Resource Wars: the New Landscape of Global Conflict
Political Geography of War:
Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts
Philippe Le Billion
Summary: Throughout the 1990s, many armed groups have relied on revenues from natural resources such as oil, timber, or gems to substitute for dwindling Cold War sponsorship. Resources not only financed, but in some cases motivated conflicts, and shaped strategies of power based on the commercialization of armed conflict and the territoriality of sovereignty around valuable resource areas and trading networks. As such, armed conflict in the post-Cold War period is increasingly characterized by a specific political ecology closely linked to the geography and political economy of natural resources. This paper examines theories of relationships between resources and armed conflicts and the historical processes in which they are embedded. It stresses the vulnerability resulting from resource dependence, rather than conventional notions of scarcity or abundance, the risks of violence linked to the conflictuality of natural resource political economies, and the opportunities for armed insurgents resulting from the lootability of resources. Violence is expressed in the subjugation of the rights of people to determine the use of their environment and the brutal patterns of resource extraction and predation. Beyond demonstrating the economic agendas of belligerents, an analysis of the linkages between natural resources and armed conflicts suggests that the criminal character of their inclusion in international primary commodity markets responds to an exclusionary form of globalization; with major implications for the promotion of peace. This paper analyses the role of natural resources in armed conflict, through their materiality, geography and related socio-economic processes. Section 2 examines the debate over the role of scarce and abundant resource in armed conflicts and extends this approach in building a political ecological framework for the analysis of resource linked armed
Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts
Philippe Le Billion
Summary: Throughout the 1990s, many armed groups have relied on revenues from natural resources such as oil, timber, or gems to substitute for dwindling Cold War sponsorship. Resources not only financed, but in some cases motivated conflicts, and shaped strategies of power based on the commercialization of armed conflict and the territoriality of sovereignty around valuable resource areas and trading networks. As such, armed conflict in the post-Cold War period is increasingly characterized by a specific political ecology closely linked to the geography and political economy of natural resources. This paper examines theories of relationships between resources and armed conflicts and the historical processes in which they are embedded. It stresses the vulnerability resulting from resource dependence, rather than conventional notions of scarcity or abundance, the risks of violence linked to the conflictuality of natural resource political economies, and the opportunities for armed insurgents resulting from the lootability of resources. Violence is expressed in the subjugation of the rights of people to determine the use of their environment and the brutal patterns of resource extraction and predation. Beyond demonstrating the economic agendas of belligerents, an analysis of the linkages between natural resources and armed conflicts suggests that the criminal character of their inclusion in international primary commodity markets responds to an exclusionary form of globalization; with major implications for the promotion of peace. This paper analyses the role of natural resources in armed conflict, through their materiality, geography and related socio-economic processes. Section 2 examines the debate over the role of scarce and abundant resource in armed conflicts and extends this approach in building a political ecological framework for the analysis of resource linked armed