In 2008, I landed in Liberia to examine first-hand that countryās efforts to reform its forest sector. Only a few years earlier, the news filtering out was that the long and violent civil war, which had killed and maimed hundreds of thousands and displaced virtually the entire population, was fueled by natural resources. Rebel groups, led by warlord Charles Taylor worked with extractive companies throughout the 1990s to export hundreds of millions of dollars annually from diamonds, iron ore, rubber and timber, with the profits being used to wage war. After Taylor became Liberiaās president in 1997, he used neighboring Sierra Leoneās lucrative diamond trade and the plunder of Liberiaās forests to fund conflict and instability in the region. International actors began to take notice, and by 2000, the United Nations had placed sanctions on Liberian diamonds (mostly originating in Sierra Leone) and logs and timber products from Liberia in an effort to end those wars.
Once the conflict ended in 2003, international peacebuilders demanded comprehensive reform of the forest sector owing to the role timber played in the conflict and exercised substantial influence in the pace and nature of the reforms, provided technical support and even oversaw revenue collection and the issuance of concessions. International peacebuilders believed firmly that forest governance reforms were not only needed to ensure timber and timber revenues did not trigger another armed conflict but were required if timber was to help consolidate peace. Indeed, by the time I arrived, things had changed dramatically and the tone was one of optimism. The sanctions on Liberian timber had ended, the government was now in control of forest areas, a review of past timber concessions had been conducted and a barrage of new laws and regulations governing the countryās vast tropical forests had been passed. These laws and regulations recognized the community and conservation values of forests but due to the perceived significance of timber extraction to Liberiaās post-conflict recovery were ātimber centric.ā The laws and regulations addressed community participation in forest-related decisions, but the emphasis was on the issuing of new timber contracts and creating a system to ensure revenue from the sector was managed transparently. In short, reconstituting the timber industry was a priority, and word was that within a year or so timber extraction would be creating jobs, stimulating economic recovery and alleviating poverty. Progress seemed to be at hand.
What I discovered as time went by and my visits to Liberia got more frequent was that although the most egregious features of Liberiaās resource plunder had been addressed and steps to improve revenue transparency were going in the right direction, efforts to reform forest governance were progressively contentious, and maybe even counterproductive for peacebuilding. The anticipated revenue, employment and community benefits of timber extraction had not materialized, and companies awarded concessions frequently failed to honor their contractual obligations and were found to have violated Liberian law. In fact, timber extraction was effectively put on hold. Disagreements with communities also were pervasive, and issues related to land ownership, user rights and public participation were a source of deep-seated tension. Community contacts frequently told me that ālittle had changedā despite almost a decade of forest reform and the government, with the support of international peacebuilders, were repeating mistakes of the past. How could this be?
Fast forward to Sierra Leone where in 2009 I began fieldwork to understand post-conflict natural resource governance and the impact of resource management on peacebuilding. The conflict in Sierra Leone, similar to that in Liberia, was linked to natural resources, specifically diamonds. Rebel groups fought to control mining areas and smuggled diamonds to finance the fighting, and as the war continued a system of collusion emerged between rebel groups, rogue government officials and other combatants to share millions in diamond revenue. International attention to the issue led to UN sanctions on diamonds, and eventually the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) was developed to curtail the so-called āconflict diamondā trade and verify that diamonds on world markets did not originate in conflict zones.
Not surprisingly, the idea that diamonds helped fuel the conflict led international peacebuilders to prioritize diamond sector reform after open hostilities ended in 2002. This resulted in numerous laws, regulations and policies largely directed and shaped by international peacebuilders, to manage the trade in alluvial diamonds and ensure they helped to fund post-conflict recovery, and did not reignite violence. Reforms included increased monitoring of mining areas, crackdowns on illegal mining activities and the implementation of the aforementioned KPCS. These efforts were accompanied by less vigorous attempts to address concerns of diamond miners and mining communities that were historically marginalized. Sierra Leone also began, again with significant influence of international peacebuilders, to devise a plan to restart industrial mining operations (i.e. rutile, iron ore and kimberlite diamonds) and grant concessions to mostly foreign mining companies. Compared to the diamond sector, industrial mining was thought to be substantially more profitable than alluvial diamonds and therefore better able to kick-start an economic recovery.
