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"Natural Resource Governance in Africa" published on by Oxford University Press.

This chapter explores some of the themes emerging in current research around themes of boundless nature and bounded political spaces and people. It explores how natural resources and transnational governance are global phenomena with uneven geographies, constructed in particular places by particular people and with effects in distant places. This chapter will review some of the key themes and scholarship on nature, politics, boundaries and the re-grounding of the nation-state. The aim throughout is not to be comprehensive but rather to give some idea of current debates.

pt. 1. Frameworks for peace --. - pt. 2. Peacekeepers, the security sector, and natural resources --. - pt. 3. Good governance --. - pt. 4. Local institutions and marginalized populations --. - pt. 5. Transitional justice and accountability --. - pt. 6. Confidence building --. - pt. 7. Integration of natural resources into other post-conflict priorities --. - pt. 8. Lessons learned

This paper reviews natural resource governance in Zimbabwe's peasant sector from colonial to post-colonial times. Governance is considered within the framework of power, process and practice and how these shaped peasant access, control and use of natural resources. Colonial natural resource governance systems resulted in over-centralisation because they were crafted in the context of conquest and subjugation. Over the years, state visions of appropriate management and use of resources have largely been extended to the African peasant sector through a centrally-directed structure and process. However, state control over the use and management of resources among the peasantry was and is largely ineffectual because the state lacks the resources and capacity to enforce such controls. Much of the colonial legislation was inherited piecemeal into post-colonial times, and amendments to date have largely deracialised the colonial acts and policies without democratising them. Pioneering efforts at decentralizing entrustments over use and management of resources to the peasant communities have largely resulted in recentralisation at the district level, where such efforts are still practiced in the trickle-down mode. This is in part because the policy thrust seeking to empower the peasant communities is supply-led, and thus defined according to the terms and processes of external agents, including funders and central governments and their functionaries. The study argues that supply-led decentralisation needs to be complemented by demand-driven decentralisation.

The paper analyzes the impact of natural resource abundance on selected governance indicators. We use a panel data set with observations on a large number of countries over an extended period of time and employ an instrumental variable technique to account for endogeneity. The results show that exports of natural resources have, above all, led to an increase in corruption. This result is robust to both different model specifications and an alternative indicator for natural resource abundance. For other governance indicators, such as law and order and bureaucratic quality, we either find no results or results that lack robustness. Adapted from the source document.

The paper analyses the impact of natural resource abundance on selected governance indicators. In contrast to earlier studies that are mainly confined to cross-sectional analysis, we use a panel data set with a large number of countries and an extended period of time. Moreover, we employ an instrumental variable technique to account for endogeneity. The results show that exports of natural resources have, above all, led to an increase in corruption. This result is robust to both different model specifications and an alternative indicator for natural resource abundance. For other governance indicators, such as law and order and bureaucratic quality, we either find no results or results that lack robustness. -- Natural Resources ; Resource Curse ; Corruption ; Governance

This chapter reviews the literature on natural resource decentralization with an emphasis on forests in developing countries. This literature can be located at the intersection between discussions of good governance and democracy, development, and poverty alleviation, on the one hand, and common property resources, community-based resource management, and local resource rights, on the other. Policies implemented in the name of decentralization, however, are often not applied in ways compatible with the democratic potential with which decentralization is conceived, and only rarely have they resulted in pro-poor outcomes or challenged underlying structures of inequity. Greater attention to who receives decentralized powers, the role of property rights, the notion of "the local," and the meeting of expert and local knowledge provides insights into key issues and contradictions. Fundamental differences in conceptions of democracy, participation, and development lie behind these contradictions and shape strategies for the redistribution of access to political power and resources, which is implied by decentralization.