Ecosystem for Peace is a collection of projects and publications made by the Community of Practice on Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace (ECCP).

The Community of Practice is administered by the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, but is a collective of more than 800 individuals around the world. This website hosts the range of projects that the community has collaboratively created since its start in early 2020.

The first and flagship project of the Community is the White Paper on the Future of Environmental Peacebuilding.

The white paper is a policy document with a call to action. Its goal is to stimulate thinking, policy, and funding for innovative programs and solutions around environmental peacebuilding. While it is not an advocacy document, it illustrates a number of options available to actors. It is not comprehensive, but it tries to encompass many topics while still maintaining a cogent, focused narrative. Its primary target audience is policy-makers.

The white paper tries to reflect, as best it can, the wisdom of the crowd. And what a crowd! It is a collaborative project guided by the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, PeaceNexus Foundation, Environmental Peacebuilding Association, Environmental Law Institute, and International Union for Conservation of Nature. The White Paper was written by Oli Brown and Giuliana Nicolucci-Altman. The Compendium pieces were edited by Oli Brown, Paige McClanahan, and Giuliana Nicolucci-Altman. Art Direction was by Lynn Finnegan with illustrations and artwork from artists around the world.

It is the product of a multi-lingual, multi-stage, consultative process carried out over many months with 154 authors writing the 50 chapters in the Compendium and more than 150 people being involved in consultation and reviews of different iterations of the paper.

The project formally launched online on 1 February 2022 at the Opening of the Second International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding.

The White Paper delivered a strong, cogent message about the relevance, evidence, and promise of environmental peacebuilding to the Stockholm+50 forum in June 2022. The community continues to collaborate in multilateral policy fora.

Contributing 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, and has embarked on a 12-month long planning process for COP28. Specific collaborating institutions are named on the pages for projects which they participate in.

Participation in the Community of Practice is flexible and informal. Information about additional tracks on environmental peacebuilding practice and evidence is available on the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform website.

You may contact Annika Erickson-Pearson at annika@gpplatform.ch with specific questions. You are also invited to subscribe below to the mailing list to be notified of upcoming collaborative opportunities.