This Guidance Note focuses on the role of natural resources in triggering, escalating or sustaining violent conflict. Its aim is to provide practical guidance on the role that the UN and EU can play in early warning and assessment, structural conflict prevention (long-term measures) and direct conflict prevention (short-term measures). It is meant to provide a combination of strategic advice and operational guidance, as well as to unite existing tools and guidance under a single framework.
To improve capacity for land and natural resource management (NRM) and conflict prevention, the EU partnered with the UN Framework Team in late 2008. The aim of this partnership was to develop and implement a strategic multi-agency project focused on building the capacity of national stakeholders, the UN system, and the EU to prevent land and natural resources from contributing to violent conflict. The partnership is also designed to enhance policy development and programme coordination between key actors at the level of country offices. This Guidance Note is one of the first outcomes of this project.
Key Findings:
Conflict-sensitive NRM can be broken down into four steps. At every stage, external actors can help countries to develop the knowledge, institutions, leadership, and accountability necessary to address conflicts over natural resources peacefully:
- Develop shared understandings of the resource and conflict context: Preventing violence over resources begins with an analysis of the role that resources can play in conflict. Ideally, the conflict analysis process should be inclusive and participatory. Additionally, national and international actors should also assess skill gaps – in government and civil society – in order to design appropriate training. Finally, assessing environmental knowledge gaps is another important early step. Baseline environmental data is often poor in developing countries, particularly in post-conflict situations.
- Design natural resource policies and projects: Based on the analysis, stakeholders should be able to engage in dialogue on priority issues and begin to establish a shared vision of how different elements and actors can come together to form a sustainable and effective NRM system. Inclusion and broad participation of stakeholders is vital. Governance issues that are likely to arise include: changes to legal and regulatory frameworks; the development of specific NRM activities ranging from land titling to construction of water infrastructure; strengthening local dispute resolution systems; and, enhancing both government and civil society oversight capabilities.
- Build inclusive, transparent and accountable NRM systems: Conflict-sensitive management is based on a governmental commitment to inclusive decision-making, transparency, and accountability. All governments can strengthen their position by providing services, information and analysis to citizens. Credibility and public support come from acting transparently and accountably, and from empowering local communities to act. For these reasons, and in order to make the best use of both limited state capacities and local knowledge and interest, developing government authority for some decisions and functions to the community level may be critical to the success of NRM.
- Monitor and evaluate environmental trends and results : Monitoring and evaluating allows a society to continually determine whether conflicts are being adequately addressed, if new conflicts are emerging, whether resource use practices are moving towards environmental sustainability at a reasonable pace, and to what extent popular expectations are being met.
