Conflict-Sensitive Approaches to Environmental Peacebuilding: Considerations for a future of effective programming

art by Rosanna Morris (UK)

Carl Bruch and Shehla Chowdhury (Environmental Law Institute); Alec Crawford (International Institute for Sustainable Development); Amanda Woomer (Environmental Peacebuilding Association); Geeta Batra and Anupam Anand (Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility)

Environmental peacebuilding practitioners and their funders must be prepared for the unique challenges of operating in conflict-affected contexts by creating responsive and effective policies, practices, safeguards, and risk-mitigation strategies to ensure safe, successful, and sustainable interventions.

Context

Conflict-affected or otherwise fragile settings present unique operating challenges: they are typically volatile, marked by complex social cleavages, and in some situations, physically unsafe. To ensure the success, sustainability, and safety of interventions in these contexts, practitioners and their sponsoring institutions must understand the complex dynamics and manage the risks associated with their work. Employing a conflict-sensitive approach to programming does this by seeking to ensure that activities—whether they be conservation, humanitarian, peacebuilding, or of another nature—do not exacerbate or create conflicts but contribute to conditions for peace. For environmental peacebuilding, the importance of conflict sensitivity stems from the recognition that interventions involving decisions about who can use natural resources and for what purposes, made in contexts of conflict, can and often do result in increased grievances and tensions. With conflict risks minimized through a participatory and conflict-sensitive approach, programme planning and implementation can identify opportunities to build peace alongside sustainable, positive environmental outcomes.

Doing environmental peacebuilding does not inherently mean the work done is sensitive to conflict. Practitioners often blur the lines between environmental peacebuilding and conflict-sensitive conservation, reflecting a larger trend of using the term “peacebuilding” as a catch-all. However, such a conflation can obscure the important role that conflict sensitivity should play in environmental peacebuilding efforts. It can also make environmental practitioners wary of engaging with conflict in complex contexts, as they may believe that peace as a goal is unrealistic or outside the organization’s mandate and expertise. Understanding both the differences and linkages between conflict-sensitive conservation and environmental peacebuilding will open doors to different ways of engaging with conflict, peace, and the environment, including through the incorporation of specific conflict-sensitivity strategies at each phase of the project life cycle.

What’s been done

Environmental peacebuilding practitioners can gain valuable lessons from the experiences of other conflict-sensitive conservation interventions. A 2020 evaluation of Global Environment Facility (GEF)-supported programming in conflict-affected and fragile situations revealed a statistically significant, negative correlation between countries’ fragility classifications and project outcomes, sustainability, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) design, M&E implementation, and execution quality. This analysis, which was conducted by the GEF Independent Evaluation Office and the Environmental Law Institute, also demonstrated that a country’s fragility classification has a significant impact on whether a project will be cancelled or dropped.[i] Review of the GEF’s project documents highlighted several pathways through which conflict and fragility can impact projects (Figure 1).[ii]

Analysis shows that when practitioners acknowledge and manage the risks posed by a context’s conflict dynamics, they can adjust their project’s design, implementation, and M&E strategies to address existing and potential dangers. Figure 2 illustrates the primary risk-mitigation strategies used by GEF implementing staff: avoidance, mitigation, peacebuilding, and learning. These approaches are consistent with those of other institutions.[iii]

Practitioners should start by developing a contextual understanding of the conflict. Conflict-sensitive interventions often begin with a conflict analysis, whereby practitioners gather information on the nature, causes, actors, and dynamics of local conflicts alongside other stakeholders. Working with stakeholders, they can then identify entry points for conflict risk reduction and peacebuilding, including making more informed decisions on project investments and partnerships, adapting benefit distribution mechanisms, incorporating lessons learned from similar settings or past interventions, and designing localized dispute resolution mechanisms.

Once practitioners have built fluency with local conflict dynamics, they can proceed to design their projects around this understanding. Practitioners can use a variety of strategies, including those exhibited in Figure 2, to mitigate risks and maximize peacebuilding outcomes. At this stage, practitioners can also benefit from building flexibility into their implementation plans, M&E strategies, and budgets. By preparing contingency scenarios and setting aside emergency funding, practitioners anticipate volatility and minimize conflict-related impacts to their work.[iv]  

Looking ahead

To integrate conflict-sensitive practices into an organization’s culture, management needs to provide the guidance, policies, safeguards, training, resources, and follow-up required to support staff in conflict-sensitive programming. For funders, standardizing conflict sensitivity measures into funding decisions can help ensure the uptake of these strategies, beginning even at the project proposal stage. Proposals can, for example, include a conflict analysis, a discussion of risk mitigation strategies, and the incorporation of conflict sensitivity into M&E frameworks and budgets. This will help ensure that implementers are prepared for conflict dynamics and situations. Interviews conducted with GEF implementing staff revealed that difficulties obtaining funds for conflict and fragility-related contingencies presented challenges in handling crises as they erupted. Thus, ensuring that institutional budgeting practices allow additional funds for conflict-related challenges and emergency preparedness could improve both project flexibility (and thus success) and staff safety.

Another way to improve conflict-sensitive programming could be the development of an international code of conduct for environmental interventions in conflict-affected and fragile situations. The creation of an international standard would promote the uptake of these strategies and ensure a basic minimum of due diligence and understanding when it comes to the line between conflict sensitivity and environmental peacebuilding. Whether an international standard is developed or an institution-specific approach is taken, conflict-sensitive programming should be grounded in conflict analysis; it should also be participatory, inclusive, gender-responsive, rights-based, flexible, transparent, accountable, and sustainable.[v],[vi],[vii]

Footnotes

[i] Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility (2020) Evaluation of GEF Support in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations GEF/E/C.59/01, Global Environment Facility (https://www.thegef.org/sites/default/files/council-meeting-documents/EN_GEF.E_C59_01_Evaluation_of_GEF_Support_in_Fragile_and_Conflict-Affected_Situations_Nov_2020_0.pdf.)

[ii] Ibid., p.48. (Aesthetically modified. Original image appears as Figure 3.1 of the cited report).

[iii] Ibid., p.66. (Aesthetically modified. Original image appears as Figure 3.3 of the cited report).

[iv] Ibid., p.83.

[v] Hammill, A. et al. (2009) Conflict-Sensitive Conservation: Practitioners' Manual, International Institute for Sustainable Development: Winnipeg.  (https://www.iisd.org/publications/conflict-sensitive-conservation-practitioners-manual)

[vi] Conservation International (2017) ‘Environmental Peacebuilding Training Manual’, Conservation International.  https://sites.google.com/a/conservation.org/peace/home/training.

[vii]Ide, T. et al. (2021) “The Past and Future(s) of Environmental Peacebuilding”, International Affairs, 97(1). (https://academic.oup.com/ia/article/97/1/1/6041492)