Resources as a source of international conflict

Natural resources are a critical component of the global economy. Most such resources are geographically limited, often to regions of social and political instability, making their possession, exploitation, sale, and consumption topics of national and international concern. Many current intrastate and cross-border violent conflicts happen because of disagreements over resources; such disputes are likely to grow with increased resource demand and resource scarcity.

Background

Access to resources for industrial applications was a key concern of most major nations both during and shortly after World War II in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The advent of the Cold War period, however, saw a shift away from concerns over resource acquisition to those dealing with the political, ideological, and military developments occurring throughout Europe and Asia. Military forces in particular were redistributed along key international borders in response to growing tensions. As the Cold War ended and the global economy began to expand, resources became of paramount security concern once more. Moreover, this concern was no longer limited to developed nations. Rather, it grew to encompass the underdeveloped and developing nations within whose borders many critical resources lie.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that since the 1950s roughly 40 percent or more of all intrastate conflicts can be linked to the possession of natural resources. According to the World Bank, fifty of the armed conflicts arising between 2001 and 2009 could be linked to natural resources. These conflicts occurred throughout the developing world, especially in Africa. Natural resources can trigger, intensify, or sustain violent conflicts depending on the resource involved and the context in which it is found. Intrastate conflicts in particular are further prone to ethnic and religious escalation, both of which can easily push resource conflicts across disputed borders. According to the World Bank, climate change may cause the number of conflicts over natural resources to increase because it is making some resources scarce, such as water and farmable land. Conflict is most likely to occur in regions where people's livelihoods are closely tied to the environment, such as agriculture and fishing. Because the possession and sale of natural resources fuels the national economy of many countries, global economic depression only serves to put additional pressure on potential resource-conflict hot spots. Militarization within these hot spots further erodes options for peaceful resolutions.

Resources, Economics, and Population Growth

Natural resources essentially represent naturally occurring, tangible substances that have some economic value even in their unprocessed form. How much worth a resource holds depends on what it is, how much of it there is, its relative extractability, its demand, and how much people or nations are willing to pay for it. Renewable resources can, over time, regenerate themselves unless they are harvested, extracted, or consumed at a rate that exceeds the rate of replacement. While renewable resources are generally not the subject of conflict, some, like old-growth timber and freshwater, are becoming significant sources of conflict due specifically to the rapid progression toward unsustainable consumption. Nonrenewable resources are much more likely to be sources of conflict. These resources exist in a fixed amount in nature or form over such a long period of time that they are essentially unreplaceable. Oil, coal, and are effectively nonrenewable because of the limits of geologic formation and time. Nonrenewable resources also tend to be highly limited geographically. Generally, as materials become scarce in an environment where demand does not change, the real or perceived value of the material goes up. Scarce resources are worth more for the simple fact that little exists. Add to this the fact that many nonrenewable resources are heavily tied to modern industry or to social and cultural usage, and their value only increases as scarcity looms.

Because many resources are scarce, hard to extract, or highly valuable, possession of resources is critical as a driving force for the economies of many nations, especially those of developing and underdeveloped countries that lack diversification in their economic structures. Economic dependence on resources can lead to conflict as intrastate or interstate arguments arise over resource ownership or control over the routes by which the resources reach the marketplace. Resource exporters must maintain control over the resource to acquire the benefits of sale while resource importers must be able to assure continued importation of materials. Both groups have a vested interested in cooperation and yet both groups are subject to global pressures and concerns. Ultimately, the economic and social fragility of many impoverished countries creates unease in global markets, producing tensions among those nations dependent on external resources. Use of force becomes more likely as a way of protecting resource flow, both regionally and globally. While natural resources alone are not the cause of all conflicts, they become influential in situations where ethnic conflict, poor economic conditions, and border disputes have already raised tensions to volatile levels, and where the concerns of larger nations force them to be more protective of resources necessary to ensure domestic security.

