Natural Resources, Conflict and Peacebuilding in Darfur

Abstract

The natural resources and conflict discourse has been instrumentalised by commentators on Darfur as a means of disputing the relative significance of conflict at national and local levels. The significance of natural resources is played down by those wishing to focus on government culpability for violence but emphasised by those focussing on local peacebuilding and a strategy of constructive engagement with the government. Mindful of this disputed context, we review an institutional perspective on natural resources and peacebuilding. We find that Darfur is undergoing a contested and traumatised institutional bricolage relating to natural resources, livelihoods and ethnicity. Institutional bricolage therefore provides a frame in which peacebuilding relating to the environment can be analysed. A comparative neglect of these issues by international actors is aligned with conflict framings which focus on national conflict dynamics and international relations at the expense of Darfur’s own protracted political contest.