What resources to solve resource based conflicts?

Notes of the SID Conference on Resource Based conflicts in Eastern and Southern Africa : Politics, Policy & Law - Nairobi 24th - 27th May 2004

To many outsiders, conflict in Africa is a ubiquitous feature of the continent; a perception fuelled by often-negative press coverage. Whereas conflict might not be as pervasive as some segments of the media might have the broad public believe, one element that is often not analysed enough is why these conflicts are taking place and perhaps more importantly, what is being done to prevent these conflicts.

The question of access to and control of resources informs a number of the conflicts in the region. Within Eastern and Southern Africa, a number of conflicts are currently unfolding - many of these are not yet at the level where they command significant attention beyond regional and national boundaries, yet their contribution to undermining stability and prosperity is quite profound.

The question of resource scarcity is often cited as a key cause of a number of these conflicts. Indeed, the resource scarcity theory has of late become quite popular in explaining away the pervasive nature of conflict in Africa, particularly amongst a segment of the political elite - nationally and internationally. The reality however is that resource based conflicts (RBCs) cannot be explained away so easily. RBCs are the function of complex and multifaceted dynamics. These range from inclement weather patterns, to the inadequacies and failures of national policies to globalization and its impact on the local. Indeed one can argue that conflicts in Africa have been as much a product of political ego-tripping amongst leaders as they have been about policy discrimination in resource access and distribution. Most analyses of resource conflicts have tended to focus more on the 'resource' than on the conflict process and dynamics that have contributed to it.

In exploring the conflict process, it might be useful to ask questions that unravel the security of resource tenure and its contribution to generation of conflicts. The question of who controls resources can be in itself a powerful contributor to conflict. With control of resources being shifted from communal and traditional arrangements to private 'winner takes all' arrangements, issues of livelihoods are increasingly colliding with 'modern' frameworks of ownership. In the absence of ways and means of mediating such contradictions, the seeds for conflict are inevitably sown.

Increasingly, RBCs reveal the hand of powerful elites : an articulated and dangerous combination of international business networks, "domestic enemies" and the vested interests of powerful local elites who set the rules of the game. One of the recent effects of such combination is the privatization of conflicts, in which private militia are dispatched to secure resources for exploitation - or when national security forces are deployed to protect private interests in the name of safeguarding 'investor interests'. Such a nexus between private interests and state power can act - and often does - to undermine the interests of communities and their livelihoods.

National institutions are a basic resource in defusing and managing RBCs. Institutions have a role and responsibility to manage power dynamics, to ensure that policy, when developed and implemented, takes into account the needs and specific situations of the people that will be affected. In particular, considering strategies that can support the livelihoods of poor and marginalized groups, or those living in conditions of resource insecurity can make a positive contribution to economic development. Conflict of any nature, particularly when protracted, poses a significant obstacle to development, impeding progress and even cancelling out gains made.

Questions around resource conflicts and the linkages with the policy process and markets (local and global) were the subject of intense discussion at a four-day conference organized by the Society for International Development (SID) held in Nairobi, Kenya from 24 th - 27 th May 2004. The conference titled ' Resource Based Conflicts in East and Southern Africa : Politics, Policy and Law ' brought together over sixty participants drawn from government, academia, civil society, the international community and politicians from across East and Southern Africa .

With a view to preparing the conference process, SID commissioned studies from each of the participating countries that sought to capture and highlight the situation in the country with respect to resource conflicts and that were to be used to guide conversations at the conference. Countries represented at this conference included: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe .

The studies prepared and presented at the conference are to be eventually published as a "Compendium of Resource Based Conflicts in East and Southern Africa " and will form an integral part of the background information for this programme, informing the subsequent in country and regional consultation processes.

These studies brought up several salient issues and covered a broad spectrum of resource conflicts that included:

•  Land issues

•  Water issues

•  Mineral rights

•  Globalization and the role of external actors in resource conflicts

•  Urban conflicts

•  Resource conflicts in pastoral zones

The Conference noted that resource based conflicts, have often been explained in terms of scarcity based theories, which view the conflicts as borne out of the struggle for scarce resources, often induced by population pressure (Malthusian), which lead to a 'war of all against all' (Hobbesian) in the struggle for survival for the fittest.

However, the conference noted that contrary to the propositions and assumptions of theories that are informed by Hobbes and Malthus, areas that were supposedly more conflict prone did prove to have relatively sophisticated institutions that foster cooperation, cooptation and conflict resolution. Conflicts involving pastoralist communities for instance, are therefore not adequately explained by the resource scarcity theories. Hence, there is a need to develop other theories that take into account both disputes and aspects of co-operation and co-optation that exist within such contexts.

The conference noted a number of areas where practitioners, social scientists and policymakers could make amends in theorizing problems of pastoral communities. For instance, when theorists and observers make superficial judgements based on what they observe on the surface, such as the way certain pastoralist communities dress, the cultural values of these entities are always discounted. The social realities of the conditions and livelihoods of these communities, and the relations with the rest of the regional society and economy are often subordinated to simplistic assumptions about a 'different' culture. The subject is turned into a mere timeless pre-historic entity, other economic realisms being left out of the equation as to why such areas are profound with conflict.

The question of grouping communities as primordially violent or basing the argument on ethno-centric grounds was challenged as not signifying genuine understanding of such cultures. A remark by a conference participant that certain communities are naturally violent drew resentment because of the very fact that it marginalizes such groups as 'primitive' and so on. It also entrenches prejudice that is visible even in governmental and NGO policymaking in areas of high insecurity.

Furthermore, the conference observed that the frequent dichotomization of conflict as being motivated by either 'greed' or 'grievance' was of limited use as conflicts in the region did not lend themselves to such clear distinctions. Motivations for conflict are manifold and the dichotomies frequently used did little to improve general understanding of the underlying motives fuelling the conflict. However, the notion of marginalization - both in the political and material sense - was much more useful in explaining the motivation for and causes of conflicts in the region.

As such, the conference noted that the entire question of RBCs need to be viewed through a policy and governance prism - that is try and understand how the national policy development and implementation process has tended to marginalize certain livelihood patterns through alienation of resources such as land, game and water.

With respect to globalisation, the shared opinion at the conference was "globalisation has to be redefined" for the sake of sustainability of our environment and the people and animals who live in it. Furthermore, the weakness of local institutions to sufficiently counter external interventions was noted, as was the propensity of elites to collude with global interests at the expense of local livelihoods, peace and security. It was noted that increasingly decisions to exploit African natural resources are being made in foreign capitals and with a high degree of involvement of private investor capital. The role of governments has been reduced in many cases to that of being the enforcer for private interests with little regard for local issues.

In summary, the conference underscored the need to understand policy and governance structures and processes as key to the causes and possible solution of RBCs.

SID Society for International Development

SID Regional office for East and Southern Africa
PO Box 2404-00100
Nairobi - Kenya
Tel. +254 20 273 7991
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