SECTION 1
An introduction to natural resource conflicts, collaborative management and sustainable livelihoods

This section explains the nature of community-based natural resource conflicts. It discusses the causes of natural resource conflict and illustrates the different types of conflicts that can occur at the community level. It also discusses how policies and interventions may contribute to triggering conflict. The section explains how natural resource conflicts influence sustainable livelihoods, and considers how managing conflicts relates to broader collaborative natural resource management approaches.

The section's two main objectives are to:

• discuss the many links among sustainable livelihoods, collaborative natural resource management and conflicts;

• increase understanding about how natural resource management policies, programmes and interventions can achieve positive outcomes without triggering or aggravating conflicts.

1.1 What are community-based natural resource conflicts?

People have different uses for such resources as forests, water, pastures and land, and want to manage them in different ways. Knowing about these different needs and interests can help to inform successful management so that everyone benefits as much as possible. However, such differences can also lead to conflict when:

• there is competition over material goods, economic benefits, property or power;
• parties believe that their needs cannot be met;

• parties perceive that their values, needs or interests are under threat.

Sometimes it is best to monitor a conflict without intervening. Such conflicts are problematic, but are unlikely to become disputes and are not dangerous. At other times, however, if a conflict is ignored, or attempts to manage it fail, it can grow into a dispute or some other form of confrontation. A dispute occurs when a conflict over a specific issue or event becomes public. A dispute can be a fight, an appeal to authorities, or a court case. The difference between disputes and conflict is important. All disputes reflect conflict, but not all conflicts develop into disputes. Some conflicts may develop into disputes quickly. Others remain latent for a long time until triggered or aggravated by something new, such as a development project or the arrival of outside interests.

Community-based natural resource conflicts may occur at the local level, but often involve regional, national or even global actors. They range from conflicts among local men and women over the use of land, to conflicts among communities disputing control over woodland, or fishers disagreeing about the devices used for fishing. Community-level conflict might involve government agencies, domestic and multinational businesses, politicians, international development agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

A dispute may also break out at different levels. At one level, the main issue could be access to or control over the resources that people depend on. At another, the dispute could relate to more deeply rooted issues such as recognition, rights, identity, or the ability to participate.

The intensity of conflict also varies greatly - from confusion and frustration among members of a community about poorly communicated development policies, to violent clashes among groups over resource ownership, rights and responsibilities (Buckles, 1999).

TRAINER'S NOTE: This guide addresses conflicts that pose a constraint to sustainable natural resource management at the local level. While a certain degree of violence may be involved in such conflicts, the guide is not designed for situations of open, armed conflict.

As this discussion shows, community-based natural resource conflicts are often very complex. There are usually many causes and many interconnected issues, making it hard to identify the key issues in the conflict.

It is sometimes helpful to think of conflict as having the following three elements:

• People: how people think about and relate to the conflict; their feelings, emotions and perceptions of the problems and of the other people involved; and how these relate to each other and to natural resources in securing livelihoods.

• Process: the way decisions are made, and how people feel about this. The decision-making process is often overlooked as a key cause of conflict. However, resentment, feelings of being treated unfairly and a sense of powerlessness are often rooted in this area.

• Problems: the specific issues and differences among the people, groups and agencies involved. These often include different values,^[2] incompatible interests and needs,^[3] or concrete differences regarding the use, distribution or accessibility of scarce resources. They are often referred to as the "root causes" of conflict, about which people tend to take clear and strong positions.

The following subsections outline more specifically what conflicts over natural resources are often about.

1.1.1 Growing competition over natural resources

Natural resources are increasingly subject to intense competition. In most cases, several factors are responsible for this, including:

• demographic change (e.g. population growth, migration and urbanization);

• market pressures (e.g. increased commercialization, intensification and privatization of local economies, growing integration of national and global economies, economic reforms);

• environmental changes that force people to alter their livelihood strategies (e.g. floods, recurrent droughts, altered river flows, changes in wildlife migration).

These forces can push people to exceed the sustainable harvesting limits of renewable natural resources (forests, water bodies, grazing areas, marine resources, wildlife and agricultural land). In areas where the number of people is increasing, resources often need to be shared among more users with different interests. These users range from farmers seeking access to agricultural land, pastoralists requiring pasture resources for livestock, and city dwellers requiring more meat, fish and cereals.

Securing access to resources can become people's greatest concern when those resources are scarce. Water scarcity in arid or semi-arid regions is a key example. As freshwater is necessary for life, but cannot be made or grown, access to water may serve as a focus of dispute.

