Introduction - Conflicts Over Natural Resources in the Global South - page 6

high-value goods such as oil and minerals - highlighted the workings of 'honey pots'
(de Soysa 2002) and 'resource curses' (cf. Watts 2004).
Connected to the notions of scarcity and abundance are the factors of greed and
grievance, as highlighted byMurshed (Chapter 3). The greed argument is closely linked
to the abundance-of-resources thesis: different parties may try to gain control over
valuable resources for financial gain. The proceeds may be used to finance the conflict
that they are involved in, and in this way the conflict may perpetuate itself. In the end,
it may impossible to tell whether the conflict is about political power in order to obtain
natural resources, or about natural resources in order to obtain political power.
In short, the grievance argument runs as follows: relative deprivation of countries,
regions or groups causes grievance, which in turn fuels intra- or international conflict.
Grievance is very likely in so-called “exclusive states'' (Smidt et al, Chapter 5), in
which certain groups are systematically excluded or marginalised, such as South Africa
under the Apartheid regime or the situation in the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
More generally, grievance is closely related to power imbalance. Not only does power
imbalance often lead to relative deprivation of some countries, regions or groups, it
may also be resented for its own sake and stand in the way of conflict resolution
because the deprived parties may doubt the possibility of a fair outcome (cf. Gray
1989). In practice, greed and grievance may reinforce each other: conflicts that start
with the greed of one group may result in relative deprivation of other group and in
grievance, and grievance may develop into greed.
The next category of conflict origins, to which we have in fact already shifted, lies
in the social realm. Frerks et al. (Chapter 2), for example, refer to the workings of
'identity politics' (cf. Watts 2004). These can have ramifications for our topic when
particular groups claim territories and natural resources as their own, to the exclusion
of others. However, 'identity' is not necessarily the cause, but can also be the result of
political struggles. Ethnic and other differences between groups can be invoked to form
and strengthen collective identities. This in turn may serve several political purposes: to
claim natural resources for one's own group; to construct a common enemy and rally
support for the ruling elite; to exclude contestants for power with a different 'ethnical
background'; to marginalise more moderate contestants from one's own group; and to
defend against other groups playing the ethnic card (Fearon and Laitin 2000; Caselli
and Coleman 2013).
The final category of causes is institutional in nature. Arsel et al. (Chapter 7),
focus on nationalisation processes in Bolivia and Ecuador, processes that are inter-
preted as integral parts of historical trajectories of conflict over extractive industries.
The understanding of the dynamics at play requires transcending the issue of owner-
ship to include an analysis of coinciding state transformations. It is argued that in the
process of instigating nationalisation and acquiring some form of ownership of natu-
ral resources, the state is itself transformed by increasing its remit and powers. Rutten
et al. (Chapter 4) further emphasise the importance of institutional and historical ori-
gins of conflict. The authors show how multi-layered competing claims can arise from
the history of property rights associated with changing administrative boundaries.
Law, taken in a broad, sociological sense (Zaitch et al., Chapter 6), plays an
important role in various contributions to the volume. Zaitch et al. explicitly refer
to formal environmental law and its repeated transgression. Their perspective is one
of green criminology. Other authors make use of a legal pluralism framework, which