Natural Resources Management and Environmental Peacebuilding in Southern Africa: Critical Reflections on 30+ Years of Theory and Practice

Larry A. Swatuk, University of Waterloo (Canada)

In the early 1990s, Homer-Dixon, among others, hypothesized a link between renewable natural resources and violent conflict. In contrast to non-renewables — e.g. oil, minerals — renewable resources such as freshwater, forests and arable land share particular characteristics making their management essential but difficult. While key to livelihood sustainability, especially in rural areas, these resources are easily degraded, overused, and subject to population pressure and local scarcity dynamics. His hypothesis of ‘resource capture’ resulting in ‘ecological marginalization’ informed more than a generation of environmental conflict scholarship. At the same time, it also launched a parallel research project whose central thesis ran counter to the scarcity-conflict narrative. Often termed ‘environmental peacemaking’ or ‘environmental peacebuilding’, this approach emphasized the idea that shared environmental challenges can foster cooperation, serve as a platform for trust-building and support both negative (no violence) and positive (justice, resilience) peace.

Having actively participated in this discussion for more than thirty years, both as an academic and practitioner, with a particular focus on the southern African region, it seems propitious to critically reflect on the state of play not only of the academic debate, but of natural resources management and conflict/peace in practice. From particular landscapes (watersheds, forests, wetlands, parks and protected areas) to issue areas (farming, urban expansion, energy production, agriculture, tourism) and conceptual frameworks (peace parks, WEFE nexus, IWRM, wildlife corridors, REDD+), this paper illustrates what is probably obvious even to the casual observer of life on Earth — that outcomes are mixed, that there is no one model fits all, and that successes — in terms of environmental peacemaking, keeping and building — are both hard-won and hard to maintain.