WSSD: BREAKING THE LINK BETWEEN RESOURCES AND REPRESSION

BREAKING THE LINK BETWEEN RESOURCES AND REPRESSION

Michael Renner

Angola’s enormous diamond and oil wealth has proved to be more of a curse than a promise, with conflict over resources causing immense human suffering. But increasingly the links between resources and conflict are being made and it is in this context that sustainable development becomes crucially important, argues this article published in State of the World 2002, excerpts of which are printed in Pambazuka News with permission from the author.

Excerpts by permission of Michael Renner, "Breaking the Link Between Resources and Repression," in Christopher Flavin et al., State of the World 2002 (New
York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), pp. 149-173.)

The United Nations Children's Fund has described Angola as “the worst place in the world to be a child.” Almost 30 percent of children die before they reach the age of six. Nearly half of all Angolan children are underweight, two thirds of Angolans scrape by on less than a dollar a day, and 42 percent of adults are illiterate. Food shortages, unsafe drinking water, and a pervasive lack of sanitation and health services have combined to limit life expectancy to just 47 years—short even by the standards of sub-Saharan Africa.

The 2001 Human Development Index of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), a broad measure of social and economic progress, ranked Angola 160th out of 174 nations. Endowed with ample diamond and oil deposits and other natural resources, Angola should not be on the bottom rungs of the world's social ladder. But more than a quarter-century of brutal “civil” war has imploded the economy, displaced close to 4 million people—one out of three Angolans—and left about a million people dependent on foreign food aid.

While the bulk of the population lives in misery and terror, the leaders of both the government and the rebel UNITA forces have devoted most of the money they gained selling Angola's resources to buying weapons and lining their own pockets. The ideological differences that first sparked the war now reside in the dustbin of history, but resource-driven greed and corruption have proved to be powerful fuel for its continuation. Instead of a promise, diamond and oil wealth has turned out to be a curse.

Though a somewhat extreme case, Angola is merely one of numerous places in the developing world where abundant natural resources help fuel conflicts. Altogether, about a quarter of the 49 wars and armed conflicts waged during 2000 had a strong resource dimension—in the sense that legal or illegal resource exploitation helped trigger or exacerbate violent conflict or financed its continuation. As of late 2001, conflict is not on the agenda of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. But it is unquestionably an issue of prime importance.

Basic human security—the absence of violent conflict—is a precondition for estab-lishing a sustainable society. And many contemporary resource-related conflicts are being fought in areas of great environmental value. The Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Colombia, for example, together account for 10 percent of the world's remaining intact forests. These and other countries in which resource conflicts are raging are also home to some of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Yet they suffered from the world's highest net loss of forest area in the 1990s, due to illegal logging and a host of other factors.

The Relationship Between Resources and Conflict

There is growing awareness of the close links among illegal resource extraction, arms trafficking, violent conflict, human rights violations, humanitarian disaster, and environmental destruction. Expert panels established by the United Nations have investigated cases in Angola, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Civil society groups have launched a campaign against “conflict diamonds” from those countries and have shed light on other conflict resources as well. Company and industry practices are coming under greater scrutiny. Media reports have helped carry these concerns from activist and specialist circles to a broader audience. All of this also comes against the background of an intensifying debate over the unchecked proliferation of small arms—the weapons of choice in resource-based conflicts.

There is another dimension to the relationship between resources and conflict. It concerns the repercussions from resource extraction itself. In many developing countries, the economic benefits of mining and logging operations accrue to a small business or government elite and to foreign investors. But in case after case, an array of burdens—ranging from the expropriation of land, disruption of traditional ways of life, environmental devastation, and social maladies—are shouldered by the local population.

Typically, these communities are neither informed nor consulted about resource extraction projects. This has led to violent conflict in places like Nigeria's Niger Delta, Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, and a variety of provinces in Indonesia. Rather than full-fledged war, these conflicts usually involve smaller-scale skirmishes, roadblocks, acts of sabotage, and major human rights violations by state security forces and rebel groups.

Anatomy of Resource conflicts

In contrast to the cold war era, today's conflicts are less about ideologies and more about the struggle to control or loot resources—less about taking over the reins of state and more about capturing locations that are rich in minerals, timber, and other valuable commodities or controlling points through which they pass on the way to markets. But the lure of easy wealth through illegal resource exploitation also encourages the proliferation of competing groups of ruthless and well-armed people, often deepening the lawlessness and prolonging violence.

