Minerals & Conflict

The document examines how valuable minerals can finance violence, trigger local conflicts, and weaken state governance through corruption. It provides lessons learned for development interventions, such as empowering local communities, supporting artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), and promoting corporate responsibility. The toolkit includes a survey instrument for risk assessment and lists USAID contracting mechanisms and international partners to address mineral-related conflict.

• Valuable minerals can influence the nature of violent conflict by shifting its geographic focus toward remote regions, lengthening its duration by financing continued fighting, and increasing its intensity by funding arms purchases.
• Minerals are most commonly linked to crime and conflict when they possess specific physical characteristics: they are lootable (easily extracted), small and valuable (easy to transport), and difficult to monitor or regulate.
• Mining activities can trigger lower-scale violent conflicts through disputes over land rights, insufficient compensation for relocated communities, and the use of security forces to expel artisanal miners.
• Macroeconomic dependence on mineral wealth can increase a country's vulnerability to global price fluctuations and empower corrupt elites, which weakens state governance and can lead to a downward spiral of violence.
• Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is often poverty-driven and, while frequently unregulated or illegal, can support development goals if it is officially recognized, regulated, and supported.
• Effective interventions to mitigate mineral-related conflict include increasing local participation in decision-making, supporting transparency initiatives like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), and adhering to international certification schemes like the Kimberley Process.

APA

International Institute for Sustainable Development (n.d.). Minerals & Conflict. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/envsec_minerals_conflict.pdf

Chicago

International Institute for Sustainable Development. Minerals & Conflict. n.d. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/envsec_minerals_conflict.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=International Institute for Sustainable Development |title=Minerals & Conflict |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/envsec_minerals_conflict.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{internationalinstituteforsustainabledevelopmentndminerals, author = {{International Institute for Sustainable Development}}, title = {{Minerals \& Conflict}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/envsec_minerals_conflict.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }