Powerful relations: the role of actor-empowerment in the management of natural resource conflicts : a case of forest conflicts in Ghana

Keywords: natural resource conflict, power, actor-empowerment,Ghana

Increasingly, conflicts over natural resource (NR) use and management have attracted the attention of both scholars and professionals. While the recognition that conflict has both constructive and destructive capabilities have dawn on us, the negative outcomes have been prominent in many cases, calling for innovations in conflict management. The question of 'power' has been observed as crucial to any such innovations in conflict management. However, it has been noted that current approaches to the study of conflict and power do not offer in-depth understanding of power and how it plays itself out in NR conflicts. Besides, the role of power in NR conflicts has not been well studied. The aim of the study was to enlighten current understanding of the role of power in conflict management interventions by investigating the patterns of strategies and resources that conflict actors used to empowerthemselvesand others to manage impairments. The study established that actor-empowerment is highly context bound and conflict interventions cannot benefit from any predictive patterns such as strategy reciprocity. Thus, instead of relying on predictions of reciprocity from game models, it has been argued that intervention will benefit from understanding actor and systemic factors that constrain the mobilisation of specific resources for mutual influence. It has also been pointed out that our understanding of the role of power in conflict can be enhanced using chronological reconstruction of conflicts and studying conflicts as a two-actor game model.