Overexploitation of natural resources and its consequences in the form of armed conflicts
Mette Kildegaard Graversen
2011 / 2
FOI PhD Thesis 2011 / 2 Overexploitation of natural resources and its consequences in the form of armed conflicts Author: Mette Kildegaard Graversen Supervisors: Lars Gårn Hansen, Eirik S. Amundsen, Henning Tarp Jensen Submitted 31 January 2011 Defended 17 June 2011 ISBN: 978-87-92591-06-7
Institute of Food and Resource Economics University of Copenhagen Rolighedsvej 25 DK 1958 Frederiksberg DENMARK www.foi.life.ku.dk
Abstract
The subject of this thesis is the overexploitation of natural resources and its consequences in the form of armed conflicts. The thesis empirically explores the situations in which valuable natural resources increase the risk of the onset of conflict and the risk of severe conflicts, when taking into account the fact that natural resources, as well as conflict types, are heterogeneous. These aspects of heterogeneity between natural resource types, as well as between conflict types, are only partly included in the literature, which analyzes natural resources and conflict outcomes. The literature may thus suffer from less precise (potentially incorrect) conclusions. Moreover, in a theoretical paper, the thesis devises a simple, but effective regulation mechanism, which has practical application for scarce resourcemanagement in low-income countries. This is contrary to most other regulation mechanisms, which are generally less suited to low-income countries. Thus, it may be possible to avoid potential future conflicts over e.g. water resources. The first part of the thesis consists of three papers that empirically analyze conflict outcomes using conflict data from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset. The first novel finding is that there is a systematic relationship between heterogeneous natural resource types, heterogeneous conflict types and conflict outcomes. When focusing on the lootability of...