Climate and Environmental Security in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Competing over Abundant Resources - Adapting to Change

Climate change is compounding the Democratic Republic of Congo's tangle of problems - a long-running civil war, weak governance, and deeply entrenched poverty and inequality. The country's future is of global significance: its vast Congo-basin rainforest is a crucial carbon sink and a haven of biodiversity. DRC's hydropower potential and its deposits of copper and cobalt could enable the energy transition, but a green resource looms over development prospects. Germany will need flexible and well-aligned national strategies to effectively support peace, human progress, and environmental protection in the DRC