Intersectional Perspectives on Environmental Peacebuilding

Jul 26, 2024 | Marisa O. Ensor

At a time when the world is witnessing the greatest number of conflicts since World War II, and irrefutable scientific evidence confirms that  humanity has fundamentally and irreversibly transformed the Earth system, the field of environmental peacebuilding could not be more relevant. The interrelated nature of peacebuilding on the one hand, and environmental protection – including climate action and natural resource management – on the other, has been clearly established. It is also widely acknowledged that climate change threatens to increase the risk of violent conflict. Women, youth, and members of minority groups are being differently and disproportionately affected by the resulting challenges as well as the opportunities for meaningful participation. Current approaches to environmental peacebuilding, as spearheaded by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association, respond to these realities by promoting inclusive, intersectional perspectives to amplify and elevate a diversity of voices. The recently celebrated Third International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding (18-21 June 2024, The Hague, Netherlands) was a celebration of the progress made, and an effort to catalyze continued collaborative action.

The Emergence of Environmental Peacebuilding

The international community has sought to address issues at the intersection of the environment, conflict, and peace for more than half a century.  In the early 2000s, attention expanded from a focus on resource-induced conflicts and the environmental consequences of war (e.g., the Vietnam War; the 1990-91 Gulf War), to the potential of cooperation over shared environmental interests to foster peace, with natural resources playing an important role in peacebuilding; some referred to this as “environmental peacemaking.” As currently understood, the new field of environmental peacebuilding “represents a paradigm shift from a nexus of environmental scarcity to one of environmental peace.” It incorporates natural resource management into peacebuilding activities and strategies to support security, humanitarian, and development objectives. Overall, environmental peacebuilding seeks to fulfill 4 primary objectives (1) preventing environment-related conflicts; (2) building trust and establish shared identities; (3) facilitating integration between conflict parties; and (4) building capabilities for resilient and sustainable livelihoods.

Since its establishment in 2018, the Environmental Peacebuilding Association (or EnPAx, for short) has contributed to the development of the field by bringing together researchers, practitioners, and decision makers working on issues of environment, conflict, and peace. From its inception, EnPAx’s three main aims have been: (1) to identify promising research avenues and best policy practices while fostering the exchange of knowledge and data; (2) to build capacity and awareness among practitioners to advance the field and increase its impact; and (3) to promote interactions among scholars, practitioners, decision makers, and others across disciplines, genders, geographical locations, and stages of professional development.

Intersectional Perspectives

The Environmental Peacebuilding Association, several UN agencies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and multiple gender and peacebuilding networks, have all called for more comprehensive analysis on the links between conflict, gender and social inequality, and the triple planetary crisis – the three interrelated problems of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Each of these problems is a crisis with its own causes and effects, but each of them shapes, and is shaped by, the others. Policy and practice aiming at addressing these issues has the potential to reinforce – or undermine – progress in the others. To effectively address the intersecting challenges of environmental protection, conflict, and inequality, it is thus imperative to integrate intersectional gender perspectives into environmental peacebuilding initiatives. This requires mainstreaming gender considerations across all stages of environmental peacebuilding policy development, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. Likewise, transdisciplinary and intercultural co-production of knowledge can also improve environmental peacebuilding outcomes in conflict-prone, environmentally fragile contexts.

Originally coined by Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a US critical legal race scholar, intersectionality refers to how multiple factors or systems of power and oppression – such as gender, race, class, age, and sexuality – intersect in defining the societal structures and people’s lived experiences. Scholars, practitioners, and policy makers must prioritize intersectional approaches guiding the implementation of inclusive environmental peacebuilding initiatives. Only then will these efforts properly address the unique vulnerabilities of different social groups affected by the various manifestations of environmental insecurity, as well as their local capacities and sources of resilience. The synergetic effects of compounded multi-faceted marginalization must also be addressed. Despite the clear connections between these various challenges, there is still a limited understanding of how they interact in practice. Recent field evidence highlights how gender and cultural identity in particular are largely absent from discussions around climate change and conflict, thus hampering inclusive environmental peacebuilding action. As Ide, Vogler, Sändig, and Dalmer emphasize in a recent blog post, “environmental peacebuilding efforts which build upon and reproduce gender and other inequalities can have adverse effects.” Raising awareness and strengthening capacity to integrate environmental protection and intersectional gender considerations into political analyses as well as conflict prevention and sustaining peace strategies is thus essential.

The Road Ahead

While gender and social equity, the triple planetary crisis, and peace and security are each well-established policy areas, the mutually reinforcing nature of gender-climate-security risks is a much more recent subject for consideration. In a world where climate change is exacerbating preexisting vulnerabilities and multiplying risks to peace and security, understanding and responding to climate-related security risks, including the intersectional dimensions of such risks, has become a strategic priority. Incorporating an intersectional range of perspectives promotes more holistic and effective solutions that address the needs and concerns of all stakeholders. Environmental peacebuilding is a field that aims to do precisely this; it informs research and practice seeking to ensure the mainstreaming of environmental issues in peacebuilding efforts, foster trust, and facilitate interdependence between parties through environmental cooperation. International institutions like UNEP have also recently championed environmental peacebuilding as a path forward.

The inclusive, intersectional approach discussed in this post is reflected in EnPAx’s leadership, membership, and demographic composition of the attendees at the various meetings celebrated so far. EnPAx’s current Board of Directors comprises 9 women and 6 men, while a third of the Chairs of the various Interests Groups (8 women, 8 men, 7 young professionals) hail from developing countries. Overall, EnPAx members – more than 400 individual members and 30 institutional members – come from 78 countries, with over 90 countries represented at the recent (18-21 June 2024) Third Conference held in The Hague, Netherlands. Panelists and speakers at this conference addressed 5 themes key to environmental peacebuilding – (1) climate change; (2) data and digital technologies; (3) natural resources and conservation; (4) peace, justice and accountability; and (5) water – as well as a 6^th open theme. Gender, Indigenous Peoples, youth, and other axes of social differentiation featured as either the central focus, or as cross-cutting issues in most events. As noted in the conference brochure, “this is an exciting time to be working in the field.”

Dr. Marisa O. Ensor is an applied environmental and legal anthropologist currently based at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) where she leads the portfolio on climate security.  She is also the current Chair of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association’s Gender Interest Group (“EnPAx-GIG”).