After armed conflict, those who survive need food, water, shelter, the means to earn a living, and the promise of a return to safety and civil order. A new study released on 3 May 2016 finds meeting these needs while sustaining peace requires more than a forum for governing natural resources; it also requires good governance.

According to the study, entitled Governance, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, natural resources are essential to sustaining people and peace in post-conflict countries, but governance failures often jeopardize such efforts. Nevertheless, with persistence and commitment on the part of government, civil society, and the international community, it is possible to improve governance of natural resources and thereby help ensure that a country’s natural resources bring peace, health, and economic development and not crime, corruption, and a relapse to violence.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, “Understanding the nexus between governance and natural resources is crucial to the recovery of post-conflict countries. This study makes it clear that, while natural resources offer the opportunity for growth in post-conflict situations, their exploitation must be accompanied by capable, accountable institutions that manage natural wealth in a transparent and inclusive manner.”

The study relies upon the combined expertise and field experience of more than seventy researchers, diplomats, military personnel, and practitioners from governmental, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organizations to illustrate the mutually reinforcing relationship between natural resources, good governance, and peace. It examines the theory, practice, and reality of post-conflict governance in fifty conflict-affected countries around the world to explore the opportunity and challenge of effectively and equitably governing the use of natural resources and then converting the subsequent revenues into the jobs, infrastructure, and public service needed to consolidate and sustain peace.

Writing in the book’s foreword, Óscar Arias Sánchez, former President of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, calls on the international community to “[take] seriously the idea that peace is much more than a white flag or a treaty. Peace is a state of affairs that can only be sustained through strong institutions, through prosperity and above all, through investment in education and human development.”

Edited by Carl Bruch, Director of International Programs at the Environmental Law Institute, Carroll Muffett, President of the Center for International Environmental Law, and Sandra S. Nichols, an environmental and natural resources attorney, the book explores lessons from past and ongoing peacebuilding efforts; describes how these lessons may be applied to create more effective governance initiatives; and presents an emerging theoretical and practical framework for policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and students.

Scott Fulton, President of the Environmental Law Institute, noted, “This analysis makes it clear that good governance of natural resources and peace go hand in hand. Not only do transparency, accountability, and equity in the governance of natural resources strengthen the rule of law, empower marginalized communities, and rebuild social ties; it also helps post-conflict economies recover quickly and sustainably.”

The study finds that, although the post-conflict period is a time of fragility, post-conflict peacebuilding provides societies the chance to make governance structures more effective, efficient, and equitable and to address problems and injustices that contributed to the conflict. Good governance of natural resources can support the reestablishment of security, delivery of basic services, strengthening of the economy and livelihoods, and improved legitimacy and cooperation.

Governance, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding is the sixth and final book in a six-volume series published by Routledge addressing the challenges and opportunities of managing natural resources for post-conflict peace building around the world.

A launch event for the study took place on 3 May at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. The event featured a conversation among the editors of the book, as well as a panel discussion of the previous book in the series, Livelihoods, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding.

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Addressing the Role of Natural Resources in Conflict and Peacebuilding

A Summary of Progress from UNEP’s Environmental Cooperation for Peacebuilding Programme 2008-2015

Preventing, managing and resolving natural resource conflicts is undoubtedly among the key peace and security challenges of the 21st century. Increasing demand for natural resources combined with environmental degradation and climate change will serve to intensify competitive pressures between countries and communities over resource access, ownership and use.

Many experts and governments expect natural resources to become key drivers in a growing number of disputes, with potentially significant consequences for international, regional, and national peace and security. At the same time, many academics and prominent figures such as the UN’s Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson, have strongly advocated the idea of “working to make the scarcity of resources a reason for cooperation, not for conflict.”

In the UN system, few other issues cut across as many institutional mandates and national interests as natural resources. Ultimately, supporting countries to effectively address conflict risks and peacebuilding opportunities from natural resources requires a strategy that goes well beyond the mandates and capacities of individual UN agencies. The key challenge faced by the UN system is how to coordinate and deploy the five core operational areas in a more effective and coherent way. These include peace and security, human rights, sustainable development, humanitarian assistance and international law.

The creation of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture in 2005 reflected an important opportunity to address these key questions. The concept of peacebuilding aimed to ensure that UN field programming responded more effectively to conflict analysis, and established a more coherent strategy to support peace consolidation across the functional domains that constitute the UN system. Yet, as the UN’s new architecture for peacebuilding was being formulated, one of the critical knowledge gaps was a nuanced and evidence-based understanding of the different roles that natural resources and the environment could play across the peace and security continuum. Analysis was also needed on the range of tools and strategies that could be used to address different conflict risks and peacebuilding opportunities from natural resources in a more coordinated and coherent manner.

UNEP’s Environmental Cooperation for Peacebuilding (ECP) programme was founded in 2008 to address this need. Building on UNEP’s field expertise from over 20 post-conflict environmental assessments, ECP aims to strengthen the capacity of countries, regional organizations, UN entities and civil society to understand and respond to the conflict risks and peacebuilding opportunities presented by natural resources and the environment.

Between 2008 and 2015, the ECP programme adopted an ambitious workplan that was comprised of collecting evidence, developing policy and catalyzing the uptake of new practices and innovative pilot projects in the field for the benefit of the UN’s peace and security architecture. These three distinct but inter-related pillars were based on UNEP’s own mandate, technical orientation and operational reach, as well as on the needs of the UN system. The ECP programme is the first comprehensive and sustained effort to set in motion and catalyze new thinking, reforms and processes in each of these pillars that could become self-sustaining and up-scaled by the partners and beneficiaries.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the different outputs for each pillar and the results achieved. It also summarizes key lessons, with a future outlook for UNEP in the coming years under the ECP framework. ECP delivery partners and partnerships are also duly recognized.

This report also informs UNEP’s approach for addressing conflict risks and peacebuilding opportunities from natural resources and the environment in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the newly established Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, goal 16 on peaceful societies, access to justice and inclusive institutions can help to strengthen transparent natural resource governance based on well informed, inclusive decision-making, thereby maximising peace dividends and minimizing the risk of social grievances and violent conflict.

ECP has positioned UNEP to be a trusted partner in addressing this challenge. UNEP stands ready to deploy this capacity and specialized technical knowledge to help manage resource conflicts and to ensure peacebuilding is underpinned by sustainable management of natural resources and the environment.