Population growth has a significant impact on resource development, consumption, and scarcity. Growth places huge demands on general resources such as food, water, energy, timber, fibers, and minerals. In some cases, demands are for bare subsistence, but general increases in standards of living over the last several decades have also resulted in increased demand for goods that go beyond subsistence. Energy in particular has increased dramatically, both in individual usage and as a driver of industrialization and manufacturing. The population dynamic of resource consumption is complex. Typically, birthrates decrease with increased urbanization and increases in standards of living, but increased wealth leads to even greater consumption. High birthrates often push individuals to cities to find work (thus increasing urbanization) but also place burdens on already limited arable land. Technology can reduce consumption of some resources, but manufacturing of alternatives places its own demand on resources. While it is difficult to predict the outcome of these growth parameters, it is clear that global population continues to rise, which will only increase the demand for resources. As the human population approaches Earth’s carrying capacity, conflicts over dwindling resources will only increase.

Energy Resources

The global economy essentially runs on nonrenewable supplies of fossil fuels: oil, natural gas, and coal. Renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power represent only a tiny fraction of energy production and consumption, and then only in developed nations. Thus, the increased scarcity of limited fossil-fuel supplies is expected to lead to increasing tensions over resource acquisition. Global consumption of energy resources is rising roughly 2 percent per year, and with increased globalization, the demand is not likely to peak anytime soon.

Both and geography work against fossil-fuel acquisition. As natural products, fossil fuels were produced under particular geological conditions in the distant past. Furthermore, fossil fuels are buried resources and must be extracted physically from the geologic formations in which they are captured. Extraction becomes more difficult technologically as less of the resource remains in the ground and as more inaccessible fields have to be tapped as primary fields run dry. Once extracted, fuel resources typically must be transported, often over large distances and through different national territories. Security of the resource and security of transport are thus intertwined. Except for a few fields located in uncontested regions of the globe, such as the North Slope of Alaska, every major oil field lies in a contested border region experiencing recurrent crises and violence.

Since World War II, petroleum has been a contested resource; the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was one of the most visible recent conflicts directly attributable to one group seeking dominance over a shared border resource. In the 1970s, the Arab-Israeli conflict, coupled with an oil embargo and price increase by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), demonstrated how critical protected oil supplies were to the international community and the United States in particular. Formation of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the United States was a direct result of this conflict, as was the Carter Doctrine (1980), which stipulated that any hostile power restricting the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf would be countered with military force. Oil importers are primarily concerned with safe delivery to ensure economic security, while oil exporters are concerned most with maintaining possession of the resource. Because oil is a lucrative asset, it is no wonder that the concerns of importers and exporters often come into conflict.

Almost 65 percent of the world’s known petroleum can be found in the Persian Gulf. Significant untapped reserves of oil and natural gas are also located in the Caspian Sea basin and the South China Sea. Additional global deposits of oil can be found in Indonesia, Africa (Algeria, Angola, Chad, Nigeria, and Sudan), and South America (Colombia and Venezuela). It is further believed that large fields of oil may lie beneath Arctic waters. Because measuring the longevity of any one oil field is difficult, hard numbers are elusive, but one US State Department estimate puts the value of the untapped reserves in the Caspian Sea basin alone at roughly $4 trillion (and likely more, given that this estimate was made in 1997). The vast majority of all this oil and natural gas is extracted for sale to countries in the West, and the safety of transport can be as tenuous as the safety of the fields themselves. The bulk of the oil shipped from the Persian Gulf must leave the region in ships confined to the narrow and troubled waters of the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz, whereas oil from the Caspian Sea travels through former Soviet states currently at odds with Russia. Of the civil wars and internal conflicts that have arisen since the 1970s, at least four have had some direct relevance to conflict over oil: Angola, Colombia, the Republic of the Congo, and the Sudan. For these four nations oil is a key component to growing national economies, and the battle of groups to keep control of the fields is intense.

