Natural resources and conflicts

What are resource conflicts and where do they occur? Where do you find conflict resources? What are blood diamonds? What is the Kimberley Process and what other kinds of resource control regimes are there?

The module on Natural Resources provides answers to these and other questions by examining the three related topics of natural resources and their distribution, resource-related conflicts and resource control regimes.

The topic of natural resources and their distribution is divided into three chapters that examine the unequal global spread of different resources such as oil and gas, cocoa trees and cannabis. The distribution of natural resources results in economic and geopolitical power relations that have been and still are the cause of conflicting interests among countries. Access to these resources, along with the control and distribution of these resources to the actors involved are conflict-relevant issues. The topic on resource-related conflicts shows those conflicts that are linked to resources and the importance of certain resources for a country.

What is more, resource production often goes hand in hand with exploitation and human rights violations. For this reason, there are resource control regimes whose memberships are reviewed in the topic of the same name.


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Data tables

For some select map layers, the information portal ‘War and Peace’ provides the user with all used data sets as tables.

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Country portraits

In the country reports, data and information are collected by country and put into tables that are used in the modules as a basis for maps and illustrations.

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Navigation and operation

The information and data of each module are primarily made available as selectable map layers and are complemented by texts and graphs. The map layers can be found on the right hand side and are listed according to themes and sub-themes.

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