REGIONAL RESOURCE CONFLICTS

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Resource Rents, Democracy and Corruption: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

We examine the effect of the interaction between resource rents and democracy on corruption for a panel of 29 Sub-Saharan countries during the period from 1985 to 2007. We find that higher resource rents lead to more corruption and that the effect is significantly stronger in less democratic countries. Surprisingly, we also find that higher resource rents lead to fewer internal conflicts and that less democratic countries face not a higher but a lower likelihood of conflicts following an increase in resource rents. We argue that these findings can be explained by the ability of the political elites in less democratic countries to more effectively quell the masses through redistribution of rents to the public. We support our argument by documenting that higher resource rents lead to more (less) government spending in less (more) democratic countries. Our findings suggest that the mechanisms through which resource rents affect corruption cannot be separated from political systems.resource rents, corruption, political systems, internal conflicts

Conflict Resolution in E-HRM Environments

There have been studies on conflict resolutions but many focused on regional inter-tribe and international conflicts between or among nations of the world. Only very few have written about industrial conflict recently, even these few did not touch the mechanism of resolving conflicts in the organization in depth. Therefore, this article will focus on various conflict resolution mechanisms and the three major models of conflict resolutions—namely distributive bargaining, integrated bargaining, and interactive problem solving as given by Cross, Susan, Rosenthal, and Robert (1999). To do this effectively, we will explore the available literature on the antecedents of conflicts in human resource systems. Varieties of views and notions held by individuals and groups in respect of the role and the consequences of conflicts in the functioning of humans in our modern complex organizations will be considered. The consequences of conflicts on interpersonal, inter-group, and inter-organizational processes, when conflict may empower, distress, or lubricate the wheels of human interaction in the context of human resource management will be traced. The views of experts, professionals and academicians on how and why conflicts should be handled to ensure a healthier and conducive environment to work will be traced

Institutions Under Construction: Resolving Resource Conflicts in Tanzanian Irrigation Schemes

In present-day Tanzania, the increasing market penetration, the declining predictability of water availability and the intensifying institutional pluralism make small-scale irrigation schemes interesting for studying water governance institutions under construction. By documenting how conflicts over water are solved, we focus on how power enters this process. We also show that resource conflicts are not necessarily disruptive and that institutional pluralism can contribute to the development of more sophisticated resource governance institutions. But despite the potential of such processes to improve resource governance institutions, it can also reproduce deeply entrenched gender relations and hinder inclusion of less powerful resource users as they do not always have the capability to engage in conflict resolutions in a creative fashion.irrigation, power, resource governance institutions, Africa

Bougainville: Large-scale Mining and Risks of Conflict Recurrence

Research on conflict resolution suggests that the significant risk of conflict recurrence in intrastate conflicts is much reduced by political settlements that �resolve the issues at stake� between parties to the conflict, and that in conflicts involving grievances about distribution of natural resource revenues, such settlements should include natural resource wealth-sharing arrangements. This article shows that the Bougainville conflict origins involved far more complexity than natural resource revenue distribution grievances, and that the conflict itself then generated new sources of division and conflict, the same being true of both the peace process and the process to implement the Bougainville Peace Agreement (BPA). As a result, the BPA addresses many more issues than natural resource-related grievances. Such considerations make it difficult to attribute lack of conflict recurrence to particular factors in the BPA. While the BPA provisions on wealth-sharing address relations between the Papua New Guinea National Government and Bougainville, moves by the Autonomous Bougainville Government to explore possible resumption of large-scale mining has generated a new political economy in Bougainville, contributing to new tensions amongst Bougainvilleans

ANALYZING NEGOTIATION APPROACHES IN NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT - A CASE STUDY OF CROP-LIVESTOCK CONFLICTS IN SRI LANKA

