PROSA Resources

The rapid growth of emerging economies is one of the most striking trends of the early 21st century. The positive and negative effects of this development not only concern the population in the respective regions, but extend far beyond. The increased demand for energy and mineral resources which – among other consequences – even prompted the established industrial countries to apply a far more active raw materials policy than, for example, in the 90s of the 20th century, should be mentioned here in particular. Furthermore, the trend has had profound repercussions on the respective mining regions, in particular in Africa, Asia and Latin America. While – in the business sections of daily newspapers – it has often been suggested in the context of the increasing need for raw materials, that the local mining regions in effect have achieved more prosperity as a result of the development in the Asian emerging economies, these interrelations are often over-simplified and, regretfully, not usually the case.

On the contrary, numerous research approaches suggest that countries, the primary goods of which account for a high share of exports, are highly susceptible to domestic conflicts. Some examples are the wars in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (access to timber and minerals), the conflicts in the Niger Delta (allocation of the revenues from extracting crude oil) or the long-running civil war in the Indonesian region of Papua (allocation of revenues from the mining of ore). Although access to the resources and the allocation of revenues made are only rarely the sole triggers of a conflict, they often have the effect of aggravating the disputes or prolonging their duration. These typical conflict patterns are nothing new and were already observed long before the commodity boom of recent years. Nevertheless, increasing raw materials prices led to an aggravation of conflicts in recent years: an evaluation of the work of the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research reveals a clear trend towards an increased number of resource conflicts, which mirrors to a large extent the development of rising raw materials prices:

Oeko-Institut uses the PROSA social indicators to cover the social impacts of resource extraction in a complete and coherent manner. In this context, the following works and analyses have been published so far:

Article "Sustainable raw materials management by means of certification"

“Social impacts of artisanal cobalt mining in the D.R. of Congo

You can find further information on cobalt mining on the website resources fever