Environmental Conflict Management in Africa: The Natural Resource Conflict Debate and Restatement of Conflict Management Processes and Strategies in Africa

摘要

Natural resources have perhaps played a major role in defining much of Africa's public square. These resources have defined power politics, resource distribution thereof; defined gerrymandering strategies in much of Africa's public administration domain; and have also proved to be a major precipitant of armed struggles. Natural resources have motivated and fuelled armed conflicts in Africa and this has proven to be a hurdle in effective statecraft, or in times of full scale conflict-it has been a hindrance to effective peace processes from the negotiation stage, mediation stage and finally in the post conflict reconstruction or peace-making stage. On the other continuum, Climate change for example, which is a major independent variable in the whole debate of natural resource conflicts in Africa could be viewed as an 'un-necessary burden' for the continent. It expands the purviews of environmental security, threatens the very base of national security and escalates social conflicts. However, it is important to note that the phenomenon of natural resource conflict is quite intricate and just like any social conflict debate, a mono-causal link of natural resource conflicts to climate change would actually not provide a thorough investigation when it comes to conflict analysis and a way forward in essence of natural resource conflict management or peace management for that matter. This paper treats natural resource conflicts as an intricate web of the larger social conflicts and seeks to provide a link between natural resources and social conflicts, to situate the debate within the nexus between natural resource management and conflict management, and to argue for a restatement of a multi-actor and multi-level approach in dealing with natural resource conflicts in the context of conflict management and peace building.