Introduction: Natural resources and ethnic conflicts in Asia Pacific (original) (raw)
Related papers
Introduction: Natural Resources and Violent Ethnic Conflict in Asia Pacific.
Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 49, No. 1., 2008
The papers in this special issue are the product of a comparative interdisciplinary workshop on 'Natural Resources and Violent Ethnic Conflicts in the Asia Pacific Region' held in Honolulu, Hawaii, 18-20 March 2005. The workshop brought together scholars who study conflicts between ethnic groups and those who study conflicts over natural resource claims in order to examine the interplay of resources and ethnicity and to seek answers to the question of why violence occurs in some cases and not in others. Both sets of scholars agreed on some points but disagreed on others. They agreed that ethnic and resource grievances occur not so much out of objective deprivation but out of 'relative deprivation' when groups compare their situation with others, to the past, or to future expectations. They both stressed the role of democratic processes in alleviating resource competition and ethnic conflicts -but they did this in different ways. The perspectives and solutions offered by these papers sum to a deeper and more contextualised understanding of the cause of conflict and to mutually reinforcing solutions for resolving them.
Resources and conflict in the Asia Pacific region: a symposium
2005
Internal conflict has become increasingly widespread in the Asia-Pacific region, creating an “arc of instability” around the southern rim of the region, stretching from Indonesia in the west, through East Timor, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the other parts of the Pacific, to Fiji in the east. There are significant economic causes and consequences associated with this instability, including effects on resource utilisation and export earnings, and on wider issues of economic development and regional cooperation.
The Dynamics of Resource Conflict: Lessons from Nigeria and Malaysia
repo.uum.edu.my
Since the emergence of environmental resource conflict on the international political discourse in the early 1980s, there has been growing concern that, resource conflicts in developing countries is likely to exacerbate conflicts originating in strenuous struggles over scarce resources due to population increase. The apparent manifestation of conflicts in the oil rich Niger Delta region in Southern Nigeria and Farmer-herder conflicts in Northern Nigeria to the lingering forest logging controversy in Malaysia is an upsurge of the coming resource "crisis" in these countries. The focus of this paper is to discuss issues on management of resource conflicts in developing countries like Nigeria and Malaysia. The paper suggests that, there is the need for commitment from the states and all stakeholders through institutionalization of proactive conflict resolution and peace building strategies, instead of resolution through the grave yards. Discussions are based on secondary data with examples from recent experiences from farmer-herder conflict, and Niger Delta crisis in Nigeria, and forest logging in Malaysia.
This paper addresses two main questions: First, to what extent is the current international literature on resource conflicts relevant to Indonesia? Second, to what extent have natural resources been a factor into different types of conflict in Indonesia and what channeling mechanisms are in place? The paper also seeks to identify the policy implications for Indonesian development practitioners and policymakers. This paper identifies four channeling mechanisms linking natural resource abundance and conflict: economic disruption, institutional failure, growth failure and relative deprivation. Natural resources play different roles and have varying importance in the four actor-based categorisations of conflict explored in this paper: separatism, the state vs. community, company vs. community and inter-communal groups. The relationships can be direct or indirect. Separatism and inter-communal violence are the most severe types of conflict in contemporary Indonesia. For separatism, feelings of relative deprivation among indigenous peoples in four resource-rich provinces against the rich were a commonly identified factor, termed herein ‘the rage of the potentially rich.’ For inter-communal conflict, natural resources can be a trigger or proximate cause of conflict, the underlying structural cause of conflict, or provide a context in which inter-communal violent conflicts take place. In short, grievance matters. The paper concludes by pointing to three arguments drawn from research findings: (i) the possibility of a resource curse in the four natural resource-rich provinces studied; (ii) the utilitarian reasons for private business to combat poverty through innovate strategies for managing natural resources; and (iii) the need during policy-making to consider the changing positions of groups relative to one another at sub-national levels.
Land of the Unexpected: Natural Resource Conflict and Peace building in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (PNG) has long been a site of analysis for exploring the links between natural resources and conflict, having been cited as an example in prominent studies of the 'natural resource curse' and used as a source of learning in international debates on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Over the past decade, this scholarship has expanded to encompass conflict analysis and peace building. This paper considers four themes identified in the contemporary literature, each with reference to examples drawn from PNG: 1) the costs of conflict on business and the power of local communities; 2) tensions between the state as regulator and the state as shareholder; 3) the unsatisfactory performance of compensation packages and CSR projects; and 4) an emphasis on the economic dimensions of the natural resource curse in the search for new frameworks. Through a discussion of these themes, the paper calls for the development of natural resource conflict mitigation strategies that are based on a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of existing CSR measures.
