Irene Mia
The increasing scarcity of key natural resources can increase their intrinsic value as a tool for military and political leverage in the continuum of war, including in its aftermath. Irene Mia and Erica Pepe investigate the dynamics of this phenomenon and identify priorities for action.
An important effect of accelerating climate change is its impact on the availability of key natural resources, including water, food, energy and land. While their increasing scarcity can exacerbate or drive conflict, it can also raise their intrinsic value as a tool for military and political leverage in the continuum of war, including in its aftermath, with major negative implications for environmental sustainability and human security.1 Such a trend is very apparent in the context of internal confrontations, which comprise the majority of active conflicts globally and are often intractable amid a proliferation of actors and motivations. Non-state armed groups’ (NSAGs’) recourse to natural resources as an instrument of warfare and political power is a particularly alarming development with far-reaching implications for counter-insurgency efforts and conflict and post-conflict interventions, as well as for environmental preservation and efforts to address structural fragilities.2
In trying to address this issue, the existing shortcomings in international rules – in terms of applicability, compliance and enforcement where NSAGs are concerned – represent a major challenge.3 Given this context, a strategic investigation of the dynamics of the phenomenon is needed to identify priorities for action and explore solutions, including possible preventative measures, adjustments to the legal framework and multilateral solutions. The fact that across the world between 60 million and 80m people live under the quasi-state governance of NSAGs adds to the urgency of the matter.4
Figure 1: Number of armed assaults and infrastructure attacks on food or water supply and utilities by NSAGs in conflict-affected countries, 1979–2019*
Understanding instrumentalisation of natural
In recent decades, conflicts have become increasingly protracted and blurred in their active and stabilisation/reconstruction phases. Actors’ strategies and motivations have adapted accordingly – as seen in their instrumental use of natural resources to prevail over the enemy but also to reinforce their political leverage and legitimacy in the post-conflict phase.
In light of these developments, our classification of the different ways that natural resources can be weaponised differs from prevalent literature on the topic: while the latter focuses mostly on the active phase of conflicts, we focus instead on a conflict’s continuum. Our framework is therefore focused on the main motivation behind a resource’s instrumentalisation and the conflict phase in which instrumentalisation takes place.
Military weaponisation
Military weaponisation occurs when natural resources are exploited as a target or weapon of warfare during an active conflict either to secure strategic goals or for tactical purposes. This typology includes situations where resource control is used to intimidate and coerce opposing parties (and/or civilian populations), including through psychological warfare (for example, by threatening to attack a key water infrastructure or to deprive an enemy of access to a given key natural resource).
Natural resources have notably become an integral part of NSAGs’ military strategies and campaigns, providing them with the ability to inflict targeted damage without necessarily directly attacking, occupying or controlling areas (see Box 1). They also enable NSAGs to gain greater military capacity than they would otherwise have in conventional warfare.
Box 1: Military weaponisation of waterControl (or poisoning/destruction) of water resources and infrastructure (including dams and wells) has often been leveraged by NSAGs to exert pressure on the general population and opposing parties in warfare. For example, severe water scarcity (due to years of drought and water mismanagement) has not only intensified Iraq’s and Syria’s instability and ongoing violence in recent times but has also been systematically leveraged by different NSAGs to reach their goals, with catastrophic consequences for civilians.
The Islamic State (ISIS) was responsible for about half of the water-weaponisation incidents in the two countries from 2012–15.5 The group’s systematic use of water resources as a weapon was on a scale unprecedented in modern warfare.6 It sought control over dams and used water as a strategic tool to weaken opponents and create hardship in water-stressed areas by diverting rivers and flooding lands. Some examples are discussed below:In 2013, the capture of Syria’s largest dam, Tabqa, gave ISIS control of approximately 60% of the country’s fresh and drinkable water resources and was a very effective defensive tool to slow the advance of the enemy (by threatening to destroy the dam, cut power to Damascus and flood 90,000 residents in the surrounding lands).
In October 2014, ISIS diverted the Khalis tributary river of the Tigris River, flooding 781 acres of agricultural land and parts of Mansouriya in Iraq’s Diyala province.7
In 2014, the group seized control of Iraq’s largest dam, Mosul, which prompted US airstrikes in support of a combined Kurdish–Iraqi offensive mobilised to retake it and prevent its use as an instrument of war by ISIS.8On several occasions ISIS militants also used water resources to gain tactical advantages on the battlefield, including by diverting rivers in Iraq’s Shirwain Basin area to thwart the advance of Iraqi security forces.
The damage (and disruption of access) to water services and facilities since the start of the war in Syria has resulted in a 40% reduction in the availability of drinking water, impacting access to safe water for 14.6m people while also causing mass migration and displacement.9
The conflicts in the Sahel and Somalia have also seen the military instrumentalisation of water by NSAGs. In the Lake Chad Basin, where some 40m people across Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria compete for dwindling water supplies,10 Boko Haram has often used natural resources as a military tool in its strategy of violence. The poisoning of wells and rivers in offensive operations against the Nigerian Army has been the most egregious example.11 Al-Shabaab has also used water as a strategy of coercion. The group’s destruction of the water wells of Garbaharey, a strategically crucial city in southern Somalia, and its seizure of the river basins in the surrounding areas in 2014 deprived the local population living in government-controlled areas of access to water supplies and inflicted hardship on government forces without even occupying the town.12
Political weaponisation
Political weaponisation occurs when natural resources are instrumentalised for political leverage and/or to reinforce legitimacy with local populations (through incentivisation). This modality is not limited to the active conflict phase but can be observed along the continuum of war, including in the instability phases that could precede it and in its aftermath.
While military weaponisation is normally centred around ‘negative’ instrumentalisation of natural resources (in an offensive or defensive way), political weaponisation can include ‘positive’ elements, including the protection of specific natural resources or provision of land and water infrastructure to incentivise support or cooperation from a local population or other parties. In fragile states, where climate vulnerability often overlaps with and exacerbates root causes of conflict or instability, NSAGs’ control of scarce natural resources has proven an effective tool to strengthen their territorial control and legitimacy with the general population – by filling voids left by overstretched and inefficient states (see Box 2).
Box 2: Natural resources for political leverageThere are many examples of the ways in which NSAGs have replaced the state by providing local populations with access to key natural resources under their control, thereby building legitimacy and strengthening their hold on territory.
In Somalia, al-Shabaab wielded water and food supplies not only as a critical part of its strategy against the Somali government but also as an instrument to gain legitimacy with the local population. Building on its widely publicised food-aid campaign during the 2017 famine , the group has since acquired a quasi-state role, imposing taxes on the use of water resources, agricultural products and livestock.
In the ‘Middle Belt’ states in north-central Nigeria, increasing water scarcity and environmental deterioration in recent years have driven displacement and prompted pastoralists from the Lake Chad Basin area and other West African Sahel countries to seek alternative pasture routes, fertile land and water supplies. This has not only led to disputes and violent conflicts with local farmers but also played a significant role in enabling Nigeria’s jihadi insurgencies. Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have skilfully leveraged existing vulnerabilities to position themselves as alternative providers of safe pasture for herders, thereby strengthening their territorial control and influence over vast areas surrounding Lake Chad.13
In Afghanistan, which is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change globally, natural resources have been instrumentalised often by the Taliban in pursuit of political gains and to bolster its legitimacy. In particular, competition over the limited land for opium production, long a source of conflict, has offered the group an opportunity – by allowing opium cultivation in remote areas under its control – to secure farmers’ political support and consolidate economic and political power in rural areas.
Similarly, in Syria and Iraq, control over access to water and lands allowed ISIS to gain and maintain political support for its efforts to establish a ‘caliphate’. The group positioned itself as the legitimate provider of basic services to the population, including water, energy and food supply, while extracting economic value from the natural resources it controlled via taxes.
In Colombia, the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group took advantage of the state’s absence from peripheral territories and widespread discontent around land distribution to exert territorial control and entrench itself in local communities, becoming the de facto government in much of the country’s rural areas.
Figure 2: The nexus between climate change, natural resources and their weaponisation
The international regulatory framework and its shortcomings
The accelerated trend of instrumentalisation of natural resources highlighted above is even more concerning given the many challenges related to their protection in the context of internal armed conflicts. While international humanitarian law (IHL) – complemented by international human-rights law (IHRL) and international environmental law (IEL) principles – does provide a regulatory framework for preventing instrumentalisation, shortcomings abound with respect to the laws’ scope, effective enforcement and applicability to the non-state actors that, crucially, represent the majority of perpetrators in the present conflict landscape.
In terms of the regulatory framework, general IHL rules protecting civilian objects in the conduct of hostility apply to natural resources, including the prohibition to target these indiscriminately, and the principles of proportionality (and precaution to avoid or minimise any environmental damage) whenever they can be considered legitimate military objectives.14 Moreover, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its horrific environmental damages, new and specific IHL rules were established, including the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD); Article 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC); and Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, relating to the prohibition of methods and means causing damage to the environment during warfare. The IHRL and IEL, which continue to apply during conflicts, add an extra layer of defence, the former through its protection of minorities and right to an effective remedy, the latter through most of its provisions.
Worryingly, the existence of this strong body of rules does not seem to be preventing conflict parties from weaponising natural resources. Besides implementation challenges relating to the scope and meaning of certain provisions (i.e., how to assess when a given natural resource is a legitimate military target and how to judge proportionality), mechanisms to enforce the regulatory framework have been lacking or proven ineffective: the ICC’s 2009 indictment of then Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for crimes against humanity (including the poisoning of wells and water pumps by the army under his control) has been the only attempt (so far unsuccessful) to sanction military instrumentalisation of natural resources to date.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that NSAGs are not technically bound to international law in the same way as state actors and international organisations, creating an additional limitation relating to compliance with and enforcement of the international framework protecting natural resources in conflict.15 However, there have been encouraging developments in the international legal architecture with respect to engaging with and regulating non-state actors, acknowledging their increasingly significant role in modern conflicts. Such efforts have included the 2019 UN International Law Commission’s Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in relation to Armed Conflicts (PERAC), which aimed to ensure better protection of the environment during and after armed conflicts and in situations of occupation. PERAC should be adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2022, once UN stakeholders have submitted their comments. Another encouraging development came in 2020 when the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) updated its Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict, which largely cover obligations for NSAGs.16 On a related note, the non-profit organisation Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS) was created in 2018 to increase awareness and understanding of the environmental and derived humanitarian consequences of conflicts and military activities. The organisation is also exploring ways and tools to monitor the implementation of the PERAC principles once they are approved.
Despite the above, ensuring compliance by NSAGs remains a major concern and a continued priority for the international community given how instrumentalisation of scarce resources, including water and land, has become an integral part of NSAGs’ warfare and strategies to assert and retain power in the continuum of war. Efforts must be made to further engage with these actors, promote their accountability and raise their awareness of the significant costs associated with reckless use of the environment in war. Finding a common denominator between their doctrines (including agreements with opponents, unilateral declarations and internal rules and regulations) and international legal principles – and building accountability based on commonality – appears the best possible strategy in current circumstances. Analyses of available NSAG doctrines show that even if very few address environmental questions, most include specific commitments to abide by the ICRC’s Geneva Conventions and/or IHL – in the case of the latter, presumably by its principles on environmental protection.17 Wherever environmental protection is addressed in these doctrines, at times it is arguably more absolute than that provided for by IHL, sometimes justifying attacks in the name of environmental preservation – which incidentally could be problematic with regard to IHL.
Irrespective of an explicit commitment to abide by IHL rules on environmental protection in conflict, many questions remain regarding the actual ability and willingness of NSAGs to ensure compliance in practice. The issue is not only that sometimes doctrines can be driven primarily by propaganda motivations or international pressures, but also that if they are not translated into internal rules, and disseminated and used to inform training for the given NSAG’s rank and file, they may have little impact in practice. Having acknowledged these limitations, NSAG doctrines are a starting point for building consensus on common rules with actors that must be part of the solution.
Possible solutions
The search for better solutions to protect scarce natural resources from malicious instrumentalisation in the continuum of war – with a focus on prevention and NSAGs – is rendered all the more urgent by accelerating climate change.
The international momentum to address climate change has led to greater attention being paid to the environmental repercussions of armed conflict (and related activities) within the UN system. This focus is evident in ongoing debates on climate, water security, conflict and environmental damage (despite the UN Security Council’s vetoes on related resolutions)18 and in the International Law Commission’s draft principles on PERAC. Such developments provide hope that consistent progress towards a more effective international framework is possible in the short to medium term.
The role played by the non-governmental organisation Geneva Call, which has engaged NSAGs to improve their protection of civilians during armed conflicts according to international humanitarian norms, notably by countersigning and monitoring compliance with deeds of commitments, appears a promising strategy to ensure that such actors are better aligned and compliant with (and enforce) IHL environmental regulations. Geneva Call is already focusing on aspects of environmental protection in conflict: in 2021, it adopted a deed on conflict-related food insecurity. A similar instrument, by which NSAGs commit not to weaponise natural resources, could help to raise visibility of the issue while also holding signatories accountable for commitments undertaken. Moreover, such a measure would build pressure on NSAGs to better socialise and disseminate commitments among their members, which it is hoped would result in increasing compliance.
The ICRC has developed contacts with approximately three-quarters of the over 600 armed groups identified worldwide, a number that includes the approximately 100 NSAGs that can be ‘legally classified as parties to non-international armed conflicts’, and has been trying to facilitate the implementation of the Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict.19 The ICRC has proposed concrete actions to this effect, arguing that areas of particular environmental importance or fragility should be identified and designated demilitarised zones.20
NSAGs’ external sponsors are another important lever that should be utilised to increase their engagement and compliance. A large majority of internal conflicts are internationalised and see the intervention or involvement (often through local NSAGs as proxies) of third-party states. Efforts to promote third parties’ commitment to the protection of natural resources in conflict could translate to additional pressure on NSAGs to comply with the international legal framework and to ensure their doctrines and practice implement it.
Finally, the requirement for metrics and data that can enable effective monitoring of natural-resource scarcity – and how conflicts aggravate it – cannot be overstated given the need to prioritise efforts and adopt evidence-based policies and strategies. A particularly important aspect will be the design of early-warning methods and frameworks to identify areas and states most at risk of resources weaponisation (based on conflict intensity, climate vulnerability, presence of natural resources and key infrastructure, governance, and economic and political factors, among others), reduce risks and strengthen resilience. A data-driven assessment of where conflicts involving resources are most likely to take place in the short to medium term would help focus decision-makers’ attention and better facilitate targeted action (including via prioritisation for adaptation financing).
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