Armed conflicts and overexploitation of natural resources

 

Cand.oecon.agro. Mette Kildegaard Graversen

has defended her PhD thesis in Environmental Economics:

 

Overexploitation of natural resources
and its consequences in the form of armed conflicts 

 

Summary

The subject of this thesis is overexploitation of natural resources and the consequences for armed conflicts, and it explores empirically in which situations valuable natural resources increase the risk of conflict onset and the risk of severe conflicts, when taking into account that natural resources as well as conflicts types are heterogeneous. These aspects of heterogeneity between natural resource types as well as between conflict types is only partly included in the literature analyzing natural resources and conflict outcomes, and the literature may thus suffer from less precise conclusions. Moreover, the thesis, in a theoretical paper, suggests a simple but effective regulation mechanism which has practical application for scarce resource-management in low-income countries. This is contrary to most other regulation mechanisms, which are generally less suited for low-income countries. Thus, it may be possible to avoid potential future conflicts over e.g. water resources.

Principal supervisor

Professor Lars Gårn Hansen , Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Co-supervisors

Professor Eirik S. Amundsen , Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen
Senior Researcher Henning Tarp Jensen, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Assessment Committee

Professor Henrik Hansen, Institute of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen (chairman)
Professor Ola Olsson, Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen, Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, USA