Climate Change, Resource Scarcity, and Green Militarization in East and Central Africa
Abstract
Purpose: This article examines how climate change and resource scarcity interact with the securitization of biodiversity conservation in East and Central Africa, a process increasingly described in the literature as green militarization, and assesses its human rights consequences for indigenous and resource dependent communities in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Research Methodology: The study applies a qualitative documentary research design, drawing on peer reviewed journal literature, international legal instruments, human rights reports, and conservation policy documents published mainly between 2021 and 2026, analyzed thematically around climate pressure, securitization, militarization, community rights, and accountability. Results: The findings show that climate and resource pressures create genuine conservation and security challenges, yet militarized responses frequently deepen land dispossession, restrict customary resource access, produce physical abuse, weaken community participation, and erode institutional trust when proportionality, oversight, and consent safeguards are absent. Conclusions: Effective conservation security should be judged not only by reductions in poaching but by legality, participation, indigenous rights, ranger accountability, and access to remedy. Limitations: The analysis relies on secondary documentary evidence across four purposively selected countries and does not generate new primary field data. Contributions: The article proposes an integrated rights based conservation security model and extends political ecology and human security scholarship into an underexamined regional context.