Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
In 'Een zaak van iedereen' (Everyone's Concern) (Ministerie van Buitenlandse
Zaken 2007), the policy paper on development cooperation written by then minis-
ter Bert Koenders, much attention was paid to the subject of conflicts. The paper
clearly demonstrated the global and political dimensions of natural resources and con-
flict. It highlighted the close relations between energy resources such as oil and gas,
and conflicts that hamper human development in many countries worldwide. Involved
are factors of unequal access to energy resources, interests of industrial countries to
secure energy sources, and powerful political elites in countries where governance is
poor. For other countries, reference was made to other valuable resources, such as
timber (e.g. DRC), diamonds (Liberia) or drugs (Colombia, Afghanistan), as a major
source of conflict hindering development and poverty reduction. The policy paper
introduced the subject of so-called fragile states, which were characterised by a high
level of instability and intra-state conflict. Such states were considered to be a global
risk, e.g. because of large numbers of refugees and the threat of terrorism. Lastly, the
subject of climate change was highlighted, leading to shortages in water resources and
food, health problems, migration and conflict over natural resources that the poor
suffer from in the first place.
The (then) Department of Environment and Water (DMW) of the Dutch Ministry
of Foreign Affairs also wrote a policy paper about Environment, Water and Poverty
Reduction (Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken 2006). The objective of this strategy
was “to promote innovation in policies and programmes in the field of environment
and water that will contribute to poverty reduction and to the achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals; and to strengthen institutional capacity to this end
in developing countries.'' The document pinpointed the organisation of knowledge
management and the allocation of resources to key research(able) problems as cen-
tral issues to be addressed. Core themes were: (a) environment and land rights, land
management and agriculture in landscape systems under pressure; (b) environment
(e.g. cross-border parks) and water (e.g. international rivers and lakes) in relation to
conflict generation and conflict resolution; (c) environment, conflict and the role of
illegal trade.
2.3.3 Other approaches
In addition to to the international and Dutch concerns that mainly referred to 'high pol-
itics', there are many other initiatives that deal with environmental conflict. Examples
include track-2 and track-3 diplomacy to resolve existing or escalating conflicts. Even
more importantly, however, are initiatives taken to set up institutional arrangements to
deal with conflict in, among others, shared river-basins, water management schemes,
conservation and nature parks, ecological zones, and areas of resource exploitation.
These take a variety of shapes from the international to the very local level and
include international river commissions, multi-stakeholder platforms, irrigation, farm-
ers' and users' committees, and trans-boundary commissions, to name but a few. It
would require a separate study to observe in detail the ways in which such institional
arrangements work and another to examine their effectiveness, but three aspects are
of importance here. In the first place, they focus on one particular aspect within a
larger conflict context and in this way make the approach more feasible; secondly,
they enable face-to-face contacts on the basis of a joint interest, possibly leading to a
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