A favourite prediction of environmentalism has bitten the dust 鈥� too many natural resources, rather than too few, are the cause of an increasing numbers of wars in the 21st century.
Many greens had predicted that the new century would see a rash of wars in countries where natural resources such as timber, water, minerals and fertile soils are running out. But far from it, says the 2002 State of the World report from the prestigious Washington-based think-tank, the Worldwatch Institute.
In fact, says the report鈥檚 co-author Michael Renner, there are 鈥渘umerous places in the developing world where abundant natural resources help fuel conflicts鈥�. More than a quarter of current conflicts are either being fought over, or are funded by, some lucrative natural resource. Examples cited by the Worldwatch Institute include:
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聲 Diamond mines in Sierra Leone and Angola making the two African nations ripe for plunder by warlords
聲 Profits from sapphires, rubies and timber arming the Khmer Rouge in their interminable jungle war in Cambodia
聲 Guerillas using the threat of sabotage to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from oil companies prospecting in Colombia
聲 Opium funding 20 years of war in Afghanistan
聲 The Congo鈥檚 continuing civil war subsisting on the proceeds of elephant tusks and coltan, a vital mineral in the manufacture of mobile phones
With the end of the cold war, superpowers no longer fund civil wars for their own geopolitical ends, says Renner. Their place has been taken by the market 鈥� in the form of the plunder and sale of natural resources.
鈥淣ature鈥檚 bounty attracts groups that may claim they are driven by grievance, but [which] initiate violence not to overthrow a government but to gain and maintain control of lucrative resources,鈥� says Renner. Such resource wars are being fought because of 鈥済reed rather than need鈥�.
According to David Keen at the London School of Economics: 鈥淲e tend to regard conflict as simply a breakdown in a particular system, rather than as the emergence of another, alternative system of profit and power鈥�, i.e. a 鈥渃onflict economy鈥� with the looting of natural resources at its heart.
Renner warns that warlords in such conflicts have no interest in winning the war, because its continuance is more profitable. And he says too many Western governments are happy to turn a blind eye as their own corporations reap the benefits in cheap no-questions-asked raw materials.
Renner argues the issue of resource conflicts should be added to the agenda of the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg in August 2002.