Participatory approaches in natural resource management are increasingly being criticized for their tendency to neglect power relations and conflicts of interests. Negotiation approaches have been proposed as a strategy to overcome such shortcomings. Using the case of negotiations on crop-livestock conflicts in Sri Lanka as an empirical example, this paper proposes to apply the concept of political capital in combination with game theoretical modeling for an analysis of negotiation processes in natural resource management. The model serves to analyze both the incentive structure of the resource users, who are motivated by economic incentives, and the incentive structure of political decision-makers, who are motivated by political interests. The crucial role that the public administration may play for the enforcement of a negotiation outcome is highlighted. The paper discusses potential extensions of the model and concludes that the concept of political capital, in combination with game theoretical modeling, provides a useful tool for the analysis of negotiation approaches in natural resource management.natural resource management, negotiation, political capital, extensive form game, Sri Lanka, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q2,

ECONOMISTS AND THE RESOLUTION OF NATURAL RESOURCE USE CONFLICTS

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Adaptive Governance and Evolving Solutions to Natural Resource Conflicts

New Zealand is facing increasing challenges in managing natural resources (land, freshwater, marine space and air quality) under pressures from domestic (population growth, agricultural intensification, cultural expectations) and international (climate change) sources. These challenges can be described in terms of managing ‘wicked problems’; i.e. problems that may not be understood fully until they have been solved, where stakeholders have different world views and frames for understanding the problem, the constraints affecting the problem and the resources required to solve it change over time, and no complete solution is ever actually found. Adaptive governance addresses wicked problems through a framework to engage stakeholders in a participative process to create a long term vision. The vision must identify competing goals and a process for balancing them over time that acknowledges conflicts cannot always be resolved in a single lasting decision. Circumstances, goals and priorities can all vary over time and by region. The Resource Management Act can be seen as an adaptive governance structure where frameworks for resources such as water may take years to evolve and decades to fully implement. Adaptive management is about delivery through an incremental/experimental approach, limits on the certainty that governments can provide and stakeholders can demand, and flexibility in processes and results. In New Zealand it also requires balancing central government expertise and resources, with local authorities which can reflect local goals and knowledge, but have varying resources and can face quite distinct issues of widely differing severity. It is important to signal the incremental, overlapping, iterative and time-consuming nature of the work involved in developing and implementing adaptive governance and management frameworks. Managing the expectations of those involved as to the nature of the process and their role in it, and the scope and timing of likely outcomes, is key to sustaining participation.Adaptive capacity; governance; resilience

Empirical Analysis of Resource-Use Conflicts Between Smallholder Farmers and Pastoralists in Semi-Arid Areas: A Case of Mkata Plains, Eastern Tanzania

An empirical study was carried out in Mkata plains, eastern Tanzania in order to establish factors determining resource-use conflicts between smallholder farmers and pastoralists. PRA approaches and questionnaire survey were employed to collected data from two pastoral and two agro – pastoral villages. The main conflict types and their intensities include inter-ethnic conflicts> village vs village,> village vs state agencies> intra-ethnic group conflicts. The perceived causes of conflicts were crop damages by livestock, pastoralists disregarding village boundaries, overcharging compensation for crop damage by farmers, confiscating of livestock by farmers, ineptness of government officials to intervene to prevent conflicts. Key factors significantly enhancing resource-use conflicts were increasing herd size, market integration, and increase in household wealthy differentiation. A key factor likely to significantly minimize the conflicts was strong local leadership. The mechanism employed to resolving resource use-conflicts was formation of “conflict resolution committee” at village level. But, only agropastoral villages have formed full functional committees. It is recommended to build capacity of government officials to analyze and resolve resource-use conflicts; and to enhance capacity of local structures for conflict resolution.Keywords: Semi-arid areas, Mkata plains, pastoralism, resource-use conflicts, conflict resolution

The exploitation of pipeline parallelism by compile time dataflow analysis

The automatic and implicit transformation of sequential instruction streams, which execute efficiently for pipelined architectures is the subject of this paper. This paper proposes a method which maximizes the parallel performance of an instruction pipeline by detecting and eliminating specific pipeline hazards known as resource conflicts. The detection of resource conflicts is accomplished with data dependence analysis, while the elimination of resource conflicts is accomplished by instruction stream code transformation. The transformation of instruction streams is guided by data dependence analysis, and dependence graphs. This thesis is based on the premise that the elimination of resource conflicts is synonymous with the elimination of specific arcs in the dependence graph. Examples will be given showing how detection and elimination of resource conflicts is possible through compiler optimization