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NORGLOBAL2-Norge - global partner

Mapping marine resource conflicts across sub-Saharan Africa: patterns, drivers and solutions for coastal communities

Alternative title: Kartlegging av marine ressurskonfliktar i Afrika sør for Sahara: utbreiing, årsaker og løysingar for kystsamfunn

Awarded: NOK 6.0 mill.

Globally, the coastal zone is experiencing rapid population growth, increased pressure on traditional sectors like fisheries, and the growth of new commercial sectors including aquaculture, wind and wave energy, and tourism. Anecdotally, these changes have led to a greater likelihood of conflicts over marine resources. The United Nations has recognized that resolving such resource conflicts is essential for sustainable resource management. In spite of this recognition, scientific research on marine resource conflict patterns is virtually non-existent. Without this knowledge, designing management or policy interventions to mitigate these conflicts is challenging and identifying areas that may be more vulnerable to conflicts is not possible. These problems are particularly important for countries that depend on marine resources for their nutrition, economic welfare, and coastal protection. Our project fills this gap by implementing the first systematic assessment of spatial patterns and drivers of marine resource conflicts at international, national and local scales with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and selected case studies. First, MARICA surveyed experts and systematically collected reports of marine resource conflicts in newspaper, magazine and other periodicals over the last 10 years to create a marine resource conflict database. Then, we analyzed whether factors like ecosystem health, governance, or population demographics may be related to greater risk of conflict. MARICA is using expert surveys from across sub-Saharan Africa and household surveys from our 3 case study countries - in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa - to identify which resource management and policy interventions are most likely to be successful in different contexts. The project has been led by the Norwegian Institute of Water Research (NIVA), with partners: Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions (USA), the Wildlife Conservation Society (Kenya), University of Ghana (Ghana), University of Western Cape Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies: PLAAS (South Africa), Norwegian Computing Centre (NR), University of Bergen, and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). The main project activities have been the mapping of large-scale patterns in marine resource conflicts, and researching local scale drivers of conflict though household and expert surveys. For the former, we have conducted a systematic review of the periodical literature (through the Factiva database) for a 10-year period in English-, French-, and Portuguese-speaking countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We also developed a conflict typology codebook to ensure consistency and transparency in coding conflict events, following standards developed by PRIO and other conflict research institutions. The coding of these articles has been used to create a database of occurrences of marine resource conflicts, their type, scale, degree of resolution, and the actors involved. To complement this database, we have also carried out a remote, online survey of experts to identify additional conflict events, their drivers, and solutions that have been implemented to address them. Together, the conflict database and online survey are allowing us develop a comprehensive understanding of conflict drivers and solutions. Analyses of patterns associated with conflict type, actors, and resolution as well as large-scale drivers based on this work will be completed in 2024. For the local-scale drivers and solutions for marine resource conflicts, the first step was to develop household and key informants survey to be used as the basis of data collection in our case study countries - Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. The surveys were piloted in all the case countries by early 2020, and the experiences were used to refine the final surveys and a joint sampling methodology across the three case countries for execution in 2021. Analyses of the case-wise investigations are ongoing; one paper (Kenya) has been published, two others are in progress. A comparative paper across the three African countries is also being prepared. The Kenyan case analysis suggest that since overfishing arises from distal processes not responsive to local solutions, a focus on local action is expected to limit the ability to address such problems. Hence, one should leverage higher scales of governance to address the broader scale depletion of stocks, resolving inter-community conflicts, and achieving broad-scale compliance with national laws. Concurrently, one should support community-based management and co-management principles such that both local and distant conflicts are addressed. By improved coordination and integration of information and institutions both proximate and distal common’s problems could be addressed.

The MARICA project has made an important contribution to elevating the importance of resolving marine resource conflicts for development. Conflicts compromise management and policy efforts to deliver on multiple Sustainable Development Goal targets, such as those related to poverty (Goal 1), hunger (Goal 2), health (Goal 3), gender equality (Goal 5), economic growth (Goal 8), life below water (Goal 14), and peace (Goal 16). We consider this increased knowledge and understanding of why conflicts happen and how to better manage them to be important for a range of stakeholders, including national governments, fisheries agencies, development agencies. The MARICA project builds knowledge for policymakers to engage more effectively with actors and sectors to reduce conflicts. The project provides new and policy relevant knowledge on marine resource conflicts that closely ties up to the thematic and geographical focus of Norwegian development aid, and we envision making our findings available to policy makers in Norway, in case study countries, and through regional bodies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through the project we have also increase survey capacity in case study countries for marine resource conflict research and strengthened partnerships with communities to enable better policy recommendations to avoid their marginalization in marine resource management.

At the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, it was recognized that the failure to understand and resolve marine resource conflicts inhibits attempts to achieve sustainable resource management. In spite of this recognition, academic research on marine resource conflict patterns is virtually non-existent. Without this knowledge, designing management or policy interventions to mitigate these conflicts is challenging and identifying areas that may be more vulnerable to conflicts is not possible. These problems are particularly important for several sub-Saharan African countries that depend on marine resources for their nutrition, economic welfare, and coastal protection. Our project will fill this gap by implementing the first systematic, multi-scale assessment of spatial patterns and drivers of marine resource conflicts across sub-Saharan Africa and in 3 case studies in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. First, MARICA will create a novel database of incidents of marine resource conflicts using periodical reports and survey results from regional experts across sub-Saharan Africa. Then, we will explore whether the frequency of conflict is related to potential conflict drivers like resource condition, resource dependence, governance, or population demographics and whether the identity of these drivers changes from international to local scales in our case studies. Conflict can also be a catalyst or inflection point for positive change in resource management. MARICA will use expert surveys from across sub-Saharan Africa and household surveys from our 3 case study countries to create a roadmap for identifying which resource management and policy interventions are most likely to be successful in different contexts. Our approach will be applied to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but findings will have broad relevance for marine resource management in other regions.

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NORGLOBAL2-Norge - global partner