Wars for Land, Water, and Commodities: The Conflict Potential of Natural Resources

The appropriate and just distribution of natural resources is considered one of the greatest challenges in this period of global climate change and a growing world population. Natural resources are becoming scarcer, but at the same time they must be shared among more people. This holds significant potential for conflict, especially within states. Researchers are warning of conflicts regarding access to water, to land, or to rare mineral resources.

This GIGA Forum will discuss how tensions surrounding natural resources arise and can be avoided. The experts will present three different conflict contexts as well as approaches for avoiding violent escalation: Christiane Fröhlich will analyse the issues regarding access to water in the Jordan River basin. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor will explain the conflicts and the possibilities for conflict transformation surrounding the mining of mineral resources within indigenous communities in Latin America. Janpeter Schilling will outline land-use conflicts in Africa.

Panel: Dr. Christiane Fröhlich is a research fellow at the GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies.

Dr. Almut Schilling-Vacaflor is a research fellow in the “Governance of Environmental Sustainability in Telecoupled Systems” project at the University of Osnabrück.

Jun. Prof. Dr. Janpeter Schilling is the director of the Peace Academy Rheinland-Palatinate and head of the Land-Use Conflicts Research Group at the Institute for Environmental Science at the University of Koblenz-Landau.

Moderation: Dr. Christian von Soest is a lead research fellow at the GIGA Institute for African Affairs and head of GIGA Research Programme 2: Peace and Security