Peacebuilding and Natural Resource Governance after Armed Conflict: Sierra Leone and Liberia
Publisher: Springer
Author(s): Michael D. Beevers
Date: 2018
Topics: Conflict Causes, Conflict Prevention, Extractive Resources, Governance, Peace and Security Operations, Renewable Resources
Countries: Liberia, Sierra Leone
This book argues that a set of persuasive discourses about the links between natural resource, armed conflict and peacebuilding have strongly influenced the natural resource interventions pursued by international peacebuilders in post-conflict Liberia and Sierra Leone. The author shows how international peacebuilders active in Liberia and Sierra Leone pursued a collective strategy to transform “conflict resources” into “peace resources” vis-à-vis a policy agenda that promoted “securitization” and “marketization” of natural resources. Securitization in the context refers to international interventions designed to consolidate state authority over natural resources through, among other things, enhanced policing, monitoring and legal and regulatory mechanisms. Marketization, on the other hand, refers to increasing resource extraction for the purpose of export led-growth. The exclusive focus on securitization and marketization have had detrimental effects on the ground and been counterproductive for peacebuilding in Liberia and Sierra Leone.