Elaine (Lan Yin) Hsiao

Assistant Professor
Kent State University School of Peace and Conflict Studies
United States

Aug 11, 2020

Elaine (Lan Yin) Hsiao is a researcher working at the intersection of issues of biodiversity, community conservation, environment, and peacebuilding. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID), conducting research on community conservation in the Albertine Rift. In 2018, she completed her Ph.D. in Resource Management & Environmental Studies from University of British Columbia’s Institute for Resources, Environment & Sustainability. She also holds a J.D. and Master’s degree in International and Environmental Law from the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, and gained her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California Los Angeles in International Economics. Elaine credits her background in law for leading her to the work she is currently doing. While studying at the Haub School of Law, she conducted field research to propose a legal framework for a peace park initiative in Central America, which led her to an increased interest in the connection between transboundary protected areas, peace, and environmental law. Her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “Protecting Places for Nature, People, and Peace: A Critical Socio-Legal Review of Transboundary Conservation Areas”, investigated the relationship between community-based peacebuilding, conflicts, transboundary agreements, and environmental peacebuilding in the Greater Virunga Landscape (encompassing Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda) and Kidepo Valley on the border between South Sudan and Uganda.

Elaine’s current research at SIID focuses on revitalizing community conservation around national parks in Rwanda, where all four national parks are transboundary. At SIID, she works with the Biodiversity and Security (BIOSEC) research project, led by Professor Rosaleen Duffy and funded by the European and Social Research Council (ESRC), to address wildlife crimes and illegal wildlife trade in conflict zones through non-violent and community-based approaches. BIOSEC has also examined the militarization of conservation and the intersection between wildlife crimes, policing, the military, and local communities in conservation. In addition to her work with SIID, Elaine is also working with Galeo Saintz, Richard Matthew, and others on an IUCN CEESP task force focused on forced migration, environmental change, and armed conflict. This initiative brings together practitioners, academics, and researchers from conservation organizations, the United Nations, the Environmental Peacebuilding Association, and humanitarian organizations in order to create a report that highlights the complex interlinkages of forced migration of both humans and other species, and conservation at the interface of environmental change, and armed conflict.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted transboundary conservation in many places, as in-person meetings and on-the-ground work may have been put on hold due to travel restrictions and safety measures. She explains, “Environmental peacebuilding works best when you have personal relationships with people. So much of it is about having partners on both sides of the border, as well as groups with different interests, and having enough faith in each other to work through contentious issues.” Elaine also notes that the need for the CEESP Task Force on Migration, Environmental Change, and Conflict is heightened by the current pandemic, particularly as health needs and shelter-in-place orders put new demands on displaced populations.

Elaine emphasizes the importance of local, indigenous, and alternative peacebuilding mechanisms. As someone coming to this field in 2007, she credits the previous decades of work as providing a place for younger generations to use as a jumping off point for on-the-ground and more local-focused research. She explains, “As well as focusing on big solutions and bigger visions, we need to focus on the small stories. Rather than tackling something huge and overwhelming, by focusing on smaller projects and community-based research, little bits of magic happen, they connect with each other, and they cross-pollinate to create a bigger web of change.”

In advancing environmental peacebuilding, Elaine stresses the importance of promoting three specific categories of peace: an international peace perspective that focuses on relations between states, focused on transboundary and shared resource management; a social peace perspective, which is about identity groups (often indigenous, ethnic, and marginalized groups) and bringing different people together around or through conservation and environmental concerns; and an ecological peace perspective, which focuses on human relationships with the rest of nature and the non-human. She says, “We need to work on and address all three to better advocate and develop holistic, positive peace.” Elaine specifically believes this is possible by focusing on political ecology as an approach to environmental peacebuilding, where scholars such as Philippe Le Billon, Nancy Peluso, and Tobias Ide are all working on environmental peacebuilding from critical and interdisciplinary perspectives.