Exploring a Scalar Nexus Approach to Understanding Environmental Change Around Refugee Settlements in Uganda

Abstract

Drawing on interdisciplinary research employing social and natural sciences methods in two Ugandan refugee settlements, this article explores complex interactions between displacement and environmental change. Contributing to political ecological debates around scale, and employing a nexus thinking lens, this article conceptualizes a scalar nexus connecting a relational settlement communities nexus and a global or intraregional sustainability scalar nexus. Positioned between these, the Ugandan context’s palliative policies seek refugee self-reliance in a constrained and challenging landscape. An interdisciplinary approach including remotely sensed satellite imagery charting landscape change over twenty years; qualitative methods, including participatory mapping and interviews; and representative household surveys, illustrate how a scalar nexus approach teases out multilayered scalar contexts interacting in environmental change, often solely attributed to refugees. Rapidly changing global-level political situations affect settlement-scale host and refugee relationships around competition and constrained collaboration for resources. The article demonstrates that solutions must be sought across both scalar nexuses and at each node: attributing sole responsibility to one node, such as refugees, or one context, such as Uganda, does not contribute to solutions. Reconceptualizing nexus thinking at multiple scales, the scalar nexus approach can be applied to other contexts facing environmental change and displacement for nuanced understandings and tailored responses.