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International Resource Conflict and Mitigation

Meredith A. Giordano

International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka

Aaron T. Wolf

Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University

Resource availability is frequently linked with historic and potential international conflict. Conventional wisdom holds that international resource conflict occurs in locations where growing resource demand and declining supplies are greatest. While relative scarcity is undoubtedly an element driving international resource dispute, a focus on supply and demand measures alone is insufficient to understand international conflict potential, because of the pervasive willingness of nations to construct regimes, structures, and frameworks – that is, institutions – for dispute mitigation. However, institutions for regulating the use of internationally scarce resources sometimes fail to develop, and when they do, they are not always sufficiently resilient to deal with changing political and resource environments. Thus, international resource conflict is most likely to occur where there exist both resource scarcity and insufficient institutional capacity to deal with it. In particular, conflict is most likely to emerge in those areas where (1) resource sovereignty is ill defined or non-existent, (2) existing institutional regimes are destroyed by political change, and/or (3) rapid changes in resource environments outpace the capacity of institutions to deal with the change. A mitigation strategy for potential international resource conflict is the construction of resilient resource management institutions, along with the improvement of existing institutions. To be most effective, these institutions should be clear in terms of resource allocation and quality control; be constructed with an intrinsic ability to adjust to changing political and environmental conditions; promote positive-sum solutions to resource problems; and incorporate structured conflict resolution mechanisms.

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