Illegal Trade in Wildlife Animals and Derived Products during Armed Conflicts: What Role for International Wildlife Agreements?
Publisher: Rechtswissenschaftliche Beiträge der Hamburger Sozialökonomie
Author(s): Karsten Nowrot
Date: 2020
Topics: Governance, Renewable Resources
Disputes over the use and distribution of natural resources are comparatively rarely the primary reason for the outbreak of civil wars and the accompanying formation of armed rebel groups. However, it is by now generally recognised that resource-rich countries, in particular those that rely heavily on the export of primary commodities, are at times suffering from the multi-faceted so-called “natural resource curse” also in the sense of being confronted with the “most severe manifestation” of this phenomenon by facing an overall higher risk of prolonged and even increasingly intensified international and in particular non-international armed conflicts precisely due to the fact that the production of, and international trade in, raw materials such as diamonds and other gemstones, gold, timber, rare minerals, oil or illegal narcotics of-ten presents itself as one of the primary sources of funding for insurgents and other organised armed groups.