Peacebuilding and Natural Resource Governance After Armed Conflict : Sierra

This book argues that a set of persuasive narratives about the links between natural resource, armed conflict and peacebuilding have strongly influenced the natural resource interventions pursued by international peacebuilders. The author shows how international peacebuilders active in Liberia and Sierra Leone pursued a collective strategy to transform "conflict resources" into "peace resources" vis-à-vis a policy agenda that promoted "securitization" and "marketization" of natural resources. However, the exclusive focus on securitization and marketization have been counterproductive for peacebuilding since these interventions render invisible issues connected to land ownership, environmental protection and sustainable livelihoods and mirror pre-war governing arrangements in which corruption, exclusion and exploitation took root. Natural resource governance and peacebuilding must go beyond narrow debates about securitization and marketization, and instead be a catalyst for trust-building and cooperation that has a local focus, and pursues an inclusive agenda that not only serves the cause of peace, but the cause of people.

Michael D. Beevers is Assistant Professor of Environmental and International Studies at Dickinson College, USA.

1. Introduction

Part One: Natural Resources, Armed Conflict and Peacebuilding 2. International Peacebuilding: Origins, Development and Strategies 3. Natural Resources, Armed Conflict and Peacebuilding Part Two: Conflict, Forests and Peacebuilding in Liberia 4. From Settlement and State Consolidation to Civil War and "Conflict Timber" 5. International Intervention and Post-Conflict Forest Governance Part Three: Conflict, Diamonds, Minerals and Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone 6. Colonialization and One-Party Rule to Civil War and "Conflict Diamonds" 7. International Intervention to Govern Diamonds and Minerals Part Four: Transforming Conflict Resources into Peace Resources in Liberia and Sierra Leone 8. The Limits of Securing and Marketizing Natural Resources and a Way Forward