Ecological peace: Exploring the possibilities of environmental peacebuilding for future conflict and resource security

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Sustainably managing natural resources is essential for humanity's long-term survival. Climatechange-related effects could expose vulnerable communities or nations, execrating existing tensionsand unearth new conflicts around access and control of vital resources.[1] The majority of literatureabout environmental peacebuilding - building cooperation around ecological resources - isconcerned with catalysing shared resources to prevent conflict.[2] Researchers have identifiedseveral cases where groups in conflict have put aside their differences and cooperated in the face ofshared environmental challenges [3].Less explored is the potential of transboundary environmental peacebuilding to avert both regionalconflict and environmental problems. This research will examine the use of environmentalpeacebuilding to prevent potential conflict or act as an entry point to peace negotiations, and at thesame time explore if environmental peacebuilding can lead to cross-border resource conservationthat improves the specific areas of present and future conflict hotspots, arriving at a set of principlesfound in successful cases.This project links political ecology and peacebuilding using 'conflict ecologies', examines a newperspective on the relationship between climate change related effects and behaviours of resourceusers and governments, and offers a novel perspective on decision pathways from the local to theregional level. In doing so, it challenges normative research linking environmental shocks to conflictand violence, instead pinpointing the cooperative opportunities of peace and conservation ofpotential ecological problems. Specifically, the study investigates what make societies vulnerable toenvironmental stress and thereby violent conflict, the influence of environmental cooperation on 3changing intergroup relations (from cooperation to violence and vice versa), and conditions underwhich cooperation around ecological resources succeed and conflict therefore reduces.Using theories of transboundary environmental peacebuilding [4] and regional resource conservation[5], this research draws on a successful case study demonstrating the importance of multiple scalesof governance to highlight and extract causal conditions of the phenomenon. Applying thoseconditions to a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of 7-10 further environmental peacebuildingcases, the research will result in a series of generalisable principles that could contribute to a greaterunderstanding of how catalysing a shared natural resource can transform a situation from conflict topeace and secure greater levels of resource conservation.