-saving care while public health systems face critical shortages of medications, equipment, and transport. Disease outbreaks that would be manageable under normal conditions become deadly when hospitals are non-functional and populations are displaced into overcrowded camps.

Malnutrition and disease reinforce each other. Nutritional deficiencies weaken immunity, especially in children, increasing vulnerability to infection and creating cycles of illness that hamper development for years after a conflict ends. The WHO classifies Ethiopia’s humanitarian situation as a Grade 3 emergency – its highest crisis level – with cholera outbreaks, mass malnutrition, and a refugee population of over one million people from neighboring conflict zones all converging at once.

Consequences for the environment

Environmental damage during civil strife is both direct and systemic. The United Nations documents how militaries deliberately clear vegetation and drain wetlands to remove cover for enemy forces – tactics reported during Sudan’s civil war and in Iraq – with major consequences for local ecosystems. Bombing of industrial facilities releases toxic pollutants into soil, air, and water. Landmines and unexploded ordnance remain embedded in agricultural land for decades, contaminating areas long after fighting stops.

Displacement compounds this destruction. The International Committee of the Red Cross notes that conflict-driven displacement pushes populations toward forests, lakes, and other ecosystems where they rely on natural resources for basic survival. This leads to accelerated deforestation, as communities depend on wood and charcoal for fuel. The Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) explains that deforestation often intensifies during conflicts, driven by communities suddenly cut off from normal fuel supplies, and by armed groups exploiting the collapse of resource management systems.

A further consequence is the breakdown of environmental governance itself. When civil institutions collapse, so does the capacity to enforce pollution controls, manage protected areas, or respond to climate pressures. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction highlights that ecosystem collapse triggered by conflict can generate long-term environmental crises that, in turn, fuel further resource scarcity and renewed conflict – a cycle that is particularly well-documented across the Sahel and Horn of Africa.

The cycle of strife and environmental degradation

Civil strife and environmental degradation are not simply parallel problems – they feed one another. Foreign Policy’s analysis found that 16 of the 20 countries most vulnerable to ecological threats are also among the most vulnerable to socioeconomic and political instability. When land degrades, food production falls. When food production falls, competition for remaining resources intensifies. When competition intensifies, the conditions for conflict sharpen – particularly in states that already lack the institutional capacity to manage shocks or resolve disputes peacefully.

This relationship between environmental stress and civil strife is not inevitable, but it is well-established. Addressing one requires addressing the other. Rebuilding health systems, restoring agricultural land, reforesting degraded areas, and reestablishing environmental governance are all part of post-conflict recovery – and all are harder to achieve the longer civil strife persists.

What do you think? Given that environmental degradation can both trigger and result from civil strife, should international peacebuilding efforts place greater emphasis on restoring ecosystems alongside rebuilding political institutions? And how should the global community rethink humanitarian aid to address the environmental dimension of conflict-driven crises, not just the immediate human needs?

References

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Table of Contents

What is civil strife? 🔗

Global examples of civil strife 🔗

Ethiopia: conflict and chronic hunger 🔗

Somalia: three decades of collapse 🔗

The Balkans: ethnic conflict and environmental contamination 🔗

Consequences for public health 🔗

Consequences for the environment 🔗

The cycle of strife and environmental degradation 🔗