Fighting for black stone
Extractive conflict, institutional change and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3671812 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mckenzie F Johnson (0000-0003-4649-3843, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 97 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 81-101 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ia/iiaa056 |
| OpenAlex | W3119826455 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
Environmental governance reform-especially in the minerals sector-has featured prominently in Sierra Leone's peacebuilding agenda. While reform has enhanced environmental governance capacity in ways that foster peace, it has also exacerbated conflict over the redistribution of extractive rights. This article examines one such conflict over tantalite in northern Sierra Leone. In the chiefdom of Sella Limba, violence erupted as local landowners and a multinational company utilized institutional hybridity-or the blending of informal-indigenous institutions with liberal reforms-to construct competing claims over mineral rights. The resulting uncertainty over the extractive 'rules of the game' accelerated conflict as stakeholders attempted to (re)negotiate the distributional consequences of institutional change in real time. International and national actors ultimately rejected hybrid institutional arrangements on the grounds that they distorted post-conflict reforms and undermined peace. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork, I retrace the conflict to provide an alternative perspective. I contend that institutional hybridity served as a necessary component of, rather than barrier to, peacebuilding because it 1) opened space for diverse political participation in post-conflict environmental governance and 2) promoted greater political accountability and integration. These outcomes have been theorized as ways in which environmental reform can facilitate post-conflict peace. This argument aims to advance environmental peacebuilding theory by examining the conditions under which environmental governance reform contributes to post-conflict peacebuilding
Accountability · Corporate governance · Economics · Environmental governance · Hybridity · Peacebuilding · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sierra leone · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Transboundary Water Resource Management
Catastrophes, Confrontations, and Constraints
Toxic diplomacy through environmental management
Artisanal mining, mechanization and human (in) security in Sierra Leone
Constructing a crisis
Conceptualizing resilience within environmental peacebuilding
New Visions, Critiques, and Hope in the Post-Liberal Age? A Call for Rethinking Intervention and Statebuilding
Sustaining peace through better resource governance
Poor performance of west Sumatran governments in resolving palm oil conflicts
Relational peace
Intrastate environmental peacebuilding
Governing after Farc
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,83 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |