Growing the WISEN (Wartime Incidents to Environment Database) for Environmental Peacebuilding

Date & Time
Jun 17, 2026 | 11.00 - 12.30

Participants
Eoghan Darbyshire, The Conflict and Environment Observatory (United Kingdom)
Doug Weir, The Conflict and Environment Observatory (United Kingdom)

Data gaps on the environmental impact of armed conflicts hamper environmental peacebuilding by reducing advocacy and narrative-building opportunities, limiting accountability pathways and biasing recovery needs. One initiative to help close these gaps is WISEN, The Wartime IncidentS to ENvironment Database, which has been developed by the Conflict and Environment Observatory. WISEN identifies and remotely characterises risk and harm from environmentally damaging incidents using a mixture of earth observation and open source intelligence. The WISEN methodology was developed in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, tested for two states in Sudan, and publicly launched in November 2025. At CEOBS we believe WISEN has tremendous potential to support environmental peacebuilding, ultimately covering all conflicts and with the data operationalised by a range of stakeholders. But to unlock this potential we need to build a coalition of international and grassroots organisations, and secure the necessary resources to develop. To pursue these goals, in this workshop practitioners will reflect on the field of remote conflict data collection and work collaboratively to conceive new use-cases and developments for WISEN across three tracks - advocacy, accountability, and recovery.