Dr. Mario Krauser

Research area

Mario Krauser is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science, Technology and Policy at the ETH Zürich. His research examines the local socio-economic consequences of natural resource production in developing regions. A particular focus of Mario’s work lies on the effects of distinct sourcing methods, such as the association between artisanal mining and conflict, or large-scale extraction and employment. To understand why sometimes undesirable local outcomes persist or new ones even emerge, he draws attention to the involvement of rather different types of actors. Using a political economy approach, he highlights their often-diverging interests, strategies, and leverage.

Addressing the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, current policies target metals and minerals such as gold, tantalum, tungsten and tin as financial motivations behind armed groups’ inflictions of violence. But to date the solutions grapple with the intricacy of the phenomenon. In an articlecall_madepublished in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Mario uses georeferenced data to showcase one of the strategies that rebel groups use to gain their profits: by protecting a mine against lethal violence in the nearby surrounding, the groups establish the basis for collecting taxes from artisanal miners. To maintain this threat, they further purposefully destabilize the wider surrounding of the mine with violence at the same time. Thus, rebels create environments around the sites akin to the eye of a storm. With such new perspectives, Mario’s work is geared towards policies striving to curb negative impacts of resource extraction without causing upheaval to local livelihoods.