Environmental peacebuilding


Environmental peacebuilding examines and advocates environmental protection and cooperation as a factor in creating more peaceful relations. Peacebuilding is both the theory and practice of identifying the conditions that can lead to a sustainable peace between past, current or potential future adversaries. At the most basic level, warfare devastates ecosystems and the livelihoods of those who depend on natural resources, and the anarchy of conflict situations leads to the uncontrolled, destructive exploitation of natural resources. Preventing these impacts allows for an easier movement to a sustainable peace. From a more positive perspective, environmental cooperation can be one of the places where hostile parties can sustain a dialogue, and sustainable development is a prerequisite for a sustainable peace.

Definitions

The study of peacebuilding develops from interest in identifying the conditions that lead beyond a temporary cessation of violence to sustainable processes of conflict management and mutual cooperation between those who have previously been adversaries or might engage in destructive conflicts in the future. As envisioned by key thinkers such as Galtung or Lederach, peacebuilding refers to a comprehensive and long-term transformation of a conflict situation towards negative and eventually positive forms of peace. Beginning with Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali promoting An Agenda for Peace in 1992, the United Nations adopted the language of post-conflict peacebuilding and developed programs based on it.
Recent studies have identified two dominant perspectives: the cooperation perspective is driven by the potential of environmental cooperation to contribute to peace through spillover effects. This perspective focuses primarily on the interstate level and often on conflict prevention rather than post-conflict peacebuilding. In contrast, the resource risk perspective recognises resource-induced instability, especially after intrastate conflicts, and stresses the need to mitigate these risks to sustain the absence of violence, through facilitating environmental cooperation.
The exact definition of environmental peacebuilding varies between different academic and policy documents, and the term is often used interchangeably with concepts like environmental peacemaking, disaster diplomacy or peace ecology. The Environmental Peacebuilding Association uses the following definition: "Environmental peacebuilding integrates natural resource management in conflict prevention, mitigation, resolution, and recovery to build resilience in communities affected by conflict." According to a literature review published in 2018, environmental peacebuilding "refers to all forms of cooperation on environmental issues between distinct social groups, which aim at and/or achieve creating less violent and more peaceful relations between these groups." In this context, peace is explicitly understood to refer to negative forms of peace as well as to positive forms of peace.

Mechanisms

Environmental peacebuilding can result from unilateral efforts or from cooperation between two adversary parties. In the former case, actors such as international donors, governments or the civil society engage with environmental and resource management issues. These efforts can result in more peaceful relations, for instance if water infrastructure is provided in post-war cities, former combatants receive support to build alternative livelihoods, or high-value resources are managed to avoid grievances, environmental destruction and resource curse effects. In line with this, the United Nations Environment Programme has placed environmental peacebuilding and conflict on its agenda since the 1990s, conducted environmental assessments of conflict zones and has recommended a stronger integration of environmental issues into the work of the UN Peacebuilding Commission.
Environmental cooperation between adversaries can lead to more peaceful relations between states through four main pathways: First, it can improve the environmental situation, hence addressing environment-related grievances, mitigating environmental conflicts and improving livelihoods. Second, environmental cooperation can increase trust and understanding by encouraging adversaries to work together and by providing opportunities for win-win interactions. Third, such cooperation illustrates inter-dependencies between various parties and can provide an entry point for follow-up cooperation, and is therefore cultivating interdependence. Finally, environmental cooperation facilitates the building of institutions, which provide forums for conflict resolution and dialogue.

Results of quantitative research

While there is a lot of case-based, qualitative research on specific environmental peacebuilding projects or initiatives, there are few cross-case, statistical studies on the issue. Various studies have shown that at the international stage, water cooperation is considerable more likely than water conflict. But this indicates that water-related issues are solved in a cooperative manner rather than that water cooperation has a wider impact on peacebuilding. Barquet, Lujala and Rod find that militarised interstate disputes are less frequent among states that share a trans-boundary protected area, but again, such conservation cooperation could be a result of more peaceful interstate relations.
Ide finds that substantial international cooperation on water and conservation facilitate the transformation of intense international conflicts in the following five-year period, but only if a number of scope conditions is present, especially high levels of environmental attention, internal political stability, a tradition of environmental cooperation, and already ongoing processes of reconciliation. The study uses the existing case literature to show how its positive cases are true instances of environmental peacebuilding. Another recent study uses refined datasets, but also finds that water-related cooperation increases the likelihood of more peaceful relations between states, especially over a time horizon of ten years and if the states are not in acute conflict with each other.