However, increased competition is not always the only cause of conflict. Four important conditions influence how access to resources could become contested. These are:

• the scarcity of a natural resource;
• the extent to which the supply is shared by two or more groups;
• the relative power of those groups;

• the degree of dependence on this particular resource, or the ease of access to alternative sources.

Of course, increased demand for resources can result in responses other than conflict. For example, it can lead to agricultural intensification (using fertilizer, terracing, irrigation, multiple cropping, stall-feeding livestock, tree planting, etc), increased reliance on non-farm/off-farm income, or increased commercialization of production. These new adaptations may in turn generate conflicts, as resource use patterns are altered.

1.1.2 Structural causes of conflict

Established organizations and patterns govern how the law works, how education and health services are provided, and how women and men, old and young people live as families and communities. These could be described as the way in which society is organized or structured. Natural resource conflicts are often underpinned by this structure.

A conflict may involve one issue - for example, a boundary dispute between two villages. This could be addressed by local people using customary law. But if someone wants to use State law, the conflict becomes more complicated. A structural conflict may arise because customary law and State law are organized differently; one is local and the other national. State law is usually stronger, and the conflict may then move from a boundary dispute to one about people's rights and identity.

Deeper, structural issues such as this often have roots in long-standing conditions, such as the way in which wealth or power is produced, distributed or controlled in society. Broader social, political, economic or legal frameworks within a society may be perceived as unjust, ineffective or exclusionary. This makes it harder to solve the problem. Structural conflicts often lie dormant until awakened by other factors.

Conflicts between official/statutory and customary tenure systems cause major concern. Even if the great majority of rural people obtain their rights to land through customary means, local land tenure arrangements often have an uncertain or insecure position within national policy frameworks. Customary land rights often remain unclear, even when they are acknowledged legally, so State law may continue to come into conflict with custom. Different authorities using different rules can then make decisions that are contradictory - one decision in customary law, another in statute law.

Wider inequalities (real or perceived) may also lead to conflicts over the use or control of natural resources. For example, marginalized groups may compete for the chance to gain or secure rights, while privileged groups may feel the need to defend their existing rights. Sometimes, minority groups may compete to seek more influence. Then, struggling for resource access becomes linked with a search for recognition of identity, status and political rights.

TRAINER'S NOTE: Resolving structural inequalities and identity conflicts is a more difficult task than resolving conflicts that relate more directly to increased competition or development pressures. The resolution of structural economic and legal inequalities, by definition, may require intervention at the national or even the global level through, for example, land reform, legal recognition of land rights, devolution of authority and responsibility, or improved governance and accountability (Section 2.3.3).

These broader issues are beyond the scope of this guide. Clearly, however, deep-rooted structural issues mean that it is not always possible to fully resolve conflicts at the community level. The approach taken in this guide can be summarized as: "Given the deep-rooted issues that we all face, how can we all try to make progress with the things that we can change?".

1.1.3 Socio-economic change fuelling conflict

When society and the economy undergo change, it is not surprising if the interests and needs of natural resource users also change. Economic development often increases pressures on natural resources, and this can trigger conflict or make existing conflicts worse. The following are some examples:

• Introduction of new technologies can have positive and negative effects on the sustainability of resource use. Managed well, technologies such as synthetic fertilizers, agricultural mechanization or permanent irrigation can improve people's lives. Managed poorly, however, they can reduce the capacity of renewable natural resources to regenerate, increase resource scarcity, and threaten the livelihoods of resource-dependent users in the longer term.

• Commercialization of common property resources: Many poor people depend on common property resources for their livelihoods. These are resources that are shared and jointly managed by several groups. The value of some resources (wildlife, land, forests, fish) is increasing. The increased benefits that can be derived encourage powerful groups to monopolize benefits through "private" property rights, often excluding others from using the resources.

• Migration changes the way in which rural society and resource use are organized. When people move into towns and cities, the available labour for sustainable resource management is reduced. This may contribute to a decline in resource quality and value (Warner, 2000). Migration into rural areas increases the demand for resource use and may challenge customary rules of distributing access. New people may not be part of the local customary systems of resource ownership, use and management.

• Perverse incentives: People respond predictably when they are given economic encouragement to act. A subsidy or guaranteed price for coffee makes more people grow coffee. High taxes on one crop make people grow another. These incentives sometimes work to help manage resources well. When they do not, they are called "perverse" (wrong-headed or unreasonable) incentives. Some perverse incentives can lead to corruption, rent seeking and other sources of conflict (Ostrom, 1990), for example between rural communities and officials.

