Towards a Definition of Environmental Peacebuilding

art by Shamsia Hassani (Afghanistan)

Carl Bruch (Environmental Law Institute); Erika Weinthal (Duke University); McKenzie Johnson (University of Illinois); Tobias Ide (Murdoch University)

Environmental peacebuilding is an emerging and rapidly evolving field, and there is value in articulating a broad, integrated definition of the field to support its ongoing development and evolution.

Context

For more than 50 years, the international community has sought to address issues at the intersection of environment, conflict, and peace. With an initial focus on the environmental consequences of war (Vietnam War and the 1990-91 Gulf War) and resource-related conflicts, attention shifted in the early 2000s to the potential for cooperation around shared environmental interests to foster peace[i], as well as the role of natural resources in post-conflict peacebuilding.[ii]

We argue for a broad definition of environmental peacebuilding that integrates diverse topics and disciplines across the environment-security-development nexus. As an overarching framework, environmental peacebuilding includes both the environmental dimensions of peacebuilding and the peace dimensions of sustainable development. It also considers an array of environmental issues that range from managing specific natural resources to protecting the global climate and oceans. By doing so, environmental peacebuilding comprises efforts to prevent environment-related conflicts, to build trust and establish shared identities, to facilitate integration between conflict parties, and to build capabilities for resilient and sustainable livelihoods.[iii] Environmental peacebuilding can build both negative peace (e.g., by addressing conflict resources and other measures to end conflict) and positive peace (e.g., by creating a context for cooperation and integration, making conflict unthinkable).

What’s been done

Over the past decade, scholars and practitioners have experimented with, learned from, and developed conceptual frameworks related to the environmental dimensions of peace and conflict.[iv] This includes the environmental causes of conflict, good environmental governance as a tool of conflict prevention, targeting of the environment during armed conflict, environmental incentives to end conflict, and environmental dimensions of post-conflict recovery.[v] 

Moreover, it is increasingly clear that environmental peacebuilding includes the peace dimensions of sustainable development. In 2015, Sustainable Development Goal 16 integrated peace into the global sustainable development agenda. In line with this, global actors have made conflict-sensitive programming a central component of sustainable development initiatives.[vi] 

Environmental peacebuilding integrates different dynamics, actors, and resources across the conflict lifecycle. This integrative role is important in breaking down institutional, temporal, sectoral, and disciplinary barriers that have often challenged peacebuilding efforts. This integration is facilitated by environmental peacebuilding’s considerations of political economy, equity, and—increasingly—decolonization, to address the economic, identity, power, and social aspects of the linkages between environment, conflict, and peace. Environmental peacebuilding challenges the traditional silos of peace, security, environment, and development. 

Finally, environmental peacebuilding operates at different scales (from the local to the national to the international) and in different conflict contexts (from social disputes and structural violence to armed conflict and war). While much of the early environmental peacebuilding literature focused on international conflicts and approached the analysis from a top-down perspective, recent literature tends to be localized and bottom-up, often focusing on social justice.[vii] Indeed, environmental peacebuilding activities at war’s end increasingly operate simultaneously at multiple scales so that these top-down and bottom-up efforts can reinforce each other and offer integrative and resilient outcomes.[viii] Effective environmental peacebuilding efforts have, thus, been characterized by inclusive participation, adaptive governance, and justice and equity considerations. Given the diversity of issues, topics, disciplines, and actors, scholars and practitioners have struggled since its inception to define environmental peacebuilding in a way that promotes a common language and framing. 

Looking ahead

In making an initial attempt to outline a definition of environmental peacebuilding, we are not calling for a single, hegemonic definition. We are seeking to more clearly articulate a definition that is overarching and inclusive so that the concept can be debated, tested, and contrasted with other understandings of the linkages between environment, conflict, and peace. For the field to grow and become more robust, it needs these definitional debates to understand the conditions under which and the mechanisms by which the environment relates to conflict or peace. A broad framing can foster an integrative approach to research, policy, and practice at the intersection of environment, conflict, and peace. It broadens the range of tools beyond cooperation, and can help frame how environmental, security, humanitarian, and development institutions engage on these issues, especially since many are contributing to environmental peacebuilding but may not recognize the larger picture. Recognizing that role makes it easier to engage with other actors and in different ways than they might otherwise contemplate. 

Footnotes

[i] Conca, K. and G. D. Dabelko., G.D. (2002) Environmental peacemaking, Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington and Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.; Wolf, A.T. (1998) ‘Conflict and cooperation along international waterways’, Water Policy, 1: 251-65.

[ii] See Ide, T. (2019) ‘The impact of environmental cooperation on peacemaking: definitions, mechanisms and empirical evidence’, International Studies Review 21(3): 327-46.[iii] Positive environmental outcomes may refer to improved living conditions and human security in a stable and healthy environment with sustainable use of and access to vital resources and adequate governance of the natural environment, and mechanisms to address or prevent conflicts related to environmental issues.

[iii] Ibid.; Johnson, M.F., Rodríguez, L.A. and Hoyos, M.Q. (2020) ‘Intrastate environmental peacebuilding: a review of the literature’, World Development 137(1): 105150.

[iv] Dresse, A., Fischhendler, I., Nielsen, J. Ø. and Zikos, D. (2019) 'Environmental peacebuilding: towards a theoretical framework', Cooperation and Conflict 54(1): 99-119; Krampe, F. (2017) ‘Towards sustainable peace: a new research agenda for post-conflict natural resource management’, Global Environmental Politics, 17(4): 1-8.

[v] E.g., UNEP (2012) Aggestam and Sundell (2016); Beevers (2019); Unruh (2019); Ide et al. (2021b); Johnson (2021a); Johnson (2021b); Sowers, J. and Weinthal, E. (2021) ‘Humanitarian challenges and the targeting of civilian infrastructure in the Yemen war’, International Affairs 97(1): 157-77.

[vi] GEF (2020) Evaluation of GEF support in fragile and conflict-affected situations.

[vii] Ali, S.H. (2011) 'The instrumental use of ecology in conflict resolution and security', Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 14(9): 31-34.

[viii] Huda, M.S. (2021) ‘Environmental peacebuilding in South Asia: an ecological response to ethno-nationalistic populism’, International Affairs 97(1): 119-138; Ide, T., Palmer, L. and Barnett, J. (2021) ‘Environmental peacebuilding from below: customary approaches in Timor-Leste’, International Affairs 97(1): 103-118.