Ukraine has finally signed its minerals agreement with the US. The deal states that Washington will eventually receive a share of the profits from the sale of Ukrainian natural resources, providing an economic incentive to continue investing in Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant says the deal demonstrates the Donald Trump administration’s commitment to peace in Ukraine.
On the surface, there is nothing surprising about the deal. The idea that natural resource extraction can play a role in building peace has been around for a decade or two, and has been promoted by the World Bank, the UN and the mining industry itself.
But what is surprising is how the conversation about mining and peace has changed. It used to be about increasing prosperity in war-torn countries, rather than the “who gets what” that has been associated with this deal.
The idea that mining can contribute to peace emerged somewhat paradoxically from the demonstrated capacity of natural resources to drive conflict in places like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sierra Leone. The theory is that mining can also lead to development – and therefore peace – if it is managed properly.
If local communities are consulted, revenues are shared fairly, harms are minimized, and if there is transparency and accountability, a mine can play a role in lifting countries out of the economic, environmental and social mess war brings.
In reality, things are more complicated. The idea that mining can bring about positive change suffers from the same top-down and externally led approach to building peace as the wider peacebuilding model in which it sits. It doesn’t necessarily take local realities and aspirations into account.
But over the past two decades, natural resources in conflict-affected areas have attracted an enormous amount of attention from UN agencies. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), for example, established an initiative in 2008 aimed at understanding the risks and opportunities presented by high-value natural resources.
It developed policies and practices related to mining intended to be part of the UN’s peace and security architecture. These included guidance for UN staff working in post-conflict countries that are rich in resources.
In Sierra Leone, UNEP identified the inability of the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor environmental performance and force compliance as a significant risk to the sustainable development of the mining industry.
The agency had become overwhelmed by the number of environmental impact assessments submitted for review as the sector expanded after the end of the civil war in 2002.
A dedicated project to build capacity in Sierra Leone was set up by the UN to remedy this. The project team report that the environmental impact assessment process itself provided an opportunity for dialogue and trust-building between those involved.
Around the same time, a raft of initiatives were developed for the extractive sector itself to encourage responsible mining. These included the Kimberley Process, a UN-mandated certification scheme designed to eliminate the trade in conflict diamonds. Sierra Leone has been a member since it was launched in 2003.
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an Oslo-based organization of government, industry and civil society representatives, was also established in 2003. Its aim is to promote the good governance of oil, gas and mineral extraction through the reporting of revenues and payments.
The concept of good governance has been expanded to include promoting the participation of women, as well as the disclosure of information relating to the environmental impact of a mine. Over 50 countries now implement the EITI Standard.
All these initiatives and processes can be criticized. But the point is that natural resources in conflict zones have, to a degree at least, been understood as sites for negotiation and dialogue for some time.
Lowering the bar
The natural resources beneath Ukraine have become sites for something else – a conflict-riven back-and-forth over their control. And it’s not just in Ukraine. The US is reportedly considering a minerals-for-security deal in the DRC, where Rwandan-backed rebels are currently seizing resource-rich territory in the east.
The bar appears to have dropped substantially where mining and peacebuilding are concerned. In the heyday of the liberal peacebuilding project, metal and mineral deposits in war-torn countries, like the copper beneath Afghanistan, promised a more positive future, albeit with caution. That optimism now seems misplaced.
In Afghanistan, this is because the country has fallen back under the control of the Taliban. Mines are quickly being developed to take advantage of the country’s mineral wealth. But the technical, financial and environmental checks associated with mining are reportedly being bypassed. There are concerns that any revenues won’t benefit the population in the way they should.
In Ukraine, it’s something different. The mineral deposits there are being used to prop up geopolitical ambitions that reflect the dangerous, transactional and increasingly extractive world we now seem to live in. Specifically, the Ukrainian mineral deposits are bringing an authoritarian, Trumpian version of peace to life.
It is a peace that comes through the geopolitical expression of power by the operation of mines, the acquisition of territory, the expulsion of citizens from certain places and the top-down transformation of other people’s space.
This has already expressed itself in Trump’s vision for the US to take over the Gaza Strip, which prompted the UN’s secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, to warn against ethnic cleansing.
I have written about the problem of natural resource-related peacebuilding before. Whether liberal or illiberal, this problem is the same: geological resources are non-renewable.
There is a profound paradox here. Whatever we want these resources to do for us, they can’t do it indefinitely. And we are heading for even more trouble if we think they can.
Expecting a voracious Trump administration or a beleaguered Ukrainian one to think about this is expecting too much. But therein lies the tragedy of current peacebuilding endeavors. They are fixated on the here-and-now, in the hope that the social, environmental, ecological and geological future will take care of itself.
Unfortunately, it won’t.
Bridget Storrie is teaching fellow, Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
