After Conflict, Peacebuilding and Recovery Efforts Too Often Miss the Environment

Aug 29, 2016 | Tim Kovach and Ken Conca
View Original

In June 2010, The New York Times published a front page story trumpeting a Pentagon announcement of roughly $1 trillion worth of mineral resources in Afghanistan. Officials said the discovery was “far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.” Then-President Hamid Karzai soon inflated the figure to $3 trillion and then again to $30 trillion, enough to transform the country into the “Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

The entire mining industry, once thought to hold so much development potential, now appears to be fostering violence. Foreign Policy reported in 2014 that illegal mining in troubled provinces like Helmand is financing the Taliban and other militant groups as they work to weaken the fragile central government. Most recently, Global Witness, a watchdog NGO, released a report demonstrating how lapis lazuli mining drives grievances and funds armed groups, constituting a threat to the stability of the entire country. In their quest to promote stability and economic development, the Afghan government and its international partners overlooked or deemphasized the role that natural resources play in fostering civil conflict. 

The international community by and large does not adequately consider natural resources and environmental governance through the full cycle of post-conflict peacebuilding, as reflected in the PCNA-PRSP-UNDAF process. The major actors involved need to do a better job of accounting for key environmental and natural resource dynamics at play by identifying these challenges at the earliest stages of the recovery process and ensuring they are addressed through each subsequent phase, from recovery planning to donor coordination to funding decisions. Failing this outcome, we may continue to see issues like the corruption, illicit activity, and controversial community impacts of Afghanistan’s mining sector drive recurring conflict in war-torn societies for years to come.