The conflict between stakeholders in Ardabil and Germi counties, Ardabil Province, Iran

What has been identified as the relationship between natural resources and conflict? In what ways are natural resources used to trigger conflict and instability? Who are the main players and actors in resource conflicts? To address these questions, this article critically reviews the main theoretical and empirical works on natural resources conflict. This area was studied as the target population due to the rich forest and rangelands resources and considering the existing conflicts in the Ardabil province. The conflict of interest between exploiters and natural resource experts is one of the problems that may have remained from the period of nationalization of forests and rangeland (1962) and has become more critical gradually. In this regard, the inapplicability of the laws, the numerous transfers that have taken place over the years, and the lack of transparency of the border between national lands and exceptions, have led to many problems. This study seeks to investigate the reasons and causes of the conflict between the key natural resources key stakeholders including beneficiaries people who use the rangelands or forest and the local authority or national actors (government) over natural resources in the study area.

legal, managerial, exploitation, and social components were examined from the perspectives of both experts and stakeholders. A number of 205 questionnaires were completed by the officials of natural resources of Ardabil and Garmi cities and its stakeholders with the Snowball Method. The validity of the main variables was more than 0.7, which is an acceptable number. Divergent validity index, among all features, was less than 0.9, which indicated that there is no dependence between the variables of each feature. Since the scale of measuring the views of experts and stakeholders is the rating, the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test was used to compare the views of two groups on the causes of conflict in natural resources.

The results showed that the natural resources conflict in the whole region, there isn’t a significant difference between the factors affecting the conflict between the local community and government experts in terms of perspective. The most important components for increasing the conflict in this region from the perspective of beneficiaries are lack of expertise of the resolution council, lack of government support for ranches, financial poverty, conflict with rangeland encroachers, low level of awareness of stakeholders, and according to the experts, lack of government support for ranches, lack of law, lack of rangeland cooperative, insufficient water in rangeland, financial poverty, lack of cooperation among the people and migration. Land grabbing, coaling, wood smuggling, and understory tillage aren’t the most challenging issues. From the managerial point of view, both groups have declared that the most effective way to reduce the conflict is the confinement of forests and pastures, but the participatory management issues were not acceptable according to the two groups’ viewpoints. Effective presence of experts in the field, recognizing the livelihood potentials of the region and encouraging and educating people to know alternative jobs are suitable ways to reduce the conflicts.

It seems that the plans of stopping the exploitation of natural resources are more accepted in this region. Participatory management is one of the solutions to reduce the conflict which necessity of its implementation was not acceptable according to the two groups’ viewpoints.