Environmental peacebuilding in the Middle East

The 1991 Madrid Conference, co-sponsored by the United States and the USSR, brought together representatives of the governments of Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, and a Palestinian delegation within the Jordanian delegation. The conference established working groups on refugees, regional security, economic development, water, and environment. The working groups on water and environment, and to some extent the one on economic development as well, had the agenda of bringing environmental cooperation and sustainable development into the formulation of a path to a sustainable
Middle East peace.
The subsequent Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Peace treaty between Jordan and Israel each had sections that envisioned joint committees on water, environmental cooperation and economic development. When negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority stalled and relations again became strongly adversarial, progress towards cooperation on water, the environment and sustainable development also stalled. At the formal level there are contacts across adversarial lines between government officials and experts, water infrastructure was kept out of the violence of the Second Intifadah, and there is some degree of cooperation – not widely publicized - on urgent water and environmental concerns. Cooperative relations between Jordan and Israel have been maintained but progress is limited by the effects of the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Diplomatic work on environmental peacebuilding in the region has been supplemented by the development of a small network of civil society organizations that promote and practice regional environmental cooperation.

Organizations involved in environmental peacebuilding in the Middle East

Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information

opened in 1989 during the first Intifada under joint Israeli and Palestinian directors. IPCRI established the Water and Environment division in 1992. A 1993 edited book presented Palestinian and Israeli perspectives on water cooperation. Three IPCRI workshops held between 1994-6 on "Our Shared Environment" were followed by three volumes of papers from the workshops. The IPCRI Water and Environment division took the lead in organizing a 2004 Israeli-Palestinian International "Water for Life" Conference, co-chaired by Israeli and Palestinian professors, held in Turkey, where over five days about 130 participants from the region were joined by about 50 international water experts.
Subsequently, working with Israeli and Palestinian experts, IPCRI undertook a study of the management of the trans-boundary Nahal Alexander / Wadi Zomer basin. IPCRI is a partner in the "GLOWA Jordan River" study of the impact of climate change on the Jordan basin, and has undertaken, with the support of the Government of Japan, work designed to provide a model for low cost sanitation to a West Bank village.

EcoPeace Middle East

was founded in 1994 as a meeting place for Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Israeli environmental NGOs and became an affiliate of Friends of the Earth in 1998. EcoPeace has a wide range of projects – organized around particular geographic areas, water, and environmental policy. FoEME has promoted protection rather than development of the Dead Sea and its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, advocated the establishment of a "peace park" along the Jordan River, and vigorously questioned the proposed mega-project to channel water from the Read Sea to the Dead Sea. The NGO circulates a monthly "environmental peacemaking" newsletter.
Since 2001 the EcoPeace Good Water Neighbors project has been working with Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian communities that are mutually dependent on shared water resources. Each community is partnered with a neighboring community. Good Water Neighbors works with local community members on water awareness and development. GWN uses dependence on shared water sources as a basis for dialogue and cooperation between partnered communities. EcoPeace features a significant educational component, including working in school with students, teacher training and green business trainings.
EcoPeace has published its own study of environmental peacebuilding. External research on EcoPeace and especially the Good Water Neigbors largely provide positive evaluations, considering them as providing a small, yet realistic and important contribution to both peacebuilding and environmental protection in the Middle East. There are a few skeptical voices, however, highlighting the limited impact on the ground and a de-politicisation of the wider conflict situation.

Migrating Birds Know No Boundaries

The initiative aims to preserve trans-boundary bird life in the region. In order to do so, it brings together Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians, hence also facilitating trans-boundary exchange and cooperation, for instance to put up nesting boxes for barn owls. Other activities include the lobbying to decision makers, workshops with farmers and education projects in schools. Migrating Birds Know No Boundaries was founded by Tel Aviv University scientist Yossi Leshem and is supported by prominent decision makers such as former IDF general Baruch Spiegel and the retired Jordanian general Mansour Abu Rashid.

