Solutions need to be developed today to prevent anticipated resource scarcities from resulting in conflicts. This was the credo of the conference on "Competition and Conflicts in Resource Use" held in Darmstadt in early May. The conference, organized by the Darmstadt Technical University, witnessed discussions by scientists and sociologists. These were centred around potentially conflict-causing impacts due to the changing availability of energy and non-energy resources, renewables and non-renewables. The main focus was on oil, natural gas, uranium, copper, iron, water and biofuels. There was unanimous consensus that an absolute scarcity among the non-renewable resources exists only with regard to oil and gas. As regards mineral resources, present day conditions may lead to a higher short term demand than available supply. This situation, too, may stoke conflicts in the producer countries. It was also feared that there may be an arms race to secure access to resources of strategic importance.

A farsighted approach towards the production and sustainable use of resources is therefore imperative to meet the demand for rare metals in the long term. Such an approach would involve bringing transparency into the cycle from raw material production to utilization and recycling, as well as avoiding material losses as far as possible. The spotlight was also on greater transparency in the debate on preventing conflicts in producer countries. Resource supply chains should be traceable from extraction to utilization in the end product. This would put an end to the unequal distribution of income from resources and the financing of conflicts through the exploitation and use of raw materials such as coltan. Apart from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the certification or determination of the resource footprint was also proposed as an approach to move forward on this issue. (Meike Westerkamp)



Additional information about the event is available here: http://www.ianus.tu-darmstadt.de/ressourcentagung.php

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, June 2009