The assertion of rights to agro-pastoral land in North Cameroon : a cascade to violence?

What are the key causalities in the linkages between environmental resource scarcity, the non-violent assertion of rights to the environment and the (non) avoidance of violence itself? Focusing on the natural resource land, the author studies three different cases of conflict over land at the local level in Diamaré, Baba Deli and Kubadje, in the extreme north of Cameroon, from 2001 to 2004, using different sociological, geographical and anthropological methods. She argues the need to come up with a kind of model to structure research in the field of environmental scarcity and security, constructs such a model, and, in the process, discusses the concepts and submodels to be used. This results in the flow diagramme Violence-or-Escape, which serves as a guiding model in the study. [ASC Leiden abstract]