(WASHINGTON, DC; NAIROBI; TOKYO; MONTREAL; OSLO) — The overriding importance of political will to rebuild sound institutions, promote accountability and anti-corruption efforts, better invest revenues, and develop natural resource management strategies which address the grievances that could lead to further conflict is among the findings in the first book in a major international series on post-conflict peacebuilding and natural resource management.
The Environmental Law Institute (ELI), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the University of Tokyo, and McGill University have today announced the publication of their first book in a seven-volume series on post-conflict peacebuilding and natural resource management: High-Value Natural Resources and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. This flagship book addresses the key challenges faced by post-conflict countries in transforming natural resources in ways that contribute to economic recovery and reconciliation, jobs, and sustain livelihoods, and while not creating new grievances or major environmental degradation.
An economy that can create immediate peace dividends based in part on high-value natural resources may be more robust and resistant to conflict relapse. On the other hand, an economy that perpetuates economic inequality and elite control of key resources can undermine confidence and complicate the task of building peace. “Certain countries are blessed with valuable natural resources that can contribute to grievances and conflict,” says ELI’s president John Cruden, “However, in post-conflict situations, there lies a unique opportunity to thoughtfully manage high-value natural resources to support economic development, livelihoods, good governance, and ultimately peace and stability.”
Edited by Päivi Lujala and Siri Aas Rustad and published with the assistance of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), this book assesses practices from around the world in using high-value natural resources such as oil, diamonds, gold, and timber in consolidating peace. The landmark book includes a foreword by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia and 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who inherited the task of transitioning the country from war to peace. Sirleaf states that peace brings promise and with it high expectations, especially in a country with abundant natural resources. “We had to turn this natural resource ?curse? into a blessing,” she notes, “But where to start?”
Lujala and Rustad — and the thirty-nine contributing authors — attempt to answer that question. The task of achieving long-term peace is difficult in any conflict-affected country, and especially so in countries that have high-value natural resources. The 30 case studies and other analyses in the book, drawn from more than 18 countries from Angola to Nepal, and from Afghanistan to the Democratic Republic of the Congo examine how such high-value resources could be better managed in post-conflict settings.
The book gives insight to a variety of natural resource management strategies, addressing the different steps of the natural resource value-chain, from extraction to distribution and spending revenues. Instead of attempting to provide a single recipe for the management of high-value natural resources, this book highlights a range of policy options and management tools. There are four areas where international support can be particularly fruitful. These include: (1) helping post-conflict countries secure better contracts with companies extracting natural resources; (2) increasing the transparency of contracts, payments, and decision making; (3) supporting the monitoring of companies that are extracting natural resources; and (4) encouraging strategic planning for and accountability in using the revenues from natural resources to provide immediate peace dividends to war-torn populations and invest in infrastructure, health, education, and economic diversification.
The book is the first publication of a four-year research project on Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and Natural Resource Management, established by the ELI and UNEP in 2008. The series documents and analyzes post-conflict natural resource