The resource nexus and impacts of food and water stress
The resource nexus is a conceptual model that illustrates the interconnections between and among different resources [Fig. 1 in 4]; in other words, it visually displays that one (or more) resource is used as an input to produce another resource [5]. For example, water and electricity (for pumping water) are necessary resources for producing food, in particular in South Asia where irrigation-based agriculture prevails.
In addition to the recent debates about a more narrow nexus between water, food and energy [7], there is also concern
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Over the nexus with minerals such as phosphorus being non-substitutable for world food production [11], or the vast array of resources needed for urbanization and
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Over the nexus with critical minerals such as rare earth, gallium and lithium being essential to the clean technologies that are needed to combat climate change [12, 13].
In a more general way, dams illustrate the importance of considering the resource nexus beyond food, water and energy in a more comprehensive manner. Usually built to produce electricity, they require immense quantities of construction materials and metals, they intervene into hydrological systems and management regimes, and they impact—often negatively—downstream agriculture. Moreover, many of the dam projects in upstream states increase political tensions with downstream states such as in Vietnam, India, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere [14].
The resource nexus has become more pressing in recent years because volatile commodity prices transmit turbulences from local to global markets faster than ever before [8, 15]. Recent evidence on the dangerous conjunction of high prices for food and water and social tensions could be witnessed during the Arab uprisings in 2011. Sternberg [16] points to the drought that occurred in Northern China as a global trigger mechanism for higher food prices. Johnstone and Mazo [17] discuss possible impacts of climate change as stress multipliers. The International Food Policy Research Institute [18] underlines additional domestic factors such as malnutrition, the phasing out of food support programs and a high share of angry young men caring for their families. In a historical perspective [19] the impact of food prices on the great revolutions in France (1789), Russia (1917), and other civil wars helps to explain the security dilemmas of the population and the contingent political outcomes.Footnote 1
However, the relationship between local water and food shortages and socio-economic struggle and political unrest is a complicated one. Our paper does not attempt to add fundamental new insights to this debate. We will examine the debate linked to the scope of our paper and derive potential drivers of a conflict spiral that have been observed in a number of case studies.
Resources and conflicts: a short survey
It is now common knowledge that both scarcity and abundance of natural resources can be underlying factors in conflicts [20–26]. Common pool resources (CPRs) especially, such as water and land, can foster cooperation if affected groups manage property rights, limit free access and establish mechanisms of trust and enforcement, but also lead to conflict in fragile states [27]. The legal and regulatory contexts around property rights vary widely across jurisdictions (at the local, national, regional, and global levels) just as the adaptive capacities and resilience also varies widely [28]. A key is to understand the local patterns and their ability to cope with shocks that are often generated elsewhere such as water shortages and food price increases.
Conflict and security literature has focused on what drives people to become involved in armed conflicts. “Neo-Malthusian” approaches link demographic changes, especially population growth, with resource scarcity, environmental problems, and increased propensity for violent conflict (e.g. Homer-Dixon). One may thus derive drivers such as a young population and malnutrition as preconditions for conflicts. A second school of thought, represented by the work of Paul Collier, has been influential because it challenged previously held assumptions that resource scarcity was the primary driver of conflict; in fact, abundance is strongly related to the presence of violent conflict. Abundance creates incentives and opportunities for looting of resources and making profits of transporting minerals from remote land-locked areas to ports. Large-n studies of conflict have identified a correlation between the proximity to mines, for example, and the level of violence. These first two types of research usually intermingle in terms of causation, and are topped with a third strand of research focused on grievances over ethnic, class, or racial identity as a cause of conflict [see 20, 29, 30]. From our perspective, however, usually these studies focus on a limited number of commodities rather than at the strategic interconnections of the resource nexus. The conclusions drawn by Humphreys [20], countries dependent on agricultural commodities are at political risk independent of their other endowments, and by Carmignani and Avom [31] on negative social developments resulting from commodity exports is seen as valid for our heuristic model on drivers (A heuristic model on drivers of a new vulnerability section). In addition, one may also derive tendencies of secessionism and incentives for organized crime to become involved in issuing property rights as being driven from new discoveries and profits.
