Resource Conflicts

Nepal is known as one of the world's most conservation-friendly countries, with more than 18% of its total area as protected areas. However, because of the top-down, bureaucratically oriented, exclusionary governance systems practised in the protected areas, there is tension between park authorities and local people that ultimately causes livelihood insecurities. Most of the sufferers from the poor conservation governing systems in Nepal are poor, marginalised and indigenous people. As indigenous people are the victims of protected area management systems, an intense debate on the property rights and prior rights of indigenous people has emerged. To shed light on this debate, the author has employed the conceptual framework of legal pluralism, thereby providing better understanding of the conflict between the customary rights exercised by the indigenous communities and the formal legal arrangements of the state. The study presented in this paper was conducted in the Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve in Eastern Nepal. The study reveals that the main cause of the conflict between park authorities and local people was the National Park and Wildlife Conservation Act of 1973, which makes provisions such as prohibition of access for domestic animals and birds for drinking water and grazing, in areas used by local people for these very purposes. Realising the complexity of the conflict, the government of Nepal initiated a participatory conservation project (called Park– People Programme). However, this participatory approach is not able to provide benefits to the poor and marginal sections of society mainly because the participatory process as well as outcome of the participatory approach was captured by the powerful elites.

This is the first part of a two-part series on anti-lithium mining protests that have erupted in Serbia over the last several months, and the broader environmental movement around it. Full text is also on the LEFTEAST website: https://lefteast.org/serbia-is-not-for-sale-on-lithium-hunger-and-other-betrayals/

Corporate-community conflict is a constant theme in Peru’s extractive sector and seems to have escalated over the past few years during which violent confrontations between anti-mining/anti-oil protestors and the state’s security forces have resulted in many tragic deaths in Bagua, Espinar and Islay, among others. The most frequent causes of these conflicts are allegations of serious environmental pollution, competition for scarce water resources and distribution of the wealth generated by extractive operations.
Faced with the complex challenge of addressing these underlying issues while maintaining Peru’s attractiveness to foreign investments, the Peruvian government has been fostering a strategy of multi-actor dialogue processes. Numerous so called ‘mesa de diálogo’ or ‘mesa de desarollo’ are now under way across the country’s extractive sector. In the area of mining, one can hardly find a mining company that has operations in Peru and is not currently sitting at any dialogue table, more often one finds a single mine involved in many local level dialogue processes at the same time.
This paper will attempt a (first) analysis about these relatively young processes’ effectiveness and, in particular, their potential for reducing local level conflict and violence. For this purpose, the paper draws on field research conducted in Peru between April and August 2013. It compares the dialogue tables between the Peruvian state, Antamina and the alcaldes of the province of Huari, Ancash with two regional dialogue tables involving Anglo American’s Quellaveco project as well as the Southern Peru Copper Corporation in Moquegua. Drawing on a comparison of these cases and focusing, in particular, on the characteristics of the underlying conflicts, the paper attempts a few tentative propositions about variables that do and variables that do not impact mesa effectiveness.

The conflict around Galgala, a small town in the Golis Mountains west of Bosaso in northern Somalia, poses the government of Puntland against clan militias and militant Islamists. The conflict was originally over natural resources, but soon turned into a conflict related to the ‘global war on terrorism’. It is additionally complicated due to its location in the contested borderlands between Somaliland and Puntland. The article analyses the effects of these dynamics on the local population and, more
generally, on stability and peace in the region. It argues that sustainable solutions to the ongoing conflict can only be found if one takes into account the legitimate claims of the Warsangeli, the clan to which the local mountain dwellers belong, regarding
the protection of their land and their resources. The anti-terrorism discourse that is currently foregrounded, mainly by the government of Puntland and its allies including the USA, is likely to inhibit the understanding of issues at stake.

Post the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, water has been a critically divisive issue between the two countries. As a result, the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) was created with the help of the World Bank to address and reduce the potential tensions that the Indus Water resources could cause. Pakistan is heavily dependent on the Indus Water Resources and is threatened by India's strategic and geopolitical advantage as all the Indus Water originates or flows through India to reach Pakistan. While this treaty has been extremely successful and immune to all the wars since its inception in 1960, the recent conflict between India and Pakistan over the Uri Attack has opened the discussion on revoking or revising the treaty. This paper argues that it will not benefit India to use the IWT as a weapon of war. However, revisions are required in the treaty because it does not address the contemporary issues such as population and industrial growth, and, environmental and climatic pressures.

