Environmental Peacebuilding (chapter in Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Peace)
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Author(s): Erika Weinthal and Carl Bruch
Date: 2026
Topics: Conflict Prevention, Cooperation, Governance, Peace Agreements, Protection and Access to Justice
Environmental peacebuilding offers a meta-framework for examining the intersection of environment, conflict and peace. The field addresses, inter alia, the targeting of the environment and natural resources during armed conflict, the use of natural resources to finance armed conflict, development of peace agreements, environmental cooperation to prevent armed conflict, and post-conflict recovery and reconstruction. Scholarship on environmental peacebuilding and international and domestic law has rapidly developed to include transparency and accountability policies and the recent work on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict. This entry surveys the legal dimensions of environmental peacebuilding, highlighting protection of the environment during armed conflict, addressing conflict resources, cooperation, and gender. Ongoing work on environmental peacebuilding has further turned to the role of bottom-up approaches for governing natural resources and the role of inclusive and participatory approaches.