ABSTRACT
The problematization, or subjecting to critical reflection, of transborder natural resource management requires understanding of the underlying socio-political processes that influence how transborder natural resource management is shaped. This chapter addresses two of those processes: (1) the formation of national territories and the demarcation of their borders; and (2) the often stressed relations between the people who reside in borderlands and the government actors of the nation-state to which the borderland inhabitants belong. These are relevant to the understanding of transborder natural resource management in that the management of natural resources in borderlands, within a single country or straddling two neighbouring countries, is in many locations a cause of conflict because the exact location of nation-state borders may be disputed as a result of historically inconclusive definitions of national territory. This is exacerbated when, as is so often the case in borderlands, relations between the state and peoples residing in borderlands are stressed.
