Environmental Priorities in Post-Conflict Recovery: Efficacy of the Needs-Assessment Process

Abstract

Donors have converged upon an increasingly institutionalised process of promoting post-conflict recovery. The hallmarks of this process are a Post-Conflict Needs Assessment (PCNA), a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), and a UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF). This paper examines the ability of this multi-stage process to address environmental issues. While research demonstrates that environmental governance and natural resource management are key challenges facing war-torn societies, they are often subordinated to other agendas or disappear from consideration entirely. We analyse PCNAs, PRSPs, and UNDAFs for seven cases (Afghanistan, Georgia, Haiti, Iraq, Liberia, Somalia, and Sudan) and compare them to baseline environmental assessments. We ask which types of environmental and natural resource issues garner the most attention and test whether the PCNA–PRSP–UNDAF chain sustains a consistent focus. We find that topics related to infrastructure and environmental governance are most likely to be flagged in PCNAs. In contrast, ‘environmental services’ and mining-related issues are far less likely to be identified. These oversights are problematic given the importance of good natural resource management for reconciliation and recovery, the centrality of environmental services to the livelihoods of poor people, and the role of the mining sector in fostering conflict.

Keywords:

• conflict
• post-conflict
• environment
• environmental policy
• recovery
• development assistance
• needs assessment
• impact assessment

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Lakhpreet Dhariwal, Giang Phan, Isabelle Rodas, and Tristan Slusser for research assistance.

Notes

1 In one instance (Georgia) we substitute a national ‘state of the environment’ report in the absence of a UNEP post-conflict assessment, and in another (Haiti) we use a state of the environment report to complement the UNEP assessment.

2 In two cases, Georgia and Sudan, the PRSP was completed prior to the PCNA. We keep these cases in our analysis because the environmental baseline study for each indicates that the most pressing environmental needs are long-term, cumulative issues rather than those tied to the particular moment of conflict. In two other cases, Iraq and Somalia, there is no PRSP on which to draw. We keep these cases in our analysis for the PCNA and UNDAF stages. In Liberia, all three tools were used but out of sequence, with the UNDAF preceding the PRSP.

3 UNEP’s website reports that it has ‘been an active member’ of a UNDAF country team in seven instances, none of which are among our cases. See United Nations Environment Programme, ‘United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF)’, available at http://www.unep.org/roe/UNDAF/tabid/54609/Default.aspx, accessed 27 July 2015.

4 We did, however, record each tagged passage in the text as either substantial or superficial, allowing us to get a crude sense of the depth of content for different issues.

5 Non-state conflict is ‘the use of armed force between two organized armed groups, neither of which is the government of a state, which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year’. One-sided violence is ‘the use of armed force by the government of a state or by a formally organized group against civilians which results in at least 25 deaths in a year’. One-sided violence excludes extrajudicial killings in government facilities. See UCDP, ‘Definitions,’ available at http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/definitions, accessed 10 August 2015.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tim Kovach

TIM KOVACH is an independent researcher, based in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ken Conca

KEN CONCA is Professor of International Relations in the School of International Service at American University, Washington.