15 Years of Environmental Peacemaking: Overcoming Challenges and Identifying Opportunities for Cooperation

Mar 13, 2017 | Sreya Panuganti
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As the 1990s drew to a close, there was a sense that much of the momentum gained at the first Earth Summit on sustainable development, a positive, affirming environmental narrative, was waning.

With the end of the Cold War and subsequent increase in civil wars, there was growing concern among governments about resource scarcity contributing to violent conflict. In the academic community too, many researchers were focused primarily on the environment-conflict link. By the end of the decade, many academic debates were bogged down in methodological fights and the policy world turned to other perceived threats when resource scarcity links to conflict or state failure proved complex and uncertain.