Natural resources conflict: management processes and strategies in Africa

This brief paper argues that environmental degradation in forms such as desertification, resource depletion and demographic pressure exacerbates tensions and instability. The paper particularly focuses on the role of natural resources in motivating and fueling armed conflicts in Africa.

The author highlights that the linked ecological processes in a specific environment have cumulative, long-term implications. Therefore, the negative ecological processes take a considerable time to manifest themselves, which often provides the underlying link between natural resources and changes to an area’s susceptibility to conflict.

The paper reviews several case studies, including the case of Mara River Basin, which is a trans-boundary African basin that has been always a reason for social tensions among countries sharing it.

The document finds that:

• natural resources are embedded in a geopolitical and interdependent space where actions may generate effects far beyond specific localities
• the ecological process is further compounded by other mediating factors like climate change variables, and this has an effect on the extent and frequency of environmental crimes
• what presents the greatest set of difficulties to environmental diplomats and policymakers is that threats to the environment are characterised by a high degree of empirical uncertainty
• as a result of such dynamics, policymakers and decision makers have little choice but to place the environmental agenda on the cost-benefit analysis scale.
  

The author makes the following recommendations: 

• diplomatic regimes have to redefine their conflict management strategies in terms of a stronger recognition of natural resource management as a powerful negotiation, mediation and post-conflict reconstruction variable
• conflict management regimes should take into account the dynamics, complexities and problems of natural resources conflicts
• it should be understood that managing natural resources will go a long way towards conflict and peace management.