Mediation and conflict resolution around natural resources require “long-term engagement, timely interventions, and lots of flexibility,” says Juan Dumas, senior advisor for the Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano in Quito, Ecuador. The Woodrow Wilson Center and the Fetzer Institute hosted Dumas for a roundtable event on Pathways to Peace: Stories of Environment, Health, and Conflict. In this interview with ESCP Director Geoff Dabelko, Dumas shares key lessons learned from his experience with his NGO that specializes in prevention and management of socio-economic conflicts around natural resources.

Bill Gates gave the PHE community a much-needed upgrade in his foundation’s 2nd Annual Letter, released this week. Unfortunately it still has a few bugs.

“In the long run, not spending on health is a bad deal for the environment because improvements in health, including voluntary family planning, lead people to have smaller families, which in turn reduces the strain on the environment,” concludes Gates.

This statement could dramatically raise awareness of and funding for population-environment programs. Any time Bill Gates talks, the world listens, as evidenced by the barrage of coverage from Reuters, AFP, and top IT newswires. For the public, it offers a rare glimpse into development strategy, so Gates’ thoughts (and financial commitments) could be seen as representative of the foundation community’s approach to global health problems.

Although it may seem obvious that fewer people place less strain on the environment, this connection has been largely absent from the environmental agenda, including the efforts to combat climate change. Some environmental leaders and organizations have dismissed population as an unimportant distraction from the real business at hand. Others have noted that population growth’s impact on climate change is far greater in the rich world than in poor countries, whose per capita emissions are a fraction of developed countries’.

Gates’ comment may cause those in the first camp to re-evaluate the importance of family planning, and it is likely to energize the converted. But it will have less impact on those focused on consumption. But if it encourages the environmental community to put population and family planning issues back on the table, it will have gone a long way.

However, Gates could have gone further, by explaining that family planning is a relatively inexpensive way to mitigate climate change, compared to complex and emerging technological solutions. He also could have pointed out that climate change is expected to increase the prevalence of vector-borne diseases such as malaria, or that sick or malnourished individuals may be forced to mismanage natural resources.

Because Gates didn’t make these explicit connections, many in the media missed his point. The wire headlines pit health against environment, when Gates was in fact pointing out how interdependent they are. This distortion is symptomatic of the media’s tendency to highlight the horserace. But maybe they would pay closer attention if the Gates Foundation put its money where its mouth is—and funded programs that integrate family planning and the environment.

Perhaps several years from now, we will look back and say that this letter marks the start of the Gates Foundation’s integrated approach to development. But we may need to wait for Letter 3.0 for a complete install.

Photo: Courtesy Flickr User World Economic Forum

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In a preview of his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must – and How We Can – Manage Nature for Global Prosperity, Paul Collier dispelled the common perception that Africa’s indentified resource reserves are the world’s largest. In actuality, it is estimated that up to four-fifths of the value of subsoil assets in the African continent are yet to be discovered. “That is the big story,” Collier remarked. “Here are assets which could finance transformation….but historically haven’t.” Instead, these resources have been plundered.

In a recent event hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace, Paul Collier, professor of economics and director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, and Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, discussed how resource-rich environments in developing countries have been traditionally misused. The two also proposed strategies to disrupt these processes and transform resource “curses” into deeply needed support for peace and stable development.

Conflict and instability in countries whose economies are heavily invested in natural resource have often hindered local development and security. Many of these countries—including Cambodia, Angola, Indonesia, and DRC—have suffered from one of two forms of plunder:

Types of Natural Resources Plunder:

1. Where the few steal from the many:
Natural assets are, by definition, without natural owners, and therefore lie as easily taken common goods. “This process of expropriation opens up a whole array of dysfunctional variants, many of which are violent,” Collier noted.

2. Where the present steals from the future:
Intertemporal mismanagement is a possibility, as unlike man-made assets, natural assets belong to all generations.

Operating from a worldview of weak sustainability, where profits from natural assets are reinvested for the benefit of future generations, Collier suggested that natural resource rights are more akin to “rights of stewardship” than traditional property rights. “We may well transform that value into something that is more productive, but if we pull up natural assets from the ground, we should leave to the future something that is equivalently valuable.”

Collier argued that the successful harnessing of natural resources for stable and sustainable development depends on the application of a tenuous decision chain:

Natural Resources Decision Chain:

1. Discovery Process:
Failure in this phase stems from poor property rights, and the time consistency problem—uncertainty that conditions and regulations that make expensive upfront investments profitable today will remain in place in the future.

2. Appropriate Taxation:
Currently, as a result of poor negotiations or limited information regarding the status of resources, governments are unable to craft tax regimes which effectively capture resource rent.

3. Avoiding the Delta:
Sustainable management any discovered subsoil assets must avoid a local “Nigerian Delta” catastrophe. Clearly designating the government as the sole responsible agent for resource rents may limit such failures.

