Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

PrefaceRECENT RESEARCH UNDERTAKEN BY THE World Bank and others suggeststhat developing countries face substantially higher risks of violent conflictand poor governance if they are highly dependent on primarycommodities. Revenues from the legal or illegal exploitation of naturalresources have financed devastating conflicts in a large number of countriesacross regions. When a conflict erupts, it not only sweeps awaydecades of painstaking development efforts but also creates costs andconsequences—economic, social, political, regional—that live on fordecades. The outbreak of violent domestic conflict amounts to a spectacularfailure of development—in essence, development in reverse.Even where countries initially manage to avoid violent conflict, largerents from natural resources can weaken state structures and makegovernments less accountable, often leading to the emergence of secessionistrebellions and all-out civil war.Natural resources are never the sole source of conflict, and they donot make conflict inevitable. But the presence of abundant primary commodities,especially in low-income countries, exacerbates the risks ofconflict and, if conflict does break out, tends to prolong it and makes itharder to resolve.Reflecting a growing interest in the links between natural resourcesand conflict and the World Bank’s evolving conflict agenda—which isplacing greater emphasis on preventing conflicts—in 2002, the WorldBank’s Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction Unit and the DevelopmentResearch Group began to define a research project to address thislink. As the Governance of Natural Resources Project took shape, thediscussion moved toward practical approaches and policies that couldbe adopted by the international community. While there is much thatix