Containment Theory Of Conflict Management

As a concept, Conflict management has been conventionally associated with conflict containment. According to Hugh Miall, conflict management theorists “see violent conflicts as an ineradicable consequence of differences of values and interests within and between communities.” These theorists regard “Resolving such conflicts as unrealistic: the best that can be done is to manage and contain them, and occasionally to reach a historic compromise in which violence may be laid aside and normal politics resumed.” This definition assumes that conflicts are irresolvable and that handling is limited to containing them and ending the violence.
However, other theorists believe that it is possible to eliminate conflicts. Therefore, they see conflict
…conflict resolution is more ambitious, as it expects the parties to face jointly their incompatibility and find a way to live with or dissolve it.
It could be concluded, therefore, that the main trend in conflict studies is to define conflict management as being on the same level as conflict settlement or containment. In other words, the general view of conflict management is that it is less advanced or that it covers a narrower range of treatment of conflict in comparison with other, more ambitious or advanced methods of dealing with this problem. Fisher et al. states that while they make “no claim” that there are a “universally accepted” typology for the methods used in addressing conflict, there are “consistent” terms, seen as “steps in a process" and "each step taken includes the previous one.” The authors classify these steps as conflict prevention, conflict settlement, conflict management, conflict resolution and conflict transformation. In their view, the definition of conflict management is that it “aims to limit and avoid future violence by promoting positive behavioural changes in the parties
There is need, therefore, to understand how such conflicts are generated, developed and methods of managing it. Natural resource based conflicts are a branch of environmental conflict, a specialized form of environment conflict. It is important to look at conflict from a broader sense. To do this one needs to borrow from the framework of international environment conflict because the two are linked especially when the goals of users of these resources become incompatible.
The study will use several tools like the escalation model developed by Jon Martin Trolldalen who defines international environmental conflict as; “conflicts that arise from the utilization of natural resources in one country which has negative environmental consequences for another country or groups of countries. Natural resource based conflicts specifically relate to access, control and unsustainable use of natural