CHALLENGE 

An emerging body of analytic work has demonstrated the linkage between poverty, armed conflict, and weak state governance. States which exemplify this nexus of human vulnerability and state failure are often referred to as ‘fragile states’-- those failing, whether for lack of capacity or political will, to perform core functions of delivering basic services and protecting the security of its citizens.

There are strong correlations between state fragility, conflict, and the means by which natural resources such as forests are managed by the state. When resource rents and concession allocations are used for patronage it has the perverse effect of not only undermining the sustainable use of forest assets for development and access to forests for local livelihoods, but it also short-circuits state accountability to citizens and the development of sound governance institutions, laying the foundations for state fragility and conflict. 

• the impact of conflict and fragility on forests, with a special focus on cross-sectoral post-conflict issues associated with the management of forest resources,
•  the mechanisms and channels of financial flows from forest extraction to state and non-state belligerents, which thereby facilitate or prolong conflict, and
• the characteristics of fragile states that should be the focus of reform in post-conflict interventions in order to improve protection of forests and forest-based livelihoods and to mitigate further conflict.