Tobias Ide

Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations
Murdoch University
Australia

Sep 11, 2018

Tobias Ide is the Coordinator of the Research Field Peace and Conflict at the Georg Eckert Institute and a lecturer at the Chair of International Relations, Brunswick University of Technology. His work focuses on the links between environmental stress, climate change, conflict, and peacebuilding. After graduating with an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Leipzig, he earned a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Hamburg. His dissertation focused on the linkages between violent conflict and climate change, and the effectiveness of the research methods used to study those linkages. He has held positions as a Visiting Researcher at the University of Melbourne and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Tobias’s research on environmental peacebuilding has been published in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Review, and Third World Quarterly, among others.

Tobias’s recent work focuses on environmental cooperation and international peacemaking. As a visiting researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tobias recently conducted research with environmental peacebuilding projects in Israel and Palestine, analyzing how environmental education can create potentials for peacebuilding in the context of a protracted conflict He has also worked recently on a statistical analysis analyzing whether positive water-related interactions have an effect on interstate relations. One of his forthcoming publications provides evidence confirming that when states cooperate over water, peace between these states is more likely to occur in the future. The various strands of his work build on the demonstrated linkages between environment and conflict, while also developing research and knowledge on the numerous ways that resource management and environmental cooperation can support peace.

Much of Tobias’s experience has focused on peace at community levels. He notes that, “I have learned that we should not be focused only on macro-level peace. There are so many interesting environmental peacebuilding projects going on in communities that might not look very high profile, but over the long term, they can have a profound effect.” He has used mixed-methods approaches to analyze the ways in which these peacebuilding projects work, and has helped to inform the broader policy discourse about the connection between resource management and peacebuilding.

As for why he joined the Association, Tobias speaks of his interest in collaborating and exchanging ideas around environmental peacebuilding. “Environmental peacebuilding is a very broad field of research that strives to incorporate peacebuilding and conflict-sensitive methods into resource management; at the same time, it highlights and integrates environmental considerations into broader peacebuilding contexts.” He is particularly interested in seeing how environmental peacebuilding will facilitate interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of environmental security by improving communication and cooperation between people coming from perspectives across political science, geography, anthropology, law, and more.