Natural Resources Governance in Southern Africa

Questions regarding the governance of natural resources will become more politicised in the face of growing international and domestic pressure for access to these increasingly scarce resources. Southern Africa has a rich diversity of natural resources and yet many of the region's countries remain trapped in poverty and are overly dependent on the export of primary commodities. As part of the Institute for Global Dialogue's (IGD) focus on governance, this second contribution to the series on natural resources has set out to capture the nature of the problem in relation to four sector-specific areas: mining, fisheries, forestry and transboundary natural resource management. Through these detailed sector analyses, this book sets out to interrogate the external and domestic demand for resources as well as the socio-economic challenges facing the governance of these resources. Through a number of policy recommendations, this book raises some strategic considerations that may prove essential ingredients in the development of a common position on natural resource governance within southern Africa.