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drawing lines. As we will show later, this ambiguity is an important pitfall in theorising
natural resource conflicts.
In
Conflicts over land & water in Africa
, Derman et al. (2007) highlight two
natural resources: land and water. In addition, they attempt to define natural resources
and, in doing so, highlight their theoretical process. They state:
natural resources are [..] generally provided by nature rather than produced by
humans. Some are renewable, and can be maintained at different stocking lev-
els depending on management and use. [..] Broadly speaking, however, natural
resources are in absolute limited supply, constrained by available areas and vol-
umes of land, water and air and they will tend to become scarcer through time as
global population increases (Derman et al. 2007: 3).
The above thinking places Derman et al. in the neo-Malthusian school of thought. Nat-
ural resources are limited and a growing demand when population numbers increase
will result in scarcity.
7
Like many before them, the definition of what natural resources
really are remains somewhat ambiguous, hampering any attempt at firm classification.
Furthermore, like Montani (1987), they define natural resources as commodities that
are useful, scarce and not produced by labour. Montani (1987) seems to followMarx's
view on the usefulness of resources as one disentangled from the scarcity concept. The
symbolic element of natural resources is also not part of this school of thought.
Some scholars argue that Marx hardly dealt with natural resources. This claim is
challenged by Perelman (1975), who refers to Marx's labour theory of value. Marx's
model begins with a period of rapid depletion of resources, followed by a period of
investment in developing resources in which technical advances increase the efficiency
of producing natural resources. In other words, a natural resource might retain its
quality, albeit with requisite human and capital interference.
Mazor (2009) has attempted to define natural resources from a liberal perspective.
Referring to liberal thinkers such as Locke and Mill, he aims to construct a theory of
natural resource property rights starting from the principles of equity, neutrality and
freedom. He diverts, however, from a more general right-libertarian argument. Instead
of holding that natural resources are useless without some form of human labour,
Mazor (2009) contends that some portion of the value of natural resources can be
attributed to the presence of the natural object itself. Mazor (2009: 40) calls a resource
natural if it has not been created or significantly altered by human beings. Land, water
and oil in pristine condition are all examples of natural resources. Wild animals (e.g.
fish in the sea) are also natural resources, but human bodies and any parts thereof are
not. Mazor (2009) acknowledges grey areas such as primates and intelligent mammals
like dolphins, but stresses that human beings routinely cultivate, harvest, mine and
otherwise transform natural resources in ways that increase their value. The resulting
goods, such as irrigated land and captured fish, are not seen as natural resources, but
rather as composite goods that require natural resources as inputs along with labour.
7
See also Frerks et al (Chapter 2) where this approach is presented as one of three main schools
of thought for explaining the occurrence of conflicts. The other two schools they identify are
the neoclassical economist approach stressing the role of institutions and innovation; and a
distributionist approach that highlights the maldistribution of resources and wealth.
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