Different Cultures : How to Live in Harmony
Different Cultures : How to Live in Harmony
| By Ako on Tuesday, August 22, 2006 - 11:02 pm: |
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| By shailendra on Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 08:58 am: |
Ecology and war
The idea that war is increasingly resulting from and driven by greed over abundant resources should be carefully examined and qualified. The contrast resulting from a wealth of natural resources giving the perception of 'easy riches' and relative poverty can exacerbate both greed and grievances - among the poor themselves or those seeking to represent them for altruistic or political reasons, including political entrepreneurs.
The pattern of relations between natural resources and armed conflicts raises several questions and controversies: Does a wealth of natural resources actually increase the risk and duration of conflicts? If so, what is different in the relations between natural resources, power struggle, and violence compared to other economic resources? Countries with a wealth of natural resources like Botswana or Norway are not affected by conflicts, nor do all belligerents rely on natural resources to fund their struggle.
Despite a diversity that stresses the importance of specific contexts, patterns can be identified which have been affecting entire regions. Three major factors can be briefly presented to explain these patterns:
1. Resource dependence has distortionary effects upon the economy and politics, which weaken states.
The economies of resource rich countries can be affected by ‘Dutch disease’, where the national currency appreciates due to greater export revenues and the non-resource sectors shrink because efforts and investments are directed towards the resource sector.
This orientation can be associated with rent-seeking activities (see). Politically, resource rents influences governance by providing political leaders with a classic means for staying in power by establishing a regime organised through a system of patronage rewarding followers and punishing opponents.
The resource rent can be deliberately used to avoid the emergence of a class demanding political change (e.g. by impeding the growth of a middle class independent from the resource rent). The risk of domestic political competition can even be further curtailed by devolving the exploitation of the resource sector to foreign firms (e.g. through privatisation schemes); a measure that also offers the advantage of satisfying international financial institutions and consolidating external political support.
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2. Resource extraction and the allocation of revenues are often in themselves highly politicised and conflictual activities. As the wealth and power gap between the ruling and the ruled increases, so does the frustration of marginalised groups seeing political change as the only avenue for satisfying their aspirations or expressing their grievances.
Such groups may include competing elites, such as marginalised politicians or military officers, and disenfranchised groups, such as unemployed youths and petty criminals, or generally a combination of both. In Sierra Leone, the take over of diamond fields by Presidential cronies and the resulting economic marginalisation of young men participated in the emergence of the RUF rebel movement.
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3. Conflict is facilitated because extractive resources are resources highly amenable to taxing and looting. This lootability arises in part from the fact that natural resources are often easily accessible to governments and rebels alike with minimal bureaucratic infrastructure. The higher the availability of valuable resources at the periphery of control, the greater the likelihood of prolonged conflict.
To take the example of Angola, if the rebel group UNITA wanted to control offshore oil, it had to control the state and gain the recognition of petroleum companies. UNITA could not even inflict major damages to the oil revenue of the government, as the overwhelming majority of the oil fields were offshore.
Similarly, if the government wanted to control all diamonds, it had to secure a monopoly of access over a vast territory. Even though the major mines are concentrated in one single province (Lunda Norte), alluvial diamonds can be found in many riverbeds over a huge territory of bush facilitating guerrilla activities. If diamonds had been found only in Kimberlite pipes, as in Botswana, or on the seabed along the coast, as in Namibia, access to diamonds by UNITA would have been complicated, not to say impossible.
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The core mechanism at work in all three cases is the propensity of natural resources revenues to weaken political accountability. As an example, following peace agreements in both Mozambique and Angola, cash-strapped RENAMO was forced to rely on an intergovernmental Trust Fund and adhered to the peace process, whereas UNITA - awash with cash from diamonds exploited by private corporations - returned to war.
The incorporation of resources in armed conflicts has also specific strategic implications upon the course of the conflict. Military targets mostly consist of business opportunities and the cost of engaging adversaries is calculated in terms of financial reward. As adversaries can prove too costly to challenge on a nation wide basis, sub-national territories remain under the control of local ‘warlords’ directing their violence mostly against civilian populations for the sake of control and predation.
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Policy conclusions: For both conflict resolution and peace enforcement, local and international institutions need to refine their instruments of control over war economies. The definition of more targeted or smart sanctions, their monitoring through expert panels, the greater capacity of NGOs, and the emergence of global regulatory instruments for sensitive commodities such as ‘conflict diamonds’ are important steps forwards.
An engagement is also needed on the part of extractive businesses to help populations hold government or rebel groups accountable for both economic and political misdeeds
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