4. Saving the money:
To avoid plunder of the future by the present, Collier suggested that, though politically difficult, a proportion of revenue streams must be delineated from general accounts.

5. Building the capacity to invest in the country:
Collier deemed the inability of resource-rich countries to attract diversified investment as the “killer link.” Governments must use returns from subsoil assets to fund “investment in investment”—directing public capital toward transportation and utility infrastructure, education, health, and other short-term projects. Once in place, such projects encourage future public and private investments, thereby multiplying long-term returns.

As with many complex systems, Collier warned that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If one link fails, “the chain won’t pull the country from poverty to prosperity.” On the other hand, if each link holds, the value is tremendous. ”[Y]ou really can pull the country from poverty to prosperity over the course of a generation. There are no fixes in economics that are faster than that.”

Ultimately, Collier and Birdsall emphasized that success depends upon the development of an informed and competent “critical mass” of people. Even the strongest decision chain will fail if it is not underwritten by a majority of the population. Birdsall reiterated the need for public participation in the process, possibly through direct income distribution or responsible interventions by non-vested third parties.

Photo: Courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Stabilizing and rebuilding state infrastructure in post-conflict settings has been increasingly recognized as critical to aiding the population and preventing renewed conflict. The United States has increasingly invested in rebuilding health systems, and in some cases assisting in the delivery of health services for the first time.

While global health concerns have recently received significant attention, as witnessed by President Obama’s Global Health Initiative, the importance of health system reconstruction to stabilization efforts remains unevenly recognized. On November 10, 2009, experts met at the Global Health Council’s Humanitarian Health Caucus to discuss investing in health services in the wake of war and the challenges of funding this investment.

“Deconstruction from violence extends beyond the time of war and often leads to severe damage of health infrastructure, decreased health workers, food shortages, and diseases…resulting in increased morbidity and mortality from causes that are not directly related to combat,” shared Leonard Rubenstein, a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Rubenstein argued that while relieving suffering in post-conflict settings should be a sufficient reason to include health reconstruction in U.S. foreign policy, policymakers narrowly define rationales for engagement based on claims that investments increase peace and improve the image of the U.S. government.

Investing in Health Systems Builds State Legitimacy

The evidence for investing in health systems to deter future conflict is limited and this approach is dangerous, according to Rubenstein, because it distorts spending decisions and fails to consider comprehensive capacity development strategies. Additionally, the Department of Defense’s approach of “winning the hearts and minds” is too short-term and neither linked to “system-building activities that are effective and sustainable…nor consistent with advancing the health of the population,” he said.

Instead, Rubenstein recommended that the United States invest in health systems after conflict because it advances state legitimacy. Although additional evidence is necessary, Rubenstein maintains that the promotion of state legitimacy enhances the perception that the government is responding to their long-term needs and encourages local ownership and accountability. Developing health systems in post-conflict settings is complex and cannot be done quickly, he noted, and thus increased financial and human resource capacities will be essential.

Coordination and Transition Funding

“We need to recognize that the U.S. is not the only funder, as there are many stakeholders involved,” argued Stephen Commins, strategy manager for fragile states at the International Medical Corps. Commins argued that there is a “desperate need to coordinate donor funding … both within and across government systems, as well as an increased need for transparent donor tracking systems.”

As countries come out of conflict and start to gain government legitimacy, they need increased support to stabilize conflict and avoid collapse. Transition funding for health systems needs to support both short and long-term efforts, maintained Commins, but unfortunately the donors driving these timelines are often driven by self-interest, not the rights of the individual living in conflict.

Without a transparent donor tracking system, it is hard to demonstrate actual monetary disbursements versus commitments, so Commins called for a system that tracks allocations and spending in real time. These are not our countries, he argued, and responding to health systems in post-conflict settings should be tailored to the country’s needs, not the donor’s. He also called for increased research that describes, over time, the costs for rebuilding and transitioning from international NGO-driven systems to self-sustained governments.

Rebuilding Health Systems in Sudan

George Kijana, health coordinator in southern Sudan for the International Rescue Committee, discussed reasons for why Sudan’s health system remains poor five years after conflict. According to Kijana, the government in Southern Sudan has not been held accountable by its donors, leading to a breakdown in infrastructure and a lower quality of health workers.

Additionally, a majority of the available health data comes from non-state actors that are not easily accessible. Kijana shared that in order for Sudan to move forward, more research and data are needed to help target long-term capacity building projects, as well as short-term interventions that address infant and maternal mortality. While progress is slow, he pointed out encouraging signs of progress, as the Ministry of Health now recognizes their weaknesses and positively engages with its development partners such as the United Nations.

Photo: Romanian Patrol administers medical treatment to Afghan communities, courtesy of Flickr user lafrancevi.

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“The downward trend, in terms of donor funding for international family planning, since the middle of the 1990s to around 2006 has been reversed,” José Rimon II, senior program officer for global health policy and advocacy at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, told ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko following a discussion on the future of family planning at the Woodrow Wilson Center.