Little did I know until I started to examine the mining sector in more detail and spend time with the people and communities involved in mining that a host of problems had surfaced, or more accurately resurfaced. Contracts between mining companies and the government were repeatedly negotiated in secret and without stakeholder or community inputāboth contravening Sierra Leonean law. Contracts regularly contained generous tax and royalty payments that deprived the country and communities of revenue, and contained clauses that exempted companies from responsibility for social and environmental impacts. These disputes were paralleled by clashes between mining companies, mining communities and miners that over the last several years resulted in harassment, injury, human rights abuses and even death. Despite substantial international intervention and concrete reform of Sierra Leoneās diamond and industrial mining sector, I kept hearing about a ālack of progress,ā and people involved directly in mining echoed the same feeling that āthey are getting poorer than [they] used to be.ā Again, I asked how this was possible.
Certainly, the international spotlight had brought attention to the role natural resources can play in fueling armed conflict. International interventions made it harder for rebel groups to access resource revenues and curtailed the outright looting of natural resources. Yet, a closer look revealed that progress was offset by mounting problems, and many of the problems looked almost identical in both countries. The negotiating of resource contracts with timber companies in Liberia or mining companies in Sierra Leone proved to be troubling and their commitment to revenue transparency and accountability open for debate. Disputes between local communities, whether in timber producing areas of Liberia or mines in Sierra Leone, were on the rise. Gains in human development were also modest in both countries, and adequate food, water, shelter, sanitation and health care remained out of reach for a vast majority of people. Put simply, the expectation that natural resource exploitation would result in improved livelihoods or appreciable development outcomes had not been fulfilled. What accounted for the perceived or genuine ālack of progressā when it came to natural resource governance in Liberia and Sierra Leone? What explained why, despite substantial international intervention and tens of millions of dollars, efforts to reform natural resource governance in both countries were mired in controversy and contention? These questions propelled this work forward.
Peacebuilding and Natural Resource Governance
Over the last two decades , natural resources emerged as a significant international peacebuilding priority (UNEP 2009; UNSG 2009, 2010; World Bank 2011). This was due to a growing body of scholarship, bolstered by documentation from non-governmental organizations and reports in the media and advocacy campaigns, that natural resources played a role in sparking and fueling civil conflicts around the world, including in places like Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote dāIvoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Studies have estimated that between 1970 and 2008 between 29 and 57 percent of all civil conflicts involved natural resources, and since 1990, 18 armed conflicts were fueled by natural resources (Rustad and BinningsbĆø 2012; UNEP 2009, 11). Put more bluntly, resources have been āassociated with dozens of armed conflicts, millions of deaths, and the collapse of several peace processesā (Lujala and Rustad 2012, 6).
Although there is considerable debate about the precise links between natural resources and armed conflict, several explanations came to dominate during the 1990s. First and foremost was the idea that civil conflicts were driven by the potential revenues from natural resources, which provided rebel groups (or aspiring rebel groups) with profits and conflict financing. International actors came to see the main relationship between resources and civil conflict as connected to ālootableā resources. Such explanations assumed that civil wars were the product of āgreedā by armed bandits rather than politically motivated āgrievancesā long associated with civil wars (Collier and Hoeffler 2000). While the illegal exploitation of natural resources played a role in civil conflicts, it was often not the only cause or even the main cause (Ballentine and Sherman 2003; Ross 2004; Fearon 2005). Regardless, the so-called conflict resource narrative was important to elevating the issue of natural resources and armed conflict and getting it onto the international policy agenda. Strategies pursued by international peacebuilders to end conflicts included interventions by UN peacekeepers, UN sanctions, revenue-sharing strategies and commodity-tracking schemes . Peacekeepers were seldom deployed to resource-rich areas, but they were sometimes mandated to help governments restore control over natural resource areas and prevent illicit extraction. Another approach, often floated by peace negotiators, sought to address the problem of resource revenues by promising combatants control of resource-rich territory or government positions that manage natural resources in exchange for peace. UN sanctions were imposed on natural resources believed to be funding conflict. The sanctions banned the import or export of a resource, be it oil, timber, minerals or diamonds, in an effort to stem flow of revenues to rebel groups. Between 1992 and 2005, the UN imposed sanctions on timber, diamonds and oil in Angola, Cambodia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola and Cote dāIvoire. Finally, commodity-tracking schemes were designed to reduce the chances of illegal exploitation and smuggling, and increase the odds that revenues will end up in state coffers. The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, for instance, required participants to certify that diamond exports did not originate in conflict zones.
International peacebuilders also came to view natural resources as an important component of peacebuilding. Armed conflict severely disrupts economies, intensifies poverty and destroys infrastructure. Natural resources can help spur economic recovery, create jobs, address poverty and provide ...