Excellencies,
The challenges associated with preventing, managing, and resolving natural resource-induced conflicts may well come to define global peace and security in the 21st century.
Most violent conflicts that the world has witnessed post-world war have been fueled by the exploitation of natural resources, whether high-value resources like timber, diamonds, gold, minerals and oil, or scarce ones like fertile land and water.
Global trends such as demographic changes, increasing consumption, environmental degradation, and climate change, are placing significant and potentially unsustainable pressures on the availability and usability of natural resources such as land, water, and ecosystems.
The geopolitical stakes are high as the survival or authority of states may depend on securing access to key natural resources.
A range of national, multinational, and state-backed companies seek to capitalize on emerging demand and supply dynamics.
In some cases, elite actors monopolize control over resource revenues, concentrating their personal wealth at the expense of local citizens.
As we emerge from the global pandemic, there is an understandable desire to expedite and enhance our recovery, for our economies to rebound quickly and efficiently.
For countries recovering from the pandemic or conflict, natural resources often offer the first opportunity to help stabilize, re-build and revive livelihoods and other economic activity.
At the same time, overreliance on a single extractive industry also heightens vulnerability to price shocks.
Given these challenges, any economic development plan should be equally geared towards supporting the recovery and improved production of rural livelihoods based on other natural resources, notably agriculture, fishing, livestock, and community forestry.
When governments manage their environment and resources well and integrate them across a range of peacebuilding activities, natural resources can provide a sustainable pathway to a lasting peace and poverty reduction.
Excellencies,
It was in this spirit that the United Nations, mainly through the General Assembly and Security Council, initiated the Kimberly Process, an international control regime aimed at preventing conflict diamonds from entering into legitimate trade.
I take this opportunity to welcome among us the presence of the former President of Botswana and Co-founder of the Kimberly Process.
Instruments like the Kimberly Process contribute to the achievement of the 2063 Agenda, as well as to the 2030 Agenda’s ambitions of ending poverty, protecting the planet, and ensuring prosperity.
Now, as we strive to recover better from a devastating pandemic, we must build upon the lessons of this Process. Specifically, we must make every effort to ensure that the financial flows of trade in natural resources are used to uplift, rather than to undermine, communities; and to ensure that we uphold peace, security, and human rights as we invest in our economic progress.
This goal is especially critical now.
LDC’s LLDC’s and SIDS, have been disproportionately impacted by a pandemic that has exacerbated the socio-economic challenges they were already facing.
Tapping into the abundant natural resources often present in these countries, offers them an effective strategy towards accelerating their economic recovery, and towards getting them back on track to meeting the SDGs.
Such a strategy, when properly managed and combined with proper investment, entrepreneurship and policy support can help generate employment, diversify economies, increase food-security and help countries transition their economies in a more climate-friendly and resilient direction.
Excellencies,
Going forward it would be important for resource-dependent countries to put in place governance frameworks and institutional structures that have the ability to manage and resolve resource conflicts.
Such institutional structures should:
- Recognize participatory rights in decision-making and access to information about natural resources.
- Ensure equitable sharing of resource revenues and benefits between stakeholders.
- Put in place transparent mechanisms and accountability in managing resource-related revenues, investments, and impacts.
- Lay down legitimate processes for enforcing rights, accessing justice and resolving disputes.
Excellencies,
The UN system also needs to strengthen its capacity to deliver early warning and early action in countries that are vulnerable to conflicts over natural resources and environmental issues.
The effective governance of natural resources and the environment should be viewed as an investment in conflict prevention within the development process itself.
Finally, all integrated peacebuilding strategies should include a selection of environmental and natural resource indicators to monitor the peacebuilding trajectory and any potential destabilizing trends.
I thank you.
