Professionalization or Constriction? Embedded Assumptions in Environmental Peacebuilding Toolkits

Erin Czelusniak, Georgetown University (United States)
Ken Conca, American University (United States)

As the field of environmental peacebuilding has evolved, scholars have identified a wide range of causal mechanisms by which environmental initiatives may strengthen peace, grounded in different and sometimes contested understandings of power, agency, and drivers of violent conflict. This article examines how efforts to ‘professionalize’ environmental peacebuilding practice, through toolkits, field manuals, and training for practitioners, engage with environmental peacebuilding theory. We conduct content analysis of a sample of professional toolkits to test which strands of environmental peacebuilding theory are predominant in terms of professional socialization. Specifically, we assess how these tools implicitly or explicitly theorize conflict and peace; the scales of socio-ecological phenomena they privilege or de-emphasize; the types of cases they consider to be of pedagogical value for professionals; and whether they are cognizant of some of the blind spots, under-researched areas, or unintended consequences that have been identified within the field.