The environment and Peace.

 

Peace is unsustainable without a sustainable biosphere. The Peacemaking Covenant recognises that peace, development and environmental sustainability are inseparably intertwined. Human societies have found many cooperative solutions to managing shared environmental resources, and human civilisation must reconcile economic growth and human advancement with the physical limits of our biosphere and ecosystems. Violent conflict erodes the adaptive capacity and resilience of states and societies to manage the effects of the climate crisis and environmental degradation. Conversely, the effects of the climate crisis and environmental degradation erode societal resilience and increase vulnerability to conflict and violence. These effects can be exacerbated by poorly designed adaptation and mitigation strategies. In many conflictaffected or fragile settings these challenges are everyday realities, not abstractions, and the climate crisis and overexploitation of natural resources has a direct and severe (and gendered) impact on vulnerable communities. Recognising that existing environmental challenges exacerbate inequalities and the risk of conflicts over land, water, food, energy and other resources, peacemakers need to reinforce the capacity of social institutions to adapt to maintain peace, security, and socio-economic functionality under stress. 

Actions to maximise the impact of these efforts should include:

•  integrating an understanding of how the climate crisis and environmental degradation exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and stresses on communities into conflict analysis and conflict prevention, mediation, and peacemaking planning and assessments 
• examining how solutions to environmental challenges can contribute to preventing or resolving conflicts, through such things as cooperation on the management of shared resources
•  ensuring that peace operations and peacemaking programmes include specific support for building resilience and adaptability to the climate crisis and the adoption of sustainable environmental strategies 
• supporting national actors and political leaders to adopt locally appropriate, gender-responsive and sustainable policies and investments in renewable and non-renewable resources and ensure equitable distribution of the benefits of natural resource exploitation.

- Rationale - 

The accelerating impact of the climate crisis and global warming must be central to peacemakers' programmes and policies. While unfolding on a longer time scale and with worldwide implications, the climate crisis has profound implications for all aspects of peacemaking and requires a shift towards understanding the spaces humans inhabit (local to global) as integrated and interdependent systems of people and nature. Extreme weather, environmental degradation, resource scarcities and climate-induced displacement will only be the most visible manifestations of the conflict-inducing crises that states and communities face. Sustainable peacemaking must increase the resilience of communities to these shocks and ensure that policies and programmes are coherent with an environmentally sustainable future for all. The Peacemaking Covenant acknowledges that peace, development, and environmental sustainability are inseparably intertwined, and that peacemaking, sustainable environmental policies and a sustainable biosphere are mutually interdependent. Local efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of the climate crisis will achieve little and may reinforce existing global inequalities if not coupled with strong global efforts to achieve netzero emissions. In this case, subsidiarity requires acting at the global level and in advanced industrial states as well as locally in conflict-affected and fragile states. Existing international agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals and Sustaining Peace resolutions, as well as the Paris Agreement, provide a legitimate global framework for cooperation and collaboration at the climate-peace nexus but are only a starting point. The urgency of a transition to a netzero future underlines the need to acknowledge that a significant and rapid transformation away from fossil fuels comes with a short-term risk of political and social insecurity and can incite or ignite conflict. Mitigation measures will encounter strong resistance from some quarters and must be conflict sensitive. A vast array of international and bilateral efforts - some with considerable financial backing - has already been launched in the environmental arena. The role of peacemakers is to ensure that their own efforts are coherent with environmentally sound peacebuilding and add value to these initiatives. Likewise, as international environmental efforts are scaled up, policy makers must ensure that their programmes do not undermine often-fragile peace and political settlements and that the burdens of adjustment and change are shared fairly.