Natural resources and the prospects for gender-just sustainable peace

Nov 17, 2022 | Carol Cohn and Claire Duncanson
View Original

To build peace that is gender-just and sustainable, we need to start with two questions: What are the conditions of people’s lives at the end of wars, and what do they need to recover? And how can the root causes of war be addressed? Answering them reveals that what usually happens in post-war contexts is essentially the opposite of what’s required!To build gender-just sustainable peace, post-war states must repair war’s harms, create sustainable livelihoods, invest in both social and physical infrastructure, transform the inequalities that underlie wars, and find ways to forestall the worst of the climate and ecological crises and to restore biodiversity and ecosystems.Instead of such efforts, which are essentially about rebuilding people’s lives and livelihoods, and the environments on which they depend, we see economic recovery prescriptions designed to rebuild the state’s financial stability and its ability to pay its debt.