About the Themes
Environmental peacebuilding explores how natural resources and the environment interact with conflict prevention, resolution, and recovery with the goals of building resilience in communities affected by conflict. The Environmental Peacebuilding Association brings together people involved in environmental peacebuilding to share lessons and developments.
Academic work alone cannot create the understanding necessary for effective environmental peacebuilding. Art of all forms plays an essential role in developing the cultural understanding needed for empathetic and creative environmental peacebuilding solutions. The Environmental Peacebuilding Association aims to make art a significant part of our work, valuing creative approaches and materials equally with traditional forms of academic research and practitioner reports.
Building the Evidence Base: Environmental peacebuilding is a dynamic field, with ongoing learning from practitioners, advocates, and researchers. This theme connects research and practice to identify success stories and lessons learned in environmental peacebuilding. Proposals on this theme may explore a range of approaches for building the evidence base including, for example, digital technologies and tools for data collection and analysis, techniques for monitoring and evaluation, and participatory methods and citizen science. There is a particular emphasis on analyses of what works under what circumstances from a wide range of environmental peacebuilding contexts, including climate change; water management; education; environmental and natural resource governance; conservation, biodiversity, and peace parks; addressing conflict resources; and community education and engagement.
Climate Change: Climate change is a threat multiplier and conflict accelerant; it also presents opportunities for cooperation. Proposals on this theme may address, for example, analysis of climate-conflict linkages; climate-related displacement and migration; tools to predict potential hotspots for climate-related conflicts; climatic disasters as a potential trigger for marginalization, exclusion, or conflict; climate as a platform for greater cooperation; sustainable food systems; climate mitigation measures as an unanticipated driver of conflict (the so-called Green Resource Curse); the role of indigenous groups, women, and other marginalized communities in climate change adaption; the role of the UN Security Council and regional organizations such as NATO; considerations in securitizing climate change; and other conflict and peace dimensions of climate mitigation and adaptation.
Public Health: The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the ways in which health, the environment, and peace are closely interlinked; the Ebola Virus Disease and other zoonotic diseases reinforce these linkages. Under this theme, we encourage proposals that explore the public health dimensions of environmental peacebuilding. These include, for example, the implications of COVID-19 for environmental peacebuilding (including digital innovations for more inclusive programming); parallels between the logistical complications of implementing environmental peacebuilding programming and managing a pandemic; the One Health approach; the Planetary Health approach; water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH); how environmental peacebuilding approaches can improve pandemic response; managing emerging climate-related diseases in fragile countries; ways that public health issues can lead to openings for cooperation around the environment (e.g., air pollution); and Indigenous Peoples, bioprospecting, and biomedicine.
Rights and Justice: Rights and justice are central to environmental peacebuilding. This theme focuses on the ways in which marginalized populations have been disproportionately impacted by the environment-conflict nexus; the roles of Indigenous Peoples and other minority groups, women, and youth in environmental peacebuilding; and the rights and needs of non-human animals, ecosystem, and Earth. Proposals within this theme may, for example, examine theories and practices of environmental justice (and environmental injustice) as it relates to environmental peacebuilding; environmental defenders; environmental human rights; the rights of nature; educational programming for empowerment; amplifying underrepresented voices; equitable collaborations with underserved communities; anti-racist and anti-imperial approaches to environmental peacebuilding; integrative approaches; and environmental rule of law.
Business and Markets: Trade, economic processes, and the private sector present substantial opportunities and risks for environmental peacebuilding; they are also affected by environmental peacebuilding. This theme explores innovations and learning in corporate social responsibility, entrepreneurship, and impact investing; impacts of business on the natural environment and communities; programs to shape business practices (such as labeling and certification schemes); fair trade; and the role of government regulation in supporting sustainable business practices. Topics might relate to, for example, supply chains (including social cohesion across value chains); legal and illegal extraction and trade of natural resources (including conflict resources); due diligence obligations; company-community dialogue processes; benefit-sharing; and trade partnerships.
Creative pieces related to any of these themes, or to other issues of importance to environmental peacebuilding, are welcome.
