From Conflict to Peacebuilding: The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment (Report Launch) Tuesday, March 24, 2009 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Edited Transcript Andrew Morton Thank you. And thank you Achim for covering actually all the complexities of the subject before I had to try. So what I will try to do now is we ll quickly go through the findings and the theories, but most of the time just looking at snapshot of what this means in practice, in case studies of various countries. And then we ll go a little bit more into just some of the recommendations, key findings. So the background: Essentially the brass, the units, have been working for over ten years with about 20 major operations. We have half a dozen running on large-scale at the moment. And total expenditures in the order of about 100 million, if you look up both conflicts and disasters, so it s an evolving program. And after 10 years it s time to sit down and reflect, actually pull together the lessons learned and start to think about rather than just activity, how we are going to put together a strategy and plan out interventions as much as you can in a conflict unit for the next decade or more. We also have increasing demand for our services, so we need to prioritize. We have the new change in organization in UNEP, which is extremely welcome, and we have link with the larger U.N. communities such as the Peace-Building Commission. And then joined on the block is the climate change-security debate, which is really starting to gain momentum. So here s some key questions which are already being addressed. How many internal conflicts are actually linked? What are the numbers? What are the main linkages? And what can be done? So let s have a look at the resources. In simple terms, high-value portable resources, the conflict resource. Second type, the scarce resources, they result in very different conflict dynamics; each country has its own collection or mixture of these types of resources. The process as already covered; essentially we re looking at partnerships with a range of experts of various elements of the U.N., since extensive work on looking at case studies by our team and around the world, extensive consultation on the material, and finally signed off by
someone who is now quite senior in your government. So, essentially, I think a fairly robust process. Here s our key experts, including our friend Geoff, there. Thanks Geoff for your contributions. And we will hit some key findings. First of all the number: The linkages. Forty percent of the interstate, in other words the civil wars, the instability, have a strong link to natural resources. These conflicts that do have the linkage, are twice as likely to relapse. So, you can see why, and that is because a political resolution will not solve the underlying problem. And finally, while you see there s a need for action is that less than a quarter of the peace agreements in such conflicts actually have any reference to natural resources whatsoever. So there s a gap that needs to be addressed. So here s some of the numbers, so who s who of conflicts over the last 19 years. All of the ones, if you think of any. Look at the list of resources, it s quite diverse. Everything through to fungus, which is sold as a Chinese medicine in Nepal through to copper, gold, opium. The list is quite extensive, it s not the classics of timber and diamonds; it s much broader than that. Okay. Let s look at the intellectual frame, so to speak. The simplest one is the impacts. Direct impacts, actually quite measurable, there the things we see on the television. The more insidious -- actually indirect -- and the thing that is never really understood is the importance of governance filing in the east. The next result we have undermining peace. Second is discussed as a driver of conflict. It s one of the reasons it finances it, and has vested interests that like the conflict to continue, because that s a business environment where they are competitive. Then we turn around and try to look for positive angles. There are opportunities for peace where mixed political and natural resource conflicts, you can use the natural resource angle to forge peace and forge recovery. So we are looking at it from a positive angle, and we re pushing now as we re here with this excellent news, to try to put this framework into place, so this is moving very fast now. So I ll move on to some case studies, just picking out some of the operations we ve been to. I will not go into the detail for each country, but just to give you a snapshot of some of the key items and nuances. Direct impacts: Lebanon, it s straightforward. Large scale military action has some fairly straightforward impacts on the environment, on the infrastructure, waste management, land use denial, et cetera. Chemical release when you target chemical facilities: Again, fairly predictable, but things that need to be understood. The role of UNEP in this case was really to be an expert witness,
