Seeking Panelists: The Political Ecology of Environmental Peacebuilding – Exploring its Values and Critiques in the Context of the Green Economy | POLLEN Biennial Conference 2018

Nov 26, 2017 | Political Ecology Network
View Original

The POLLEN Biennial Conference 2018, is looking for paper proposals and panelists for the "CfP POLLEN18: The Political Ecology of Environmental Peacebuilding – Exploring its Values and Critiques in the Context of the Green Economy" panel.

Panel Description: 

We invite papers which explore the political ecology of environmental peacebuilding and critically assess its theoretical values and pitfalls in the context of the green economy. The aim of this panel is to critically reflect on the concept of environmental peacebuilding that the dominant peacebuilding paradigm promotes as a ‘greener’ solution to reductionist “resource war” approaches (Homer-Dixon, 1999). The peace potential of the environment has gained prominence in academic debates over the last two decades (Ali, 2007; Bernauer et al., 2012; Conca and Dabelko, 2002; Conca and Wallace, 2012; Collier and Hoeffler, 2004; Le Billon, 2008). These scholars emphasize the potential of the environment to contribute to post-conflict peacebuilding as part of the “Green Economy”, predominantly focussing on two central themes: post-conflict resource risk and environmental co-operation (Krampe, 2017a).

In this regard, a wide range of works investigated the distribution of revenues from high-value resource commodities in post-conflict settings (Lujala and Rustad, 2012); issues stemming from land control, territory and the management of land-based resources (Le Billon and Baird, 2012; Unruh and Williams, 2013); water resources, sanitation and related infrastructure systems (Weinthal et al., 2014; Jägerskog et al., 2015; Krampe, 2017b); and good governance of natural resources and local livelihoods (Young and Goldman, 2015; Le Billon, 2014; Bruch et al., 2016). Opposed to these promoted potentials, a growing body of critical literature challenges the environmental peacebuilding concept as a new ‘greening’ rhetoric for old liberal peacebuilding approaches based on economic growth and market liberalization (Cramer, 2006) and its contribution to measures of ‘green’ violence and militarization (Duffy, 2015; Lunstrum, 2015; Büscher, 2015; Marijnen and Verweijen, 2017).

Although such a vast body of research has generated much-needed empirical data, a coherent theoretical conceptualisation of underlying dynamics for environmental peacebuilding remain largely absent from these debates. Recent works by Ide (2017), Le Billon (2017), and Krampe (2017a) indicate the pressing need to examine the interaction of the socio-economic, political and ecological spheres at a theoretical level, aiming for more cross-disciplinary research comprising (human) geography, peace and conflict studies, psychological anthropology or criminology. This panel aims to give different interdisciplinary insights on the interaction of these spheres to discuss critically the role of environmental peacebuilding as part of the “Green Economy”.

We aim to shed light on questions such as, what impact will the move towards a global green economy have on the concepts and practices of environmental peacebuilding, and vice versa? Does it provide an opportunity to foster and develop non-neoliberal forms of peacebuilding based on ‘alternative sustainabilities’? What are the theoretical (dis)advantages of more interdisciplinary approaches to environmental peacebuilding? What are the decisive features of the current, diverse concepts and definitions of environmental peacebuilding?

Organizers: Teresa Lappe-Osthege (University of Sheffield) and Lisa Trogisch (University of Wageningen)

Please send abstracts of 200-300 words to Teresa Lappe-Osthege (t.lappe-osthege@sheffield.ac.uk) and Lisa Trogisch (lisa.trogisch@wur.nl) by Friday, December 6th. Panellists will be notified by December 10th.