Natural Resources and Insecurity
Publisher: The Handbook of Global Security Policy
Author(s): Mary Kaldor, Iavor Rangelov
Date: 2014
The Natural Resources and Insecurity chapter argues that evidence that natural resources cause civil war onset is not as robust as is popularly believed, especially when it stems from cross-country studies. From a policy point of view, the question of how the supposed relationship between natural resources and violent conflict works (i.e. the mechanisms connecting resources and conflict) is equally important. Only with a sound understanding of these mechanisms can we design effective policy interventions. A number of alternative mechanisms follow from various theoretical models, not all of which have been tested empirically to this date. Interestingly, the mechanism investigated most empirically, hypothesizing that the price of natural resources influences wages or income and thereby the opportunity costs of conflict, has not yet been widely translated into policy.