The severing of links between humans and non-humans as a war strategy (2024)

OUR FUTURE IS INTERDISCIPLINARY, INCLUSIVE, AND EQUITABLE: ACKNOWLEDGING AND REDRESSING PHYSICAL, STRUCTURAL, AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL VIOLENCE IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL PEACEBUILDING FIELD

THE FUTURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL PEACEBUILDING, 2022

Moving beyond natural resources as a source of conflict: Exploring the human-environment nexus of environmental peacebuilding

THESys Discussion Paper, Paper 2 2016. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. Pp. 1-21, 2016

The Environment and Armed Conflict

Oxford Scholarship Online

Armed conflict is inherently destructive of the environment. It can cause serious and irreversible damage and threaten the health and livelihoods of individuals and the planet as a whole. International environmental law (IEL) cannot and is not relegated to peacetime, but continues to apply and interact with international humanitarian law (IHL). Therefore, principles of IEL must play a role before, during, and after conflict. This chapter focuses on general principles of IEL, specifically intergenerational equity and the precautionary principle. It demonstrates that these principles can and should be used to interpret and apply existing IHL for civilian and environmental protection. It concludes with a look at peace agreements and truth commissions, arguing that despite limitations of their past use they can provide fertile ground for building sustainable peace.

Toward Sustainable Peace: A New Research Agenda for Post-Conflict Natural Resource Management

Global Environmental Politics, 2017

This forum reflects upon the current state of research on post-conflict natural resource management. It identifies two dominant perspectives on environmental peacebuilding in the literature: one focused on environmental cooperation, the other on resource risk. Both perspectives share a concern for the sustainable management of natural resources in post-conflict settings and prescribe environmental cooperation at large as a means to foster peace and stability. Yet both perspectives also feature notable differences: The cooperation perspective is driven by a faith in the potential of environmental cooperation to contribute to long-term peace through spillover effects. The resource risk perspective , however, recognizes that resource-induced instability may arise after intrastate conflict; stressing the need to mitigate instability by implementing environmental cooperation initiatives. Despite the significant contributions of both perspectives, neither has provided any cohesive theoretical understanding of environmental peacebuilding. This article suggests a timely revision of the research agenda to address this gap. For international and domestic actors, post-conflict situations constitute one of the most difficult policy arenas to understand and operate within. In this context, the role of natural resources management has received increasing scholarly attention over the past two decades, as researchers have focused on the ecological foundations for a socially, economically, and politically resilient peace. However, this research has not led to a cohesive theoretical understanding of the pathways by which environmental cooperation facilitates peace. This is concerning, because it is increasingly evident that the interaction between social, political, and ecological processes decisively shapes the post-conflict landscape.

Introductory Comments: The Pervasive, Persistent, and Profound Links Between Conflict and the Environment

2012

International conflict and conservation of natural resources

1988

The missing link : environmental change, institutions, and violent conflicts

2011

In current debates about climate change, the environment is often seen as a potential cause of violent conflicts. According to this view, environmental degradation will significantly increase the stress put on various societies, particularly in so called weak and fragile states, and thereby cause political destabilization and violence while jeopardizing national and international security. Drawing on research conducted within the NCCR North-South, this article shows that establishing such direct causal links is simplistic and reductionist. While recognizing that climate change, and especially resource scarcity, can lead to violent conflict, we argue that, when trying to understand the relationships between changes in the environment and violent conflict it is crucial to put social and human dimensions at the centre of the analysis. Climate changes may render human interaction and social regulation more difficult, but it will hardly ever directly affect the probability of violence. C...

The Future of Environmental Peace and Conflict Research

Environmental Politics, 2023

Interest in the intersections of environmental issues, peace and conflict has surged in recent years. Research on the topic has developed along separate research streams, which broadened the knowledge base considerably, but hardly interact across disciplinary, methodological, epistemological and ontological silos. Our forum addresses this gap by bringing into conversation six research streams on the environment, peace and conflict: environmental change and human security, climate change and armed conflict, environmental peacebuilding, political ecology, securitisation of the environment, and decolonizing environmental security. For each research stream, we outline core findings, potentials for mutual enrichment with other streams, and prospects for future research.

The political ecology of war: natural resources and armed conflicts

Political Geography, 2001

Throughout the 1990s, many armed groups have relied on revenues from natural resources such as oil, timber, or gems to substitute for dwindling Cold War sponsorship. Resources not only financed, but in some cases motivated conflicts, and shaped strategies of power based on the commercialisation of armed conflict and the territorialisation of sovereignty around valuable resource areas and trading networks. As such, armed conflict in the post-Cold War period is increasingly characterised by a specific political ecology closely linked to the geography and political economy of natural resources. This paper examines theories of relationships between resources and armed conflicts and the historical processes in which they are embedded. It stresses the vulnerability resulting from resource dependence, rather than conventional notions of scarcity or abundance, the risks of violence linked to the conflictuality of natural resource political economies, and the opportunities for armed insurgents resulting from the lootability of resources. Violence is expressed in the subjugation of the rights of people to determine the use of their environment and the brutal patterns of resource extraction and predation. Beyond demonstrating the economic agendas of belligerents, an analysis of the linkages between natural resources and armed conflicts suggests that the criminal character of their inclusion in international primary commodity markets responds to an exclusionary form of globalisation; with major implications for the promotion of peace.

Bavinck, M., L. Pellegrini and E. Mostert (eds., 2014). Conflict on natural resources in the global South - conceptual approaches. Boca Raton, USA, CRC press.

2014

Inhabitants of poor, rural areas in the Global South heavily depend on natural resources in their immediate vicinity. Conflicts over and exploitation of these resources – whether it is water, fish, wood fuel, minerals, or land – severely affect their livelihoods. The contributors to this volume leave behind the polarised debate, previously surrounding the relationship between natural resources and conflict, preferring a more nuanced approach that allows for multiple causes at various levels. The contributions cover a wide array of resources, geographical contexts (Africa, Asia and Latin America), and conflict dynamics. Most are of a comparative nature, exploring experiences of conflict as well as cooperation in multiple regions. This volume finds its origin in an innovative research programme with the acronym CoCooN, steered by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO/WOTRO) and involving universities and civil society partners in many countries. It presents the conceptual approaches adhered to by each of seven interdisciplinary projects, ranging from green criminology and political ecology to institutional analysis, legal pluralism and identity politics. The volume will be of interest to academics and practitioners concerned with an understanding of conflict as well as cooperation over natural resources.