Globally, one in eight people lacks access to potable water; more people die from unsafe drinking water than from all forms of violence, including war. A substantial body of research documents that the privatization of water – led by global financial institutions working in collusion with governments and corporations – does not lead to more people gaining access to safe water. In fact, the opposite is true:  privatization leads to both higher cost and lower quality water. For the past century, the dominant focus of transnational organizing has been “from the West to the rest,” and the frequent attention to movements in the global North has led to the neglect of transnational linkages between movements. Drawing on fieldwork conducted on three right to water movements that span three continents (North America, South America, and Africa), this paper examines effortsto reclaim the water commons,and how struggles have been driven by grassroots movements demanding that democracy, transpar...

ABSTRACT: Recent large-scale land acquisitions for agricultural production (including biofuels), popularly known as' land grabbing', have attracted headline attention. Water as both a target and driver of this phenomenon has been largely ignored despite the interconnectedness of water and land. This special issue aims to fill this gap and to widen and deepen the lens beyond the confines of the literature's still limited focus on agriculture-driven resource grabbing. The articles in this collection demonstrate that the fluid nature of ...

Over the past four years, a range of conflicting narratives have emerged around the Boko-Haram violence crisis, its causes and possible solutions. These conflicting and competing narratives have made it difficult for the government to devise a clear cut approach in dealing with the violence, and have contributed to worsening the relationship between the predominantly Muslim North and the mainly Christian South. The study critically puts to test a number of existing models that seek both to explain the origins of Boko-Haram and to propose solutions. It does this in relation to the publicly stated views of two groups: Nigerians in the Diaspora and Youth leaders. Although, there are a number of explanations, I organise these under three dominant school of thoughts: (i) the Economic or Human Development approach, which is embedded in an explanation based on poverty and deprivation; (ii) the Religious or Islamic State model that focuses on the role of ideology and religion, and (iii) the Political, which consists of Elite conspiracy or feud approach, which views power, greed, and elite machinations as the main causes of Boko-Haram violence. Without a doubt, The Boko-Haram phenomenon is extremely complex. Yet these three main theoretical explanations of the Boko-Haram violence crisis have a significant influence on public thinking about the problem. While the political feud or elite conspiracy theory seems to be mainly put forward by Southerners, Northerners tend to think that Human development issues of poverty are more important. It was found that there was no single dominant way of thinking about the problem in terms of explaining it.  In terms of solutions, however, youth were overwhelmingly for a military solution, whilst the diaspora focused mainly on dialogue.  The study hopes to contribute to findings ways out of the crisis, in a modest way

Afghanistan, Colombia, and Sudan are the world's three longest producers of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). Why? To answer this question, we evaluate the conventional and dominant geopolitical model of forced migration, as well as alternative models that focus on resource-based conflicts and political economy. We demonstrate that in each of the three cases, natural resources are at the heart of the conflicts that precede the involuntary movement of people both across international borders (refugees) and within national borders (IDPs). But the presence of resources by itself does not cause conflicts or forced migration. In Afghanistan, Colombia and Sudan, it is the political economy of resources-the ways in which these resources are accessed, appropriated, produced, distributed, and transported-that generates the conflicts which create refugees and IDPs. We conclude that alternative models of forced migration are important to policy-making and planning at the regional, national, and global levels in order to reduce the underlying causes of forced migration.

This paper examines resource conflicts from a securitisation perspective, discussing the nature of resource conflicts and the securitisation of the resources themselves. Do resource conflicts take place in poor regions as a result of humans requiring a share of the earth’s limited resources for survival? Or does challenging this Malthusian conviction reveal a more accurate – less simplified – version of events leading to conflict over resources? This essay addresses both of these questions in the context of the securitisation of resources. A study of securitisation is central to dismantling the Malthusian understanding of resource conflicts, as it is the vessel through which resources could be seen as a factor rather than a catalyst.