Pros and cons about the resource curse—what’s new
The related debate about a potential resource curse has been alive since the early 1990s with Paul Auty’s seminal paper [32, see also 33]. The fact that particular oil-exporting countries had poor economic performances compared to some of the top-performing emerging economies, such as South Korea, led to two main explanations:
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Macro-economic deficits of overvaluing a currency in foreign exchange rates based on the booming resource extraction sectors while neglecting other sectors as well as failures to establish a robust fiscal system and to diversify the economy beyond resource extraction (“Dutch Disease”); and
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Political-institutional deficits of negotiating contracts, corruption and organizing resource rents for purposes of social development and infrastructures. This strand of explanations offers more variables for cross-country comparisons and hence appears more complex than macro-economic issues. The more recent literature seems to focus on this aspect.
It is important to acknowledge that the commodity price hikes since the year 2000 in combination with better policies have benefited some countries such as Botswana, Chile, and Kazakhstan. The lessons learned there have been widely discussed [34–37], and in recent surveys, van der Ploeg [15], Heinrichs [38] and Di John [39] question the evidence of any resource curse.
Accordingly, the more recent discussion among academics and practitioners seems to adopt a slightly more optimistic view for overcoming the resource curse [9, 10]. Based on the lessons learned, online tools for better policies are now available. The “Natural Resource Charter,”Footnote 2 with its 12 principles on how to turn the natural endowments into extraction and development, is such a tool available for resource-rich developing countries. In addition, a model mining development agreementFootnote 3 has been formulated by the Mining Law Committee of the International Bar Association. In May 2013, Revenue Watch Institute produced the Resource Governance IndexFootnote 4, measuring the quality of governance in the oil, gas, and mining sector of 58 countries, particularly in Africa and Asia. The African Mining Countries have developed their own vision and an action plan.Footnote 5 These tools, though, overlook the harsh reality of structural deficits and unfavourable conditions as well as the obstacle of adapting and applying the tools at the local level. However, they offer the ingredients from which countries can start or improve and, in particular, the move towards greater transparency and less corruption is notable.
In our view, the challenges of the resource nexus are not yet built into these future policy tools and not yet reflected properly by research. Climate change and other environmental impacts will have to be fully incorporated into regional planning processes, and can be considered game changers for socio-economic perspectives [40]. The possible cumulative changes of very large numbers of people over the course of years, and potentially disruptive impacts on existing institutions are poorly assessed yet. A more critical view of the aforementioned tools suggests two main weaknesses. Firstly, the international economic order with volatile commodity prices and existing distortions such as illicit trade has been left out. Secondly, destructive tendencies of organized crime, secessionism, fundamentalism and terrorism may have been underestimated. This leads to the conclusion that the socio-economic interconnections between environmental change and the resource curse should receive wider attention in Futures 2.0 research and politics.
A heuristic model on drivers of a new vulnerability
A combination of factors at the interface of regional environmental change and socio-economic dynamics demands new models on the adaptive capacities of societies [41–46]. While we fully acknowledge the enormous challenges of turning slowly reacting adaptive capacities into anticipating and pro-active ones, our attempt here is more moderate: to derive relevant drivers from the debates above and develop a heuristic model that describes these new vulnerabilities as challenges for adaptive capacities in the long-run Fig. 2).
In general terms, we observe two new main challenges. First, global drivers can overshadow local drivers in the management of common pool resources such as river basins management and agriculture. Second, increasing connectivity allows local turbulences to spread rapidly, with unintended side-effects on other resources and regions. Thus, fragile countries and regions are likely to become vulnerable, but other regions including the industrialized countries will have to cope with the indirect impacts too. Adaptive capacities will have to be developed for the directly affected regions and others more indirectly affected.