a mutual expert witness. Obviously, in a conflict both sides give out different news; our role is to state the facts. The indirect impacts actually are bigger. They re the more insidious ones, because in a conflict, normal life stops including livelihoods and people move to coping strategies. And here s a quick run-through example: Afghanistan. Deforestation rocketed since Soviet occupation, and in the civil wars that followed. In some areas, 95 percent deforestation. And these -- this essentially was a livelihood -- pistachio forests, they were a stable livelihood. And now, when you talk about Afghanistan, what is the growing crop of Afghanistan at the moment? It s opium, which is the finance source of the Taliban. Another indirect impact, these conflicts generate humanitarian disasters, very difficult to control, and address basic humanitarian needs. And one of those is energy, so when you have quarter of a million people displaced, and they need food, which we supply, they need energy, their next door national park, and they take the timber. So this is a big problem, particularly in Darfur, where we re working. Darfur in particularly is an extreme case of an aid-economy. Some towns in northern Darfur the rent, the property has gone up by 10 times. And the people renting them are employed by the peacekeepers. These new towns and villas, they re built of bricks, and those bricks are made with trees, which are cut down by the displaced people and sold to the brick kiln operators. You are generating deforestation through your operations. So it would be good to stop that, or at least turn that into something sustainable. Institutional impacts: Iraq. Many years of sanctions and then two wars, essentially left a country that was quite industrialized, incapable of managing its industrial operations. So we saw a lot of very problematic contaminated sites in Iraq. Gaza: A lot of things are breaking down in Gaza, and one of them is the environmental infrastructure. So here we see a simple kind of sewage. It s a very congested urban environment, and they have giant problems simply due to lack of governance, decay, they can t afford to run these things, so we have problems like you see here. Another institutional impact is essentially criminalization of the authorities, and this is a occurring in some states. We see it in the Congo, and to be honest, quite understandable when you have things like civil servants not receiving salaries in four months, people giving a mandate to monitor natural resources and make funds. So we have charcoal trading in the
Congo, which is essentially a business. It s an illegal business, but it s a business, and we can see why, because there s not many other livelihood options around. So let s look at some other examples. Darfur, a place we talk almost too much about. It s a very complex conflict, one layer of the conflict is about ownership of land and water. And I won t go into the details, but there is, for example, a problem group known as the Abbala, the rest of the world knows them as the Janjaweed, they are cattle-herding nomads. They have had deep environmental problems in their range-lands: Falling rainfall, land degradation, blockage of stop routes, all sorts of problems. Essentially look at destitution as a result of a range of pressures, and that makes them extremely vulnerable to recruitment for causes, good or bad. Classic case of underlying factors causing the vulnerability for conflict. This is a very straightforward case, war in Sierra Leone was bankrolled by resources. It also is bankrolling several militia groups in Congo for all sorts of diverse material, not just the minerals, but also bushmeat, charcoal, et cetera. Now we have this and issues of vested interests. Where you have stable situations and legitimate business can establish itself [unintelligible]. Where those instability, conflict-risk, you get what I would call the sort of black side of the business community working and for them, actually, they could be a spoiler. Then I don t want this thing to end, because it s quite high profit margins, and it s a good opportunity for making a profit without much competition. Okay, so to positive, let s look at some opportunities and some examples. A very good example which exists is Rwanda. We have gorilla tourism going on within a few kilometers of what, essentially, was a war zone. And the nations have cooperated to keep the tourism going. Rwanda generates a lot of income from this, completely sustainable, well-managed, and good cooperation between the conservation authorities. So excellent example, which we intend to expand on. Economic development: Not yet a positive example for DR Congo, but essentially it s a resource-based conflict. All of the potential in Congo is about natural resource management. The recovery of Congo will be based on natural resources. So it is the pole you want to follow. How to sustainably manage the extraction, conversion, utilization of the resources.