Water

Water is essential to life, and yet the vast majority of the Earth’s water supply is (roughly 97 percent) and therefore unavailable for immediate human consumption. Most of the that does exist is trapped in polar ice and glaciers. The World Bank estimates that each person in the world requires approximately 1,000 cubic meters of water per year, both for immediate use in drinking and bathing and as a by-product of industry, agriculture, and other uses that provide humans with their daily needs. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development estimates that the amount of water actually available per year is 12.5 million cubic meters. Current usage by the world’s population is roughly 50 percent. Available water is the water from rain and snowfall minus the water lost to evaporation and land runoff. Rain and snow are intimately associated with climate. Therefore, global climate change and global warming have an effect on the amount and distribution of available water. Persistent water scarcity is already a problem in many areas of the world, including the Middle East and certain portions of Africa and Asia. Climate change exacerbates the problem. As temperatures rise, two things happen. First, rain increases along the coastlines of oceans and large bodies of water and decreases inland, leading to persistent drought. Second, increased temperatures cause increased water evaporation and a corresponding loss of arable land. Without water for drinking or irrigation, famine and social upheaval result.

River systems are absolutely critical to the provision of freshwater. Many of the world’s largest river systems, which provide water for millions of people, traverse two or more countries. These rivers include the Nile, the Jordan, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Amu Dar’ya River systems. The Nile alone is bordered by nine different countries. Upstream countries control the flow for all downstream consumers; therefore, sharing water resources is vital. Contestation over supply, however, exists in all of these major systems. Tension and conflict are likely to increase as demand for water approaches 100 percent of capacity.

Land, Minerals, and Timber

Among undeveloped and underdeveloped countries the primary source of conflict centers on the control and exploitation of vital national resources as the main contributor to national income. Critical resources include diamonds, emeralds, miscellaneous gems, gold, copper, tin, iron, and organic resources such as timber, cotton, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, rubber, and fish. Scarcity is becoming an issue for many of these resources, particularly old-growth timber. Forests in Brazil, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Indonesia are among those experiencing not only devastation to old-growth timber but also increased conflict between governments wishing to gain from the sale of the timber and indigenous populations that depend on the forests to survive.

Arable land has become a scarce in many areas of the developing world. Climate change, urbanization, and lack of sufficient water for irrigation are creating wastelands instead of agricultural fields, leading to decreased food sustainability. Nowhere is this more visible than in the Darfur region of the Sudan. When this scarcity is combined with social inequalities and injustice, conflicting territorial claims to the same materials, and ethnic and religious tensions, violent conflict often erupts and, in many cases, escalates to cross-border warfare.

Civil war in Angola represents a case study of the impact natural resources can have on conflicts. The fight between the socialist independence movement, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the anticolonialist movement, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), began as a Cold War battle fueled by foreign money. In 1992, Angola held the first multiparty elections in its history, as foreign influence waned. The MPLA won, but UNITA rejected these results and turned to violence, using the profits earned from diamonds to fund its war efforts. For its part, the Angolan government used the proceeds of oil sales to counter UNITA, making natural resources a sustainer of conflict on both sides. In 2000, the United Nations passed a resolution demanding an end to “conflict diamonds” or “blood diamonds,” a call echoed by the World Diamond Council. Rejection of blood diamonds in favor of documented conflict-free diamonds from other areas of Africa and the world has greatly depressed the revenue available to UNITA, illustrating how market forces can be used to either drive conflicts or end them.

Conflict Resolution

Several factors influence whether conflict over resources is likely to turn violent. These include, but are not limited to, the relative stability of the country or region in general, the history of relationships between bordering nations, local military balance, and general levels of social inequality (the globalization gap between rich and poor). Resource scarcity is a reality in most cases and so solutions to conflict must address the ancillary conditions that make conflict more likely. Effective governance of natural resources is the key to reducing resource conflict and enhancing the standard of living of those countries mired in conflict. Methods must be found to inventory and allocate global resources on a more equitable basis, especially during times of scarcity. Conservation efforts are needed to preserve the resources that remain. Investing money in economic growth rather than conflict maintenance can change the social and economic dynamics of countries so as to reduce the potential for future conflict. Finding alternatives to scarce resources and seeking technologies that save materials and reduce consumption, so long as these alternatives and technologies are available to all, will also reduce the problem of future resource conflicts.

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