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“While
a large body of research examines the contribution of
environmental degradation to violent conflict, little in the way
of systematic scholarship evaluates an equally important
possibility: that environmental cooperation may bring peace.”
After decades of simmering conflict and heated border disputes,
Peru and Ecuador ceased hostilities under a 1998 peace agreement
facilitated by Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and the United States.
The disputing governments agreed to establish conservation zones
along the border that would be managed by their national agencies
but headed by a binational steering committee. The new Cordillera
del Condor conservation zone—or “peace park”—uses the
interdependence of the two countries’ ecosystems to remove a
thorny obstacle to peace.
Today, there is growing recognition that cooperation can bring
greater benefits than fighting over or merely dividing shared
resources. “Environmental peacemaking “involves using
cooperative efforts to manage resources as a way to transform
insecurities and create more peaceful relations between parties in
dispute. As such initiatives become more frequent and gain
momentum, they may provide a way to transform both how people
approach conflict and how they view the environment.
Environment and Conflict: A History
“Posing a problem as one of ‘environmental security’ may
inhibit cooperation in the very places where the ecological
insecurities of people and communities are most stark.”
Do environmental problems cause or exacerbate violent conflict?
There is some evidence that environmental problems can trigger or
exacerbate local conflicts that emerge from existing social
cleavages such as ethnicity, class, or religion. Yet claims that
environmental degradation induces violent conflict remain
controversial. Some fear that casting environmental problems as
conflict triggers will “securitize” environmental policy,
injecting militarized “us-versus-them” thinking into a realm
that demands interdependent, cooperative responses.
Governments in the global South have long been wary that the
North’s increased interest in international environmental
protection might hamper their own quest for economic development.
In the context of an already contentious North-South environmental
dialogue, poor countries often view the concept of
“environmental security” as a rich-country agenda to control
natural resources and development strategies. Given these concerns,
recasting environmental debates in security terms has not been an
effective catalyst for global environmental cooperation.
Why the Environment?
“By their very nature, environmental problems demand
anticipatory action, entail longer time horizons, and require an
appreciation for sudden, surprising, and dramatic changes.”
As a peacemaking tool, the environment offers some useful, perhaps
even unique, qualities tat lend themselves to building peace and
transforming conflict: environmental challenges ignore political
boundaries, require a long-term perspective, encourage local and
nongovernmental participation, and extend community building
beyond polarizing economic linkages. Given these characteristics,
environmental cooperation could push decision makers to embrace a
longer time horizon, such that future gains weigh more heavily in
current calculations.
Environmental issues encourage people to work at the
society-to-society level as well at the interstate level. Over
time, regular interaction among scientists and non-governmental
organizations may help to build a foundation of trust and implicit
cooperation. For example, despite daily battles in the streets of
the West Bank, Palestinians and Israelis continue to meet
informally to manage aspects of their shared water resources.
Cross-border environmental cooperation may also help to build a
more broadly shared conception of place and community.
Using Environmental Cooperation to Build
Peace
“Environmental peacemaking recognizes that a robust peace will
require a foundation in sustainability.”
Most environmental peacemaking initiatives fall into one of three
partially overlapping categories: efforts to prevent conflicts
related directly to the environment, attempts to initiate and
maintain dialogue between parties in conflict, and initiatives to
create a sustainable basis for peace. Initiatives that target
shared environmental problems may be used to establish a direct
line of dialogue where other attempts at diplomacy have failed.
Often, conflicting nations find the environment to be one subject
where communication can be maintained.
Shared
environmental challenges may be useful not only for initiating
dialogue but also for actually transforming conflict-based
relations by breaking down the barriers to cooperation—transforming
mistrust, suspicion, and divergent interests into a shared
knowledge base and shared goals. In the end, whether the
environment causes the conflict or simply aggravates it is
irrelevant, as there will be no long-lasting peace unless groups
can cooperate and develop a solution.
Remaining Challenges
“Despite environmental peacemaking’s potential, a skeptical
eye is warranted when such initiatives remain the narrow purview
of governments and political-economic elites.”
Initiatives that improve trust and reciprocity among governments
without promoting a broader, society-to-society foundation for
peace run the risk of reinforcing the zero-sum, state-based logic
of national security. They are also prone to short-term mitigation
efforts that fail to address the full scope of the problem.
Narrow government-to-government initiatives risk creating the
conditions for more-efficient resource plunder, promoting neither
peace nor sustainability. There is also a danger that governments
are simply deciding things over the heads of people most affected
by the projects. Eco-tourism may benefit wealthy hotel owners and
foreign investors far more than locals living in the shadows of
cross-border peace parks. In southern Africa, projects were most
successful when greater control over land and resource use was
ceded to local communities.
Making Environmental Peacemaking a Reality
“Environmental Peacemaking strategies offer the chance to craft
a positive, practical policy framework for cooperation that can
engage a broad community of stakeholders by combining environment,
development, and peace-related concerns.”
Cross-border
environmental cooperation can yield tangible environmental,
economic and political gains. If properly designed, environmental
initiatives can also reduce tensions and the likelihood of violent
conflict between countries and communities. Yet environmental
cooperation does not occur easily or automatically. Knowledge of
environmental initiatives designed specifically to address
violence and insecurity is limited. Governments and other actors
have just begun to share experience and knowledge about
environmental peacemaking through peace-and-conflict assessments
of environmental programs. The challenge is to amass evidence that
these strategies could create opportunities.
The
Environment and Security Initiative (ENVSEC), a partnership
established in 2002 among the Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe, the UN Environment Programme, and the UN
Development Programme, is an important attempt to test
environmental peacemaking arguments. Its objective is to identify,
map, and respond to situations where environmental problems
threaten to generate tensions or offer opportunities for
cooperation. Yet ENVSEC also illustrates the hurdles commonly
faced by attempts to put environmental peacemaking ideas into
operation. Host governments often contest the idea of
environment-security linkages, or consider them less important
problems. Various stakeholders have different expectations, and
political sensitivities must always be considered.
Nevertheless,
globalization’s ability to move political dynamics out of narrow
interstate settings and into a broader society-to-society context
is an important and healthy sign. This new social space holds much
of the potential for environmental peacemaking.
Further
information as well as the references for this material is
available in State
of the World 2005
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