Afghanistan: Although we have major degradation, some projects show that you can instill natural resource management, sustainable development initiatives even in the war zone. So right in the middle of hot spots you can get things done, such as this solar project in the villages. And you have, essentially, not quite food-for-work, but livelihood initiatives such as these which -- look at forestation as a peace dividend but essentially an activity to generate livelihoods in the zone of conflict. Darfur, that s an opportunity at the moment. Now we understand the conflict better. Now we understand the resource dynamic et cetera. Any case agreement when the conditions are right can start to writing the terms which deal with the equity issue and the land issue. So let s say, potential. Haiti is not in conflict. It s got some stability problems. I was there last week. The big issue there is that environmental pressures and emergencies, which are linked to climate change, such as increased hurricane frequency, they have the potential to make countries more and more difficult to govern. When you have large-scale displacement, annual emergencies, food insecurity, any government would be challenged. And fairly fragile governments such as you have in Haiti could be overwhelmed. So this is -- that one is a red flag in Haiti, we really need to work on that, not to save the environment, but to keep the country together. Here s another positive one, we had a good dialogue going between Afghanistan and Iran for awhile on a shared water basin, because as you know, river networks and lakes do not respect international boundaries. We even had a cooperation going between Iran and Iraq; you had an eight-year war. In the area of their prior battle zone, talking about a shared resource, the marshes. It is possible and actually can be one of the few arenas where the two parties can meet. Good opportunities -- we re looking forward -- we re putting together a program now, is how to expand the cooperation between Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, beyond gorillas and start talking about things such as [unintelligible] trade, sustainable energy initiatives, fisheries, trans-boundary fishery agreements. All these sort of things which tie the nations together, very good potential there. The future trends are that demand for this and the needs will increase. Increase in population, consumption, increasing as capital goes up. As China gets richer, it needs more resources. So we have the demand side increasing, In a finite world, we have -- in degradation we have
the supply side decreasing, the governance remains a challenge in many countries, and we now have climate change as the new wild card acting as a threat multiplier. It will strike very unevenly, certain regions, certain countries. So the net forecast is the likelihood it s going to increase. So we need to really pick up these opportunities. The recommendations: First thing is if it s part of the conflict, we should actually analyze it and put it together as part of the brief. It s a fairly easy win, actually, to -- all you really need analysis and asking the right questions. Peacekeeping, as we look in here, monitoring natural resources and actually looking at how to resolve things such as conflict financing are a real opportunity and Congo, in particular right now, but in many other cases. And peacemaking: It takes longer, but you need to put some sort of resource-sharing or agreement into these peace deals. Political agreements based on figureheads or political parties are not enough. You need to look at, for example, these dispossessed tribes, this displaced populations and so, how can we remove the conditions which made them vulnerable to instigation of the conflict. How do we fix that? So to do that you need to research and understand the situation before you bring in the diplomats. So we are really keen on this happening. In some cases cooperation is not an option and we re talking about punitive measures and things like sanctions. And they have worked. Here s an example: It worked in Liberia, it can work in other things. We just need to do some homework on defining these resources and establish a process. We can continue on this to environmental cooperation, it s, again, another easy win, not in terms of quick-fix, but these are numerous places where cooperation can start and put together a long-term solution for things like shared boundaries, river networks, et cetera. Conflict prevention: For me it s -- prevention is much more economic than attempt at cure. It is -- peace-keeping operations, humanitarian responses, they can cost huge amounts of money. In Darfur, it s peacekeeping and the humanitarian is at least two billion a year, similar sums to Congo. Immense sums being spent, essentially, on trying to contain the situation. We spend a fraction of that beforehand, you should be able to get some return. And here we talk about-- give a bit of a sales-pitch, I m afraid. Basically, to get more intelligent about this we need continuity, a critical mass, and we need to actually start to provide this service to the world, thorugh things such as pooled-service agreements, early
warning analysis of various countries, which are not all about politics, but natural resources and climate change risks -- these are the sorts of things that need continuity. I ll quickly go over our key messages. The numbers make sense, it counts, we need to look at this issue. We have the three linkages, impacts of the conflict, drivers of conflict, and opportunities. We can and must integrate these into peace-building, conflict-prevention strategies. Demand will increase due to climate change, population growth, and some degradation. And now we are tooling up to meet the challenge, and we look forward to working with many of you in the future, and coming back perhaps a year from now and telling you about what progress has been made in several countries.