On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, journalist Dahr Jamail joins co-host Rachel Donald to discuss the ways many international conflicts are based on resource scarcity.

Notable as an unembedded reporter during the US-led Iraq invasion, Jamail expands on the human and ecological costs to these conflicts, the purported reasons behind them, how those justifications are covered in the media, and the continued stress these conflicts put on society. 

"There was a saying a ways back by Lester Brown [who] said 'land is the new gold and water is the new oil.' And I think that that perspective is really kind of driving what we're seeing," Jamail says.

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Image credit: A U.S. Army soldier watching a burning oil well at the Rumaila oil field in Iraq in April 2003. Image by Arlo K. Abrahamson/DoD via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

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Timecodes 

(00:00) Introduction

(01:57) From Alaska to Iraq

(10:59) Resource scarcity and the geopolitics of war

(29:31) New horizons and new tensions

(35:09) Post-show discussion

(50:05) Credits