Environmental Peacebuilding Association

Rethinking Green Foreign and Security Policy in an Age of Environmental and Political Crisis

Date & Time
Jun 18, 2026 | 14.00 - 15.30

Participants
Chair: Falguni Lalwani, Henrich Boell Foundation (India)
Francesca Fassbender, Tel Aviv University (Germany)
Gunel Madadli, Heinrich Boell Foundation (Azerbaijan)
Falguni Lalwani, Henrich Boll Foundation (India)

(1) Panel abstract: Green Foreign and Security Policy (GFSP) has emerged as a normative foreign-policy framework advanced by many Green actors and parties. It seeks to integrate climate and environmental protection with peace, human rights, feminist principles, multilateralism, and restraint in the use of force. Yet, while GFSP is increasingly referenced in political practice, its conceptual boundaries and policy implications remain under-theorized across key arenas of global crisis governance. This panel brings together the Green Foreign Policy Fellows of the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Thessaloniki Office to elaborate GFSP through four distinct perspectives that speak directly to environmental peacebuilding. The contributions examine: (1) how feminist and green foreign-policy agendas can be integrated to address gendered climate insecurity and mobility; (2) how intersectionality can be translated from rhetorical commitment into policy accountability tools; (3) how GFSP narratives travel and are adapted in East African Green parties as forms of normative foreign policy; and (4) how post-war recovery can be conceptualized as a core GFSP arena shaping environmental repair, governance, and durable peace. All the presenters are Green Foreign and Security Fellows at the Heinrich Böll Foundation Thessaloniki The Germany/ Italy (2) Individual Abstracts: A.) An Intersectionality Foreign Policy Toolkit: Operationalizing Intersectionality in Party Platforms for Greens & Progressives Author: Falguni Lalwani India - Heinrich Böll Foundation Thessaloniki This paper investigates how gender is discursively constructed in national climate strategies across Canada, India, and Germany, and how these constructions shape environmental harm, feminised labour, and the potential for just peace. Methodologically, it employs a comparative feminist discourse analysis and an intersectional lens to foreign, security, and climate policy documents across the three countries and shows that policy narratives often valorise “resilient women” to sustain ecological well-being while leaving colonial and structural inequalities intact. By exposing which environments and bodies are protected, extractable, or politically voiceless, the study argues that environmental peacebuilding must move beyond symbolic recognition toward material redistribution and intersectional justice, if it is to dismantle the power relations that reproduce environmental burdens for marginalised gender. B.) Unpacking Normative Foreign Policy in East African Green Parties: A Theoretical Reflection on Values, Voice, and Internationalism of the Green Foreign & Security Policy Narrative Author: Stacy Ogembo Kenya Green Foreign Policy (GFP) has been predominantly theorised and articulated in the Global North, yet it has increasingly diffused globally through a range of actors and institutions, including green political parties in the Global South. A central characteristic of GFP is its normative orientation, anchored in international rules, legal frameworks, and institutions that seek to reduce uncertainty and promote peace within the international system. Despite this diffusion, scholarly engagement with GFP in East Africa remains limited. Addressing this gap, this study examines green political parties in East Africa—specifically the Green Party of Kenya (GCK), the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda (DGPR), and the Ecological Party of Uganda (EPU). Using documentary and thematic analyses, the research investigates how these parties articulate, reinterpret, and adapt normative foreign policy elements shaped by international law, institutional power, and postcolonial governance structures. By foregrounding Global South perspectives, the study critically engages with GFP through a decolonial lens, examining how normative environmental governance both reproduces and challenges existing power asymmetries within international peace and security frameworks. C. Author: Gunel Madadli Azerbaijan Aligning Feminist Foreign Policy and Green Foreign and Security Policy This study investigates how Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) can be integrated with Green Foreign and Security Policy (GFSP) to address environmental change, displacement, and migration through an intersectional justice lens. Using Germany, Canada, and Chile as case studies, it analyzes how gendered vulnerabilities and green security agendas shape climate-related mobility, forced displacement, and access to protection. Applying an adapted 4Ps model (Participation, Protection, Prevention, Promotion), the research identifies synergies and contradictions in state responses to environmental insecurity and migration. Through document and thematic analysis, it proposes indicators for assessing intersectional outcomes, contributing to debates on climate justice and migration with dignity. D.) The Day After War: Environmental Reconstruction and Green Foreign Security Policy Author Francesca Fassbender Germany/ Italy Green Foreign and Security Policy (GFSP) advances strong normative commitments to sustainability, peace, and justice, yet it remains underdeveloped with regard to post-war reconstruction of environmental systems and infrastructure. This omission is consequential, as reconstruction decisions shape long-term ecological vulnerability, political legitimacy, and conflict dynamics. This paper conceptualizes post-war reconstruction as a core but neglected arena of GFSP. It develops an integrative framework that synthesizes insights from environmental peacebuilding, political ecology, sustainable development, and feminist security studies, showing how these literatures can jointly illuminate the power relations, governance challenges, and distributive effects embedded in recovery processes. Using Gaza as an illustrative case, the paper examines how environmental destruction and externally driven reconstruction models constrain peacebuilding and argues that a GFSP-informed synthesis can help move recovery beyond technocratic and securitized approaches toward more durable and just outcomes.