Globally, one in eight people lacks access to potable water; more people die from unsafe drinking water than from all forms of violence, including war. A substantial body of research documents that the privatization of water-led by global financial institutions working in collusion with governments and corporations-does not lead to more people gaining access to safe water. In fact, the opposite is true: privatization leads to both higher cost and lower quality water. For the past century, the dominant focus of transnational organizing has been "from the West to the rest," and the frequent attention to movements in the global North has led to the neglect of transnational linkages between movements. Drawing on fieldwork conducted on three right to water movements that span three continents (North America, South America, and Africa), this paper examines efforts to reclaim the water commons, and how struggles have been driven by grassroots movements demanding that democracy, transparency, and the human right to water are prioritized over corporate profit. As feminist scholars have pointed out, the "standpoint" offered by marginalized actors offers important insights into the operation of systems of power and the strategies of survival and resistance that less powerful actors adopt in order to survive and thrive. This paper explores how transnational movements around water and other basic rights engage with and learn from each other.

How do conflicts around nature and resources influence our attempts to learn about them? We wrestle with this question by engaging in a dialogue guided by our ethical commitments and experiences working with activists and communities who are fighting to defend their socio-natural worlds in two countries of the Global South. We view social movements as rich sites of knowledge production where diverse epistemological approaches unveil different underlying realities that constitute “resource geographies” through embodied spatial practices. Instead of considering activists as objects of investigation, we look at the tensions between academic and activist spaces, attend to the performance of research, and consider how navigating resource conflicts potentiate our attempts to learn about them.

The Ivory Coast is one of the world's largest producers of the cocoa bean, providing many large corporations and companies with the chocolate they use to produce some of our favorite sweets. Many of us are ignorant of where our chocolate comes from and the effects the cocoa bean industry has on the countries which provide the resource. In the Ivory Coast there are many resource conflicts that cause the country to see violence, child trafficking and labor, land disputes and an increased possibility of a stronger rebel force. The future of the Ivory Coast relies heavily on cocoa beans, which is a dangerous situation.

This study examines the processes of economic transition and the corresponding impact on the Niger-Delta communities. It argues that the region has witnessed several epochs of economic transition; all of which came with damning consequences. While the major focus of the study is the change from palm oil to crude oil (two oils), the study explores the curious linkage between economic transitions, contemporary poverty and environmental violence in the region (one evil). The integration of the region into the vortex of oil globalization has paradoxically and inversely increased the poverty amongst the rural poor. The study argues that while the ‘oily debacle’ yield endless violence against the indigenous population, issues of environmental governance exacerbates. This is evidenced in the government’s militarized mediation strategies that worsen the prospects of peace in the enclave. Typical of ‘resource curse’ philosophy, the wealth from crude oil that should improve the lot of the rur...

This study examines the processes of economic transition and the corresponding impact on the Niger-Delta communities. It argues that the region has witnessed several epochs of economic transition; all of which came with damning consequences. While the major focus of the study is the change from palm oil to crude oil (two oils), the study explores the curious linkage between economic transitions, contemporary poverty and environmental violence in the region (one evil). The integration of the region into the vortex of oil globalization has paradoxically and inversely increased the poverty amongst the rural poor. The study argues that while the ‘oily debacle’ yield endless violence against the indigenous population, issues of environmental governance exacerbates. This is evidenced in the government’s militarized mediation strategies that worsen the prospects of peace in the enclave. Typical of ‘resource curse’ philosophy, the wealth from crude oil that should improve the lot of the rur...

This study examines the processes of economic transition and the corresponding impact on the Niger-Delta communities. It argues that the region has witnessed several epochs of economic transition; all of which came with damning consequences. While the major focus of the study is the change from palm oil to crude oil (two oils), the study explores the curious linkage between economic transitions, contemporary poverty and environmental violence in the region (one evil). The integration of the region into the vortex of oil globalization has paradoxically and inversely increased the poverty amongst the rural poor. The study argues that while the 'oily debacle' yield endless violence against the indigenous population, issues of environmental governance exacerbates. This is evidenced in the government's militarized mediation strategies that worsen the prospects of peace in the enclave. Typical of 'resource curse' philosophy, the wealth from crude oil that should improve the lot of the rural poor has directly shut them out of the expected benefits of oil extraction. The study investigates and avers that the unholy alliance between the State and global capital is a challenge and concludes that capitalist exploitation of the region on account of crude oil explains the contemporary dilemma of the indigenous population.