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.