Welcome to the online home of the Community of Practice on Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace (ECCP).

The ECCP Community of Practice is a collective of more than 950 individuals around the world, working for more than 300 organizations and institutions. This website showcases the collective work of the ECCP, from 2020 to today.

What is the ECCP? How does it work?

The ECCP is a community of practice that aims to strengthen networking and community building on environmental peacebuilding, conflict-sensitive conservation, climate security, and other related topics through collaboration, dialogue, and learning between institutions and individuals around the world.

The ECCP is a constellation of convenings and connections. There are:

  • monthly, community-wide meetings meant to create a platform for networking and relationship building,

  • regular updates with recent publications, events, and resources circulated to the group, and

  • working groups on different topics raised by the community as priorities for collaborative action.

There is no formal “membership” within the community or each project or group, and participants do not need to choose participation in one over the others. Rather, working groups provide a framework for organizing information in a way that does not “re-silo” the community back into focus topics.

ECCP members in Nairobi hosted by Polycom, February 2024

What is the ECCP working on now?

The objectives of the ECCP are:

  1. To foster inter-institutional collaboration and dialogue on ECCP topics and projects.

  2. To promote learning and innovation, recognizing that each actor has a unique angle to bring to the table.

  3. To harness the joint reach of all participants to mainstream ECCP into organizations, institutions, and policy processes.

In addition to monthly meetings and regular community updates, there are a number of working groups that coordinate to achieve specific impact.

Peace@COP is a participatory collective of more than 200 individuals across more than 80 institutions and 5 continents, all with an interest in making climate change policy more peace responsive and conflict sensitive. They meet regularly to develop common policy priorities, exchange information on UNFCCC proceedings, and to plan for annual engagements at the Conference of the Parties (COP).

Recognizing the positive impact of efforts in the UNFCCC, the Peace@CBD working group similarly aligns roughly 60 individuals across 20 institutions to raise visibility for peace and conflict sensitivity in the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD).

Growing out of discussions with funders and policymakers across these multilateral fora, another working group has coming together to develop a catalog of innovative climate finance models, emphasizing cases where funding was directly channeled towards local or community-based actors. The catalog is planned to launch in October 2024, ahead of the COP16 (CBD) and COP29 (UNFCCC).

In the past, other working groups have come together to create a catalog of Nature-based Solutions for Peace, a peer-exchange on environmental peacebuilding practice, as well as the other projects you’ll find linked across this site.

Activities within the ECCP are simply driven by participant interest and request. Members can choose to participate as individuals, or as representatives of their institutions. A current strategic outline is available here.

ECCP members at their collaborative Nature Footprints art exhibition at COP28 in Dubai, December 2023

 

How do I use this website? What can I expect to find here?

This website houses the collaborative work of the community of practice. You’ll find pages dedicated to current working groups, as well as projects throughout the history of the ECCP.

  • Peace@COP - This website has a specific landing page for each COP within the UNFCCC process (COP27, COP28, and coming soon, COP29).

  • Peace@CBD - This page currently links to the policy priorities of the group, and will soon host a list of events and publications related to peace at CBD.

  • Community of Practice - The Community page provides a non-exhaustive snapshot of the participating institutions in the ECCP community of practice.

  • White Paper - From 2020-2022, the community engaged in an ambitious process to collaboratively develop a White Paper on the Future of Environmental Peacebuilding and accompanying compendium of 50 visions for the future of the field.

  • Art - Art is regularly woven into the work done by the ECCP. You’ll find more information about the artists who contributed to the White Paper project, as well as to Nature Footprints, an online & physical exhibition shown at COP28.

Where did the ECCP come from? Where is it hosted?

The ECCP is currently co-hosted by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association (EnPAx) and the Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding (CCDP) at the Geneva Graduate Institute. It is currently managed by a coordinator, Annika Erickson-Pearson, and the contributions of ECCP members to lead or co-lead specific workstreams. Funding is currently provided by community of practice members.

In 2024, the ECCP will embark upon a visioning process to develop a roadmap for the change it would like to affect in the years to come.

The community was created in early 2020 by the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, as a part of its workstream on community management. Over the years, the community has grown from about 40 Geneva-based participants to nearly 1,000 participants around the world. 

In 2020, ECCP community members began to coordinate on a collective project to create the White Paper on the Future of Environmental Peacebuilding. You’ll find that paper and 50 compendium articles here on this site.

Contributing White Paper authors and community participants drew upon the messages and cases in the White Paper to build a collaborative footprint for peace and conflict sensitivity topics at the Stockholm+50 Conference. They co-hosted side events, co-authored articles, and shared responsibility for bringing the topic to policy-makers working on environmental issues. By the end of the Conference, peace, security, and conflict sensitivity were referenced multiple times in outcome documents, and in some cases using the exact wording proposed by community participants.

Collaboration towards Stockholm+50 sparked promise for community collaboration in other policy fora. The group coordinated again to raise visibility of peace issues at COP27, COP28, and soon for COP29.

Today, the community continues to meet regularly online, and in-person around the world. You can read more about the community’s origin, function, and goals in this recent evaluation.

It should be noted that the ECCP is meant to serve as a container for shared action and facilitator of conversation. The ECCP does not take formal positions or jointly endorse policies. Information and views shared on this website and in ECCP communications should not be interpreted as a consensus and do not necessarily represent the views of all members. Instead, the ECCP is a space for individuals and institutions to come together, think, discuss, and act on critical issues.

The ECCP is supported by an active Steering Committee.:

  • Alison Harley, WWF

  • Amanda Woomer, Oxford Policy Management

  • Carl Bruch, Environmental Law Institute / Environmental Peacebuilding Association

  • Eliza Urwin, Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding 

  • Hassan Mowlid Yasin, Somali Greenpeace Association

  • Heloise Heyer, PeaceNexus Foundation

  • Hesta Groenewald, PeaceNexus Foundation

  • Harriet Mackaill Hill, International Alert

  • Keith Krause, Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding 

  • Munini Mutuku, Kenya National Cohesion and Integration Commission

  • Subindra Bogati, Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative 

  • Thomas Reeve, Oxfam

The ECCP is funded and run by members and partners.

We sincerely thank the PeaceNexus Foundation, World Wildlife Fund Colombia and Germany (WWF) through the International Climate Initiative (IKI), and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) for their financial contributions and partnership. We also express appreciation to co-hosts Centre of Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding (CCDP) and Environmental Peacebuilding Association (EnPAx) for the in-kind support that keeps the community going. Finally, we thank Oxfam, International Alert, and Search for Common Ground for their in-kind support to manage the Peace@COP group, as well as Saferworld for their support for the conflict sensitivity group.

Contact Us

To receive updates, please contact ecosystemforpeace@gmail.com.