PeaceRep research from International IDEA explores recommendations for natural resource management drawn from the fifth annual Women Constitution-Makers’ Dialogue.

Issues surrounding natural resource ownership, control and wealth distribution remain significant—and often contentious—topics in peace negotiations and constitutional deliberations. In the coming years, such negotiations could be increasingly complicated by the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss (Hickey, 2024).

Despite growing recognition of gender equality as a cornerstone of sustainable development and the documented benefits of inclusive decision-making processes, women are frequently sidelined from influential roles in negotiations on natural resource management. Inclusive frameworks that integrate conflict resolution, environmental protection, and inclusion of women must be developed and utilized in peace processes and subsequent constitution-making processes (Hickey, 2024).

Management of natural resources, while often considered a technical issue, fundamentally involves political decisions about the allocation of decision-making power and revenue among different stakeholders and levels of government (Hickey, 2024).

Effective decentralization of natural resource management must be balanced with central oversight and accountability. If natural resource management is decentralized in theory, substate governments need sufficient powers and resources to discharge their responsibilities in practice (Hickey, 2024).

Environmental considerations should be integrated into broader economic, policy and legal frameworks to embed environmental stewardship within the overarching goals of economic development and governance (Hickey, 2024).

While certain aspects of natural resource management may be more appropriately addressed through legislation and policy, constitutions can establish robust institutional frameworks to ensure oversight of executive power. Constitution-makers should also consider the ways in which innovative constitutional provisions can promote environmental and social justice (Hickey, 2024).

There is a pressing need for national and international dialogue on alternative development models that move away from the dominant extractivist model. Political will and innovative thinking need to be mobilized in support of better economic and development alternatives (Hickey, 2024).

PeaceRep research by the World Peace Foundation and Coventry University sets out the links between decarbonization and peacemaking, investigating the impact of decarbonisation and the related decline of political finance in respective political marketplaces.

While the period of high oil prices in the mid-2000s was characterised by several significant peace deals that attempted comprehensive settlements, the decline of oil prices in the years from 2013 to 2021 has led to a new era of turbulence. The reasons for these patterns are the availability and subsequent decline of political finance that enabled elite buy in at a large scale in “big tent” politics, as well as the rise and decline of strategic interest in geopolitical stability by international powers (Pospisil, 2023).

Oil is key to political finance, and decarbonization is potentially destabilizing. In fragile states where governance institutions are weak, politics often centers on transactional bargains among the elite rather than the rule of law. Access to or control over oil rents is key to elite actors’ ability to achieve and maintain political power. The global transition away from fossil fuels risks upsetting these elite deals in contexts where governments are least well-equipped to manage the transition (Spatz, Sarkar, & de Waal, 2023).

Availability of discretionary oil rents impacts patterns of peacemaking. Evidence from the PA-X Peace Agreements Database suggests that comprehensive peace agreements tend to happen more often when more political funds are available. Similarly, more limited peace agreements happen when political funds are scarce (Spatz, Sarkar, & de Waal, 2023).

PeaceRep research from Coventry University shows that flooding due to the climate crisis has intensified the migration of Dinka Bor herders from Jonglei State to the Equatoria region of South Sudan.

In South Sudan, conflict between migrating herders and local farmers has resulted in clashes as livestock destroyed crops and encroached upon the hunting grounds of host communities. Resource constraints hinder larger peace dialogues organized by civil society, and there is a perceived lack of interest in dialogue among the conflicting communities, as well as limited political will to address the conflict peacefully (Muorwel, Pospisil, & Monoja, 2023).

While the national government has made some targeted efforts to mitigate climate-induced displacement and its impact on herders and farmers, comprehensive climate action policies are lacking. The absence of such policies has compelled citizens to devise their own coping mechanisms, often leading to conflicts among them (Muorwel, Pospisil, & Monoja, 2023).

PeaceRep research from the University of Edinburgh considers options for diplomacy amid transboundary water disputes.

PeaceRep research on water resources and interstate conflict finds that transboundary watercourse use and management is influenced and decided by domestic, regional, and global power dynamics as well as global and regional environmental and climate changes. In international law, the principle of equitable and reasonable provides a basis for negotiating transboundary watercourse conflicts. Public, transparent, updated and cross-border Environmental Impact Assessments can also bring a human needs perspective to watercourse conflicts that are often perceived as a sovereign dispute (Funnemark, 2020).

PeaceRep research outlines approaches to water diplomacy, setting out potential dispute settlement mechanisms available to international water conflicts. Where no dispute settlement mechanisms are available, riparian states may settle transboundary water disputes by referring to other international conventions that the parties may have entered into, such as the Pact of Bogotá, the Protocol of the African Union, or arbitral agreements of general nature (Daza-Clark, 2022).

In transboundary water disputes as a form of interstate negotiation, the line between ‘formal mechanisms’ and ‘informal ones’ does not necessarily align with ‘more effective’ and ‘less effective’ interstate agreements. Disaggregating what induces parties to stick to the commitments they agree to can be useful to negotiating an agreement because it provides a way of working with reluctance over certain issues or areas within water disputes (Daza-Clark, 2022).

Daza-Clark, A. M. (2022). Resolving Water Conflicts: Dispute Settlement Mechanisms Applicable to International Water Resources. PeaceRep: The Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.

Elsaim, N. & Epple, T. (2024, 15 Oct). This is what Azerbaijan can focus on instead of a truce COP (Devex Opinion). https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-this-is-what-azerbaijan-can-focus-on-instead-of-a-truce-cop-108477

Funnemark, A. (2020). Water Resources and Inter-state Conflict: Legal Principles and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Edinburgh: Global Justice Academy, University of Edinburgh.

Hickey, S. P. (2024). Natural Resource Management: Development and Environmental Protection in Constitutional Reform Processes – Fifth Women Constitution-Makers’ Dialogue, 2023. International IDEA.

Kunhiak Muorwel, J., Pospisil, J., and Igale Monoja, V. (2023). Caught Between Crises in South Sudan: Flood-Induced Migration of Dinka Bor Cattle Herders into the Equatoria Region (PeaceRep and FES Discussion Paper). Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, South Sudan Office.

Pospisil, J. (2023). The New Era of Turbulence: Peacemaking Trends in Post-Carbon Times. Somerville, MA: World Peace Foundation.

Spatz, B., Sarkar, A., & de Waal, A. (2023). Decarbonization and Conflict Resolution: New Patterns of Peacemaking in Political Marketplace Systems and its Implications for the Clean Energy Transition (PeaceRep Policy Brief). PeaceRep: Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform, University of Edinburgh.