Struggles over natural resources are considered among the most important threats to global security. Two powerful paradigms in particular have shaped the debate about resources and violent conflict: the environmental security approach, stressing growing scarcity, and the economic motives (“greed”) perspective, privileging the role of valuable resources. Both approaches contribute important insights regarding the way natural resources play a role in generating, conditioning and prolonging civil wars but also have important theoretical and methodological flaws.
This one-day seminar brings together Wageningen experts of different disciplines, working on the relation between natural resources and conflict from these and other perspectives. It offers a space for exchange and debate between different approaches. The day is also meant to strengthen the specific Wageningen expertise in the field of resources and conflict and to explore the potential for future initiatives. The seminar is organized by the Disaster Studies Group and hosted by Wageningen International.
Discussion topics will include:
- Challenging the orthodoxies
- Conceptualizing competing claims to land, forest, and water
- Institutional reform, resources and conflict
- Local resource disputes and civil war
- Climate change, disaster and conflict
- Resource conflict and post-war reconstruction
Details on the seminar program and the venue (in Wageningen) will be communicated soon.
Registration:
Please register your interest with Mrs Lonneke Budel at Wageningen International: lonneke.budel@wur.nl.
The deadline for registration is 17 September.
More information:
For further information on the contents of the seminar please contact Gemma van der Haar (gemma.vanderhaar@wur.nl) at the Disaster Studies Group.