The following Fig. 2 distinguishes three more general stress multipliers: climate change and weather extremes, volatile commodity prices, and population growth from the following drivers at the local and regional level:
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Malnutrition: following the observations about the pressing local and national urgency of any food and water crisis, one may consider malnutrition as an entry point for socio-economic and political impacts.
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Migration: beyond general issues, this is a key social issue arising during and after the time when a mine is constructed. Humphreys [20] calls it one of the grievance mechanisms. Rudra and Jensen [47] and Bearce and Laks Hutnick [48] provide new insights on the nexus between migration and natural resources.
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Fundamentalism and Terrorism: some regions may adopt anti-Western attitudes, in particular, if their national government appears to cooperate with them. Natural resources could provide a way to finance rebellions that have been started for other reasons and may extend the duration of civil wars; [see, e.g., 49, 50].
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Secessionism: this is estimated to be the biggest source of violent conflicts according to the conflict barometer according to the conflict barometer done by Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research [51]) and is especially relevant for those extraction activities and reserves that are located in well-defined areas of a country with socio-cultural heterogeneity. Sudan may be the most illustrative case study.
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Organized crime: an issue that starts at a lower level with vengeance-seeking group grievance but could increasingly involve extraction and trade with conflict-minerals (but also other natural resources), drugs, and other illicit activates [see 20, 52, 53]. The cases of Mexico’s drug trade and Western Africa may be most illustrative.
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Civil wars and severe violations of human rights in general: this is especially prominent in those regions that have long-lasting civil wars such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Aceh/Indonesia where natural resource production is hampered [54] and chances for peace are undermined [55].
The combination of these factors could translate into what we call a redux of the resource curse: triggered by the emergence of a food and/or water crisis—whatever the causes may be – local and national governance mechanisms are vulnerable and may not be able to cope with such a shock. If people start rioting for access to water and food and if the existing institutional resilience is low, fragile states and regions will be put at risk of further instability, where the above-mentioned mechanisms might escalate. Any such escalation may then lead to interruptions of supply chains for essential materials and have international repercussions.
Many resource-producing countries and regions can be considered fragile. In particular new resource suppliers in Africa and Asia that started extracting on a large scale basis during the boom of the years 2000–2008 and in the aftermath of the financial crisis have to struggle with basic governance challenges, including:
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Negotiating fair agreements with extractive industries;
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Managing the switch from the employment-intensive construction period of a mine to the more capital-intensive extraction period, which usually comes with huge lay-offs;
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Establishing a transportation infrastructure that meets the needs of broader development purposes and environmental standards, in particular if the country is land-locked;
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Balancing the needs of the affected local communities with other regions and the general public (quite often the population in the capital);
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Establishing a robust fiscal regime with permission grants, royalties, and rents; and
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Dealing with environmental issues that partly arise through mining processes but usually have other causes.
In general, such fragile states can hardly be assumed to comply with international norms for labour safety or environmental protection. Moreover, their institutions are often weak and have low resilience to stress. According to Paul Collier [56] a domestic institutional capacity comparable to Portugal in the 1980s is necessary to embark on a path for inclusive and sustainable growth. Stress multipliers such as climate change, volatile commodity prices and pressure from population growth – factors that are not easily managed by weak states—further limit capacity-building in fragile states, increasing the risk of violent conflicts. Some of these states may even fail.
Such drivers of a new vulnerability may not only occur within those states that are currently considered fragile but also within authoritarian regimes (e.g. in Asia or Latin America, or the Russian type of democracy), where resource revenues help to maintain political structures. The lessons learned from countries such as Egypt and Libya might be that such countries may be more fragile than observers believe, with inappropriate “extractive institutions” [57] and the mechanisms explained above leading into conflicts and a new resource curse. Exploring this and putting it into any mapping is, however, beyond the scope of this paper.