Most resource-based conflicts are unlike traditional wars. Pitched battles between opposing sides are generally avoided because the objective is maintaining conditions conducive to resource looting. In fact, some of the different armed factions are known to have engaged in simulated attacks against opposing groups, sold arms and supplies to them, or collaborated in other ways. The common objective is to facilitate looting and to perpetuate conditions that permit activities that otherwise would be plainly understood as criminal.

The bulk of the violence is directed against civilians. Since establishing undisputed control over resources is a key objective, armed groups seek to intimidate the local population into submission or use terror to drive people away. “Hence the importance of extreme and conspicuous atrocity,” observes Mary Kaldor of the University of Sussex, including directly expelling people, rendering an area uninhabitable by the indiscriminate spread of landmines, shelling houses and hospitals, chopping off people’s limbs, imposing long sieges and blockades to induce famine, and applying systematic sexual violence.

How Resource Extraction Triggers Conflict

In Many instances, resource extraction is itself the source of the conflict. Around the world, the operations of oil, mining, and logging companies are causing severe tensions with local populations, often indigenous peoples. From Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru to Nigeria, Cameroon, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, the same scenario is unfolding. Typically, these operations confiscate land from local people without proper compensation.

They cause an array of environmental problems by poisoning drinking water, destroying arable land, and disrupting hunting and fishing grounds. And they introduce social disruptions because they bring a heavy influx of construction workers, miners, and loggers. Buildings and roads that are etched into previously inaccessible areas may bring boomtown conditions and attract additional outsiders. While the burdens and disruptions are all too real, the economic benefits from resource extraction mostly accrue to outsiders: the central government, multinational corporations, and assorted foreign investors. But when the affected communities resist, they are often met with severe government repression.

The implications for those in the international community who seek to end such conflicts are disturbing. It may be possible to arrange cease-fires or even peace accords, but these tend to be respected only as long as they suit the interests of the armed groups. Achieving a true peace will require long-term and substantial involvement by the international community.

There is growing awareness that natural resources will continue to fuel deadly conflicts as long as consumer societies import and use materials irrespective of where they originate and under what conditions they were produced. Support is growing for the idea that companies need to adopt more ethical ways of doing business. Shareholder activism and campaigns for ethical investing can help achieve these goals. But it is clear that activities to date are only a beginning. Governments and international organizations will need to work hard to create greater transparency in the dealings of financial and other companies. So far, western governments have been all too ready to turn a blind eye in order to protect the interests of their own corporations.

The policies discussed here are largely concerned with reacting to resource-based conflict rather than preventing it. Prevention is not an easy task, and there is no silver bullet. Promoting democratization, justice, and greater respect for human rights are key tasks, along with efforts to reduce the impunity with which some governments and rebel groups engage in extreme violence. Another challenge is to facilitate the diversification of the economy away from a strong dependence on primary commodities to a broader mix of activities.

The quest for sustainable development that is the focus of the Johannesburg conference is of crucial importance in this context. Investing in human development, improving health and education services, and providing adequate jobs and opportunities for social and economic advancement will go a long way toward reducing the risk that a country’s natural resource endowment will become its undoing. This is an investment that needs to be made not only by every government but also by the World Bank and other multilateral development agencies that have generously funded oil, mining, and logging projects. It must also be a priority for the rich nations that have for so long benefited from cheap raw material supplies while turning a blind eye to the destruction at their source.

World Summit Priorities on Conflict

- Develop strong global certification systems for diamonds, timber, and other resources to improve ability to ascertain origins of commodities and to screen out those produced and traded illicitly in conflict areas.

- Secure better compliance with U.N. sanctions against illicit resource trafficking by improving the capacity of the United Nations, regional and international organizations, and governments to monitor and enforce embargoes.

- Increase the transparency and accountability of oil, mining, and logging corporations in areas of conflict, of trading and shipping companies, and of banks and other financial institutions. Develop strong codes of conduct for corporations and brokers.

- Reduce the availability of small arms by establishing stricter national export criteria, regulating arms brokers, marking and tracing weapons, and improving collection of surplus arms.

- Promote democratization and greater respect for human rights, particularly the rights of indigenous and minority groups.

- Support diversification of economies away from a heavy dependence on a handful of primary commodities.

- Increase consumer awareness of the connections between resource exploitation and conflict.