Resource conflict and ethnic peace in northern Thailand
Although northern Thailand has experienced both ethnic discrimination and resource conflicts, neither has produced significant organised violence. The relative absence of ethnically mobilised natural resource conflict in northern Thailand is due in part to the historical pattern of state formation, and in part to the Thai state's capacity to deter and mediate conflicts before they escalate into organised violence. Resource conflict and ethnic peace Resource conflict and ethnic peace Resource conflict and ethnic peace Resource conflict and ethnic peace
2014
Inhabitants of poor, rural areas in the Global South heavily depend on natural resources in their immediate vicinity. Conflicts over and exploitation of these resources – whether it is water, fish, wood fuel, minerals, or land – severely affect their livelihoods. The contributors to this volume leave behind the polarised debate, previously surrounding the relationship between natural resources and conflict, preferring a more nuanced approach that allows for multiple causes at various levels. The contributions cover a wide array of resources, geographical contexts (Africa, Asia and Latin America), and conflict dynamics. Most are of a comparative nature, exploring experiences of conflict as well as cooperation in multiple regions. This volume finds its origin in an innovative research programme with the acronym CoCooN, steered by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO/WOTRO) and involving universities and civil society partners in many countries. It presents the conceptual approaches adhered to by each of seven interdisciplinary projects, ranging from green criminology and political ecology to institutional analysis, legal pluralism and identity politics. The volume will be of interest to academics and practitioners concerned with an understanding of conflict as well as cooperation over natural resources.
2015
Disputes over natural resources-such as land, fresh water, minerals or fishing rights-are ubiquitous. When resolved peacefully, as is most often the case, such disagreements are an essential part of progress and development. However, resource disputes can also trigger violence and destruction, particularly in states with weak governance, high levels of corruption, and existing ethnic and political divisions. Bitter disagreements over the distribution of Iraq's oil wealth among Sunni, Shia and Kurdish regions, for example, have contributed to the fragmentation of that country. In the Darfur region of Sudan, disputes between pastoralist herders and farmers over livestock migration routes and watering holes have become a violent flashpoint for wider cultural, ethnic and religious differences. Population growth, urbanization, rising consumption, climate change, environmental degradation, and new technologies for the extraction and processing of resources are changing the patterns of resource supply and demand. This has profound implications for the political economy of resource use-both globally and locally. By the middle of this century, for example, it is predicted that the world's population will have exceeded 9 billion, global energy use will have doubled, and global water demand will have increased by 55 per cent over 2012. These various trajectories, when taken together, strongly suggest that disputes over resources will occur more frequently in future. They may arise over issues and resources that are hard even to imagine now, and in places that we may not anticipate. In our globalized world the costs of violent conflict are incurred not only locally in terms of human lives and destruction, but also regionally and internationally. It may not be too much of an exaggeration to suggest that politics in the 21st century will be shaped, in part, by how well these disputes can be resolved. At a broad level four types of resource dispute can present a general challenge to national stability: secessionist conflicts in which resource-rich regions seek to split away from the rest of a country; disputes over resources as part of a new national compact (i.e. in the context of a peace agreement or new constitution); grievances over standalone projects such as mines and hydroelectric dams; and the cumulative impact of multiple small-scale clashes, typically over land, livestock or fresh water. One of four potentially contentious issues is typically at the heart of these national or sub-national resource disputes: ownership of the resource; allocation of power for managing access to or developing the resource; the distribution of resource revenues; and environmental and social damage caused by extracting the resource. Most disputes are resolved locally without any international intervention, through existing legislative, judicial, traditional and management mechanisms. Occasionally, however, national authorities and local communities may be unable or unwilling to settle their differences. In these cases, with the attendant risk of violent conflict, the international community may have an important role to play in helping to resolve the dispute. This is particularly true in cases where the dispute is intractable, funds to support dispute resolution are lacking, or there is a need for an impartial outsider to bring protagonists together to develop
Natural Resource Rents, Institutions and Political Violence: A Theoretical Exploration
Research Square (Research Square), 2023
Natural resource abundance has been linked to major violent con icts in the world. Collier and Hoe er (1998) were the rst to discuss distributional concerns among different groups and its potential in instigating violence in the presence of natural resources. This work traces the theories that link natural resource rents to violence and develops a theoretical framework which can explain the role institutional accountability and third-party interference in that relationship. We have considered the dynamics between the dominant and minority groups in determining the shares in natural resources and then have adapted the framework by Elbadawi and Soto (2015) for explaining the motivation for exploitation and rebellion. Onwards, we modify the framework by incorporating institutional cost and third-party interference into the baseline analysis. The derived outcomes depict that indiscriminate institutional accountability for exploitation and aggression can be instrumental in neutralizing the effect of natural resource rents on political violence. Further, the effectiveness of institutional cost of violence is compromised in case of third-party interference. Our work makes a case for not only institutional reforms that would penalize exploitation and violence but also for a less con ictual foreign policy for a developing nation.