1.1.4 Natural resource management policies, programmes and projects as sources of conflict

New policies of decentralization, devolution and collaborative management increase the decision-making power and influence of local communities, households and individuals. Such policies encourage communities to become more involved in decisions affecting their own livelihoods and the resources on which those livelihoods are based. Although such policies are helpful for sustainable livelihoods, the successful introduction of greater power sharing among different groups is often challenging.

Policies, programmes and projects themselves can serve as sources or arenas of conflict, even though their intention is to reduce conflicts or improve livelihoods. Reasons include the following (FAO, 2000):

• Policies imposed without local participation: Natural resource policies and interventions are often made without the active participation of communities and local resource users. For example, some governments rely on centralized management strategies controlled by administrative units and technical experts. These often fail to take into account local natural resources rights and practices.

• Poor stakeholder identification and consultation: Stakeholders are people or groups who possess an interest in, or influence over, a resource. Examples of stakeholders are the local government and the community. However, such groups are often highly varied and contain many subgroups. So counting the community as one stakeholder group may be meaningless; some people may have very different interests from others, according to gender, status, age, wealth, ethnicity, etc. Conflicts can occur because planners and managers identify stakeholders inadequately, or fail to acknowledge a group's interest in a resource.

• Uncoordinated planning: Many government and other agencies still rely on sectoral approaches with limited cross-sectoral planning and coordination. For example, the agricultural service may promote cash crop expansion in forests to raise incomes, without recognizing the adverse effects of this on other resource users. Overlapping and competing goals among agencies may lead to confusion when those agencies are unable to reconcile other stakeholders' needs and priorities

• Inadequate or poor information sharing: Effective sharing of information on policies, laws, procedures and objectives can improve the success of programmes and reduce the likelihood of conflicts. In contrast, lack of information on the planning agencies' intentions may lead to suspicion and mistrust.

• Limited institutional capacity: Conflicts arise when government and other organizations lack the capacity to engage in sustainable natural resource management. Not only do organizations face financial constraints for staff and equipment, but they also often lack the expertise to anticipate conflicts, or to handle conflicts that arise in the course of their activities.

• Inadequate monitoring and evaluation of programmes: Programmes and priorities are often designed without clearly defined monitoring and evaluation components, especially regarding natural resource conflicts. When there is no systematic monitoring and evaluation of natural resource management activities, it is more difficult to identify or address conflict.

• Lack of effective mechanisms for conflict management: For natural resource management programmes to be effective, mechanisms for participatory conflict management need to be incorporated into their design and implementation. These should ensure that open or latent conflicts are constructively dealt with to reduce the chances of conflict escalation.

TRAINER'S NOTE: Annex 3 provides two examples of natural resource conflicts in Ghana. These illustrate the interrelatedness of various factors and how they have been managed and resolved.

1.2 Collaborative natural resource management and conflict

Collaborative management involves joint decision-making by government, communities, NGOs and the private sector about natural resource access and use. Borrini-Feyerabend et al. (2000) state that collaborative management is a situation in which two or more parties negotiate, define and guarantee among themselves the sharing of the management functions, entitlements and responsibilities for a given territory or set of natural resources.

The institutional arrangements for collaborative management can take many forms, ranging from official recognition of customary tenure rights to yearly contracts that allow villagers highly restricted access to State lands. State agencies may share resource allocation or management responsibilities with communities, including indigenous ones, and other parties such as user groups, NGOs and corporations (Castro and Nielsen, 2001). These management regimes can be found in a range of common property resources - forests, pastures, wildlife, fisheries, protected areas - where excluding access among competing users can be difficult.

Although individual stakeholders may have different interests, the fundamental assumption is that sharing authority and decision-making will enhance the process of resource management, making it more responsive to a range of needs. In particular, collaborative management is viewed as a way of promoting both conservation and livelihood goals in an efficient, equitable and sustained manner.

Many collaborative arrangements have arisen as innovative responses to long-standing conflicts over natural resource use and management. This fact reinforces the idea that conflict can be a creative element in society. Sharing the management of, and benefits from, contested resources has reduced struggles that seemed endless, where progress was hard to find.

However, the process of engaging in collaborative management can also spark conflicts. This is partly because the people, groups and agencies involved have many different interests concerning the use of natural resources, as well as different levels of power to influence negotiations. Moreover, the groups or people with the greatest access to power tend to influence natural resource decisions in their own favour.

It has become clear that effective collaborative resource management involves attention to conflict management issues. Disagreement over access rights, lack of consensus on management objectives and misinformation or misunderstandings emerge in most settings. Managing differences of opinion is critical to nurturing an atmosphere in which constructive solutions can be identified and taken forward.

