RGS Annual Conference 2016

Sep 4, 2016 | Becca Farnum
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The RGS Annual Conference 2016 took place this week at the Royal Geographical Society and included a session on "Environmental Peacebuilding: The Peace-Environment-Conflict Nexus (2): Nature as Diplomat: Emerging Theories and Practices of Environmental Peacebuilding." Participants examined the logic of the environmental peacebuilding rationale and the links between peace, the natural environment, and conflict. The focus was on critically considering when and where peacebuilding does and should happen, the unique position occupied by nature in these processes, and the need to examine both the negative and positive consequences of environmental concerns. Examining theoretical debates and including practitioner and activist voices, the session considered whether environmental scarcity inevitably leads to conflict; what the goal of environmental peacebuilding is and should be; how the natural environment might be understood as a tool, actor, and/or stakeholder in peacebuilding processes; and how various actors at multiple scales might learn from successful examples of environmental peacebuilding.