The Environment of Lasting Peace: Natural Resources and Climate Change in Peace Negotiations (chapter in "Handbook of Security and the Environment")
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Author(s): Barbara Magalhães Teixeira
Date: 2021
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes, Cooperation, Peace Agreements, Renewable Resources
Can natural resources and climate change positively affect peace? This chapter explores the relationship between natural resources and climate change and the onset of conflict, and flips the coin to understand how they can positively affect peace instead. Borrowing from fresh water cooperation theory and environmental peacemaking, this chapter proposes a similar approach to natural resources and climate change's possible effect to peace in internal armed conflicts, turning them from conflict drivers to catalysts of negotiations. I argue for a phase-based approach to analyzing how natural resources and climate change can affect peace before, during, and after negotiations, with the intent of improving the discussion on the role of natural resources and climate change in peace and sustainable development.