Dealing with conflicts across a range of communities, cultures or stakeholders (including State agencies) is not easy. City people often find it difficult to pick their way through legal or administrative institutions, while legal access is difficult for rural people because of distance (both physical and social), cost and lawyers' general lack of interest or expertise in issues related to natural resources. For most rural people, obtaining access to conflict management fora, even within their own societies, can be a challenge. This is particularly true for women, the destitute, the landless, lower castes and other groups.

In many places, there is a substantial need to strengthen local capacity to deal with the many conflictive situations that arise from collaborative management. Rural communities often lack the capacity to address conflicts related to the establishment or operation of collaborative management arrangements (Castro and Nielsen, 2001). Such people are familiar with conflict management approaches, such as negotiation or mediation, and are as experienced at negotiating and mediating as anyone else. However, the approaches they follow are culturally embedded within their own societies, and are often inappropriate to the particular conflict concerned (Castro and Ettenger, 1997).

Collaborative management approaches have two main objectives:

• managing the use of lands, forests, marine areas and their products through negotiating mutually agreeable principles and practices among stakeholders;

• establishing ways of sharing among stakeholders the power to make decisions and exercise control over resource use.

Anticipating and managing conflict are therefore critical ingredients of collaborative natural resources management. A defining characteristic of collaboration is that decisions are made by consensus. Consensus does not mean unanimous consent, nor does it mean adopting anyone's preferred option. Consensus is reached when each stakeholder feels that his/her interests have been addressed. Consensus building sets out to avoid trade-offs (when at least one of the parties has to forego something).

Consensus building approaches do not stand alone. It is helpful if they are fully integrated into a broad framework of collaborative management, and build on processes that lead to mutual benefits and achievements.

Successful conflict management in collaborative natural resource management depends on the following conditions:

• All parties to the conflict have some power or influence to negotiate: Some degree of power sharing in making decisions and controlling outcomes is an important precondition for collaborative management. Without power sharing, it is doubtful that all parties can effectively engage in conflict management and find arrangements that are mutually acceptable. Large inequalities of power deter collaboration because powerful groups may take actions on their own or force weaker parties to accept a decision. Sometimes, very powerful stakeholders can actually make sure that collaboration does not work (FAO, 1999).

• People are assured of their immediate basic needs, such as food, shelter, health and security: If any of these basic human needs is lacking or under threat, people are likely to focus their attention on obtaining it and have little interest or time to collaborate on other things.

• There is a mutually accepted political and legal framework: Resource management must be based on rights that are mutually recognized - ideally officially. Stakeholders need to have confidence that they will receive the benefits from resource use that are anticipated for the short and long terms. Rights therefore need to be enforced, and stakeholders need to have a reasonable chance of successful appeal if they are infringed or ignored.

• The conflict is not manipulated by politicians or group leaders for broader political struggles: These actors may use the conflict for their own political means, rather than having an interest in addressing the conflict. When this happens, the scope for collaborative solutions is limited.

TRAINER'S NOTE: Natural resource conflict management can only work effectively if the broader enabling environment is sufficiently supportive to permit collaborative natural resource management.

CHECKPOINT: Annex 1 presents the basic concepts of collaborative natural resource management. This is the more general approach for becoming involved in natural resources conflict management.

1.3 Natural resource conflicts and sustainable livelihoods

Natural resources are important to the livelihoods of many households in rural areas. Conflicts over natural resources can be useful in making needs and rights clear and helping to solve injustices or inequities in resource distribution. However, some conflicts have the potential for becoming obstacles to livelihoods and sustainable resource management if they are not addressed. When conflicts escalate, they can also hurt relationships by increasing mistrust and suspicion. Violent confrontations may even destroy the resource base for people's livelihoods.

"Livelihood" does not mean just the activities that people carry out to earn a living. It also means all the different elements that contribute to or affect people's ability to ensure a living for themselves and their households. These elements include:

• the assets that the household owns or has access to, which can be:

  - human capital - skills, knowledge, good health and ability to work;

  - social capital - formal and informal social relationships, including how much people trust each other, how reliable and adaptable they are;

  - natural capital - natural resources that can be held, such as soil, crops and trees, and the services that nature brings, such as shade, water quality and a place to plant seeds;

  - physical capital - goods and physical things that have been made, such as fences, houses and roads;

  - financial capital - money and access to credit and loans;

• the activities that allow the household to use these assets to satisfy basic needs;

• various factors that the household itself may not be able to control directly, but that affect vulnerability, such as changeable weather, shocks and natural disasters, or economic and other long-term trends;

• policies, institutions and processes that may help, or make it more difficult for, households to achieve an adequate livelihood.