Environmental peacebuilding in other world regions

Environmental peacebuilding projects have been conducted in other world regions as well.
In Southern Africa, several trans-boundary peace parks have been established with the support of the Peace Parks Foundation since the 1990s, such as the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Area and the Lubombo Conservancy. Assessments of these projects often highlight several negative aspects, such as the dominance of South Africa, the exclusion of local populations vis-a-vis state and business interests, and a low impact on peaceful international relations. Conservation cooperation between the DR Congo, Rwanda and Uganda in the Virunga region, by contrast, has yielded some conservation and peace benefits even though it took place in an environment characterized by political instability and low economic development. There are also bottom-up dynamics of environmental cooperation amidst conflict between pastoralists and farmers in several African countries, including Ghana and Kenya.
In Europe, environmental peacebuilding took place on the divided island of Cyprus and in the Kosovo, especially to manage shared water resources across political boundaries. A trans-boundary peace park for the Balkan region has also been suggested. So far, these initiatives have stimulated exchange and civil society cooperation between conflict parties, but had little impact on formal peace processes.
Latin America is home to two of the so far most successful environmental peacebuilding projects. The establishment of a conservation area and demilitarized zone in the Cordillera del Cóndor supported Ecuador and Peru in resolving their long-standing conflict in 1998. Similarly, environmental cooperation in the context of the Central American Commission for Environment and Development and especially in the Trifinio region was instrumental to the termination of the rivalry between El Salvador and Honduras in the early 1990s.
Asia has seen a great variety of environmental peacebuilding initiatives. Water cooperation along the Aral Sea served to consolidate interstate relations in the 1990s, but could not stop the environmental disaster in the region. Similarly, the Permanent Indus Commission and the Mekong River Commission allowed for environment-related cooperation and exchange even during times of conflict, though the impact on wider international relations remained limited. A recent study compares environmental cooperation dynamics between three pairs of states in conflict and finds that such cooperation is usually weak or moderate in intensity and should be considered as an outcome rather than as a driver of more peaceful relations. Relatedly, Ide finds no case of successful environmental peacemaking between states in Asia. But UNEP's efforts to rehabilitate the Iraqi Marshlands indirectly contributed to peacebuilding by restoring livelihoods in the region. Also, just like in various African states, there are well-documented cases of bottom-up environmental peacebuilding, for instance around water resources in Yemen.

Critique and negative effects

While environmental peacebuilding aims to address peace- and environment-related problems simultaneously and offers a more positive and less deterministic lens on environmental security, it has also been criticized both as a concept and a practice. Researchers have argued that environmental peacebuilding suggests a win-win approach and romanticizes environmental cooperation. This could pave the ground for technical solutions that obscure wider political conflicts and socio-economic inequalities. Peace parks in southern Africa as well as large-scale hydropower cooperation can result in displacements of local populations and the occurrence of conflicts. Environmental peacebuilding can also serve as a pretext for coordinated resource exploitation. A systematic assessment describes six potential negative effects of environmental peacebuilding practices : depoliticisation, displacement, discrimination, deterioration into conflict, delegitimisation of the state, and degradation of the environment. While these effects are avoidable and even if they occur can co-exist with far larger positive effects, researchers and practitioners have to pay more attention to such adverse consequences of environmental peacebuilding.

Institutionalization

The Environmental Peacebuilding Association seeks to further exchange, research and training on environmental peacebuilding. It conducts conferences and workshops on the issue and also sponsors several awards, including the Al-Moumin Award and Distinguished Lecture on Environmental Peacebuilding. It has also developed a MOOC on environmental peacebuilding. The Association produces a bi-weekly update that contains information about publications, events, positions and developments relevant to environmental peacebuilding.
"Land and Environment" is one of the ten themes of the The University for Peace, sponsored by the United Nations, includes as one of its eight graduate programs. Governmental and civil society organizations have also explored the role of environmental issues in peacebuilding. The EU sponsored has produced a series of The International Crisis Group includes as one of its key areas.