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Resource Conflict Monitor: The Links between Governance, Conflict and Natural Resources

The Resource Conflict Monitor (RCM) monitors how resource-rich countries manage, administer and govern their natural resources and illustrates the impact of the quality of resource governance on the onset, intensity and duration of violent conflict.

The RCM serves as a tool for identifying and supporting viable resource governance and contributes to conflict prevention, post-conflict reconstruction and sustainable development.

Many developing countries rich in natural resources, such as diamonds and oil, have been plagued by poverty, environmental degradation and violent conflicts. In many of these countries, the natural wealth has not led to sustainable development. On the contrary, in some instances resource wealth has provided the funding and reasons for sustaining civil wars. This so-called resource curse brought a lot of attention to the link between resources and conflict over the past decade. Governance has been identified as key factor for understanding the resource-conflict dynamic and for mitigating its negative impact in developing countries. Resource governance in the present context describes the way in which governments regulate and manage the use of natural resources as well as the redistribution of costs and revenues deriving from those resources.

The purpose of the RCM is to provide an empirical measure of resource governance to inform the discussion of future policy options, develop instruments for understanding and acting upon the conflictual aspects of natural resource wealth, and to improve good resource governance in developing countries. The results are freely accessible to the public.

The resources and conflict research project and the RCM website were initiated in 2007 by the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC).

Web-Resource website ( Webpage - www.bicc.de )