The strategies that households develop to ensure their livelihoods depend on:

• how they can combine their livelihood assets;
• how vulnerable they are where they live;

• the policies, institutions and processes that affect them.

Livelihood strategies result in outcomes that are more sustainable for some people than for others. People who have many different choices about how they can make a living (strategies they can use) are usually less vulnerable than those with limited choice. Sustainable livelihood approaches are about addressing these issues. Some of the tools of conflict management, such as consensual negotiations, can help.

Ideally, an effective sustainable livelihoods approach should generate more income, increase well-being, reduce vulnerability, improve food security and result in more sustainable use of natural resources for its beneficiaries.

Access to natural resources is a key asset for rural households, especially as it affects the subsistence and food security of poor households. Conflicts over natural resources can be a major obstacle to people's livelihoods. Conflicts can indicate that different policies, institutions and processes are not doing a good job of regulating access to resources, and can undermine people's livelihood outcomes. Long-term conflicts can increase people's vulnerability and reduce their capabilities to respond to sudden challenges, such as price changes, droughts or AIDS.

In any society, assets are distributed unevenly. Different levels of poverty exist even in the poorest communities. Gender, age and other differences may significantly affect access to assets. For example, a tree may be regarded as a household asset, but a woman's rights to use it may not be the same as a man's. People's control over key assets also changes seasonally and through time, in response to the different problems and opportunities that life brings.

Household livelihoods and the strategies that people use to create them are at the core of development. Promoting sustainable livelihoods is therefore:

• an objective to support the goal of poverty elimination;
• a framework for thinking about poverty;

• an approach to addressing poverty.

The ultimate aim is to help people to achieve their livelihood goals. A livelihood is sustainable when it(Chambers and Conway, 1992):

• manages stress and shocks (such as drought or sudden economic change), and recovers from them;
• keeps or improves strengths and assets, now and in the future;

• does not undermine the natural resource base.

In other words, livelihoods should provide well-being to households - not only today, but also in the future. In order to achieve this, it is essential that the natural resource base be safeguarded.

Conflict management that follows the principles of sustainable livelihoods seeks to facilitate a balanced negotiation of competing resource claims among different stakeholders. Successful conflict management:

• enhances awareness of, knowledge of and the skills to identify and overcome constraints in the development process (human capital);

• strengthens relationships and builds trust within and among groups (social capital);

• increases the capacity of communities, organizations and institutions to solve problems (social capital);

• contributes to strengthening the institutional arrangements that regulate access to and use of resources (policies, institutions and processes);

• fosters the increased flow of income and benefits through improved access to and management of natural resources.

Section summary

Section 1 has outlined how natural resource conflicts may emerge and how they may affect sustainable livelihoods. It also discussed why a collaborative approach to natural resource management is essential to enhance sustainable livelihoods, and what conflict management contributes to this broader process. Section 2 discusses different conflict management approaches and explains the strengths and limitations of consensual negotiations. The subsequent sections introduce negotiations in more detail, and lay out a process map consisting of ten steps for addressing natural resource conflicts in practice.

Natural resource conflicts are disagreements and disputes over access to, control over and use of natural resources. They can be useful in helping a community to clarify interests and needs and in reducing possible injustices or inequities in resource distribution. However, some natural resource conflicts have to be addressed effectively and in good time or they will upset local livelihoods by undermining trust among stakeholders and increasing insecurity and resource degradation.

Community-based natural resource conflicts often have many causes that are closely linked - some form the core, others are underlying or contributing. The various factors causing conflict can be divided into four principle types: 1) growing competition for natural resources; 2) structural causes; 3) development pressures; and 4) natural resource management policies, programmes and projects.

Policies, programmes and projects promoting natural resource management can unintentionally serve as sources or arenas of conflict. This situation generally arises when there is inadequate local participation in interventions, and when insufficient consideration is given to the conflicts that might emerge.

Conflicts over natural resources indicate that different policies, institutions and processes are not doing a good job of regulating access to resources. Many rural households depend on natural resources for their livelihood strategies, so such conflicts may undermine their livelihood outcomes and well-being.

Promoting sustainable livelihoods for the poor requires a community-based and collaborative approach to resource management. The objective is to improve governance and sustainable livelihoods. Central to this process is enabling different stakeholders to participate in decision-making in order to develop and manage their resources.

Managing conflict is one important element to be integrated into a broad framework of collaborative management. Collaborative management is effective when institutions and processes that regulate resource use are able to anticipate and respond to stakeholders' different interests over resource use, and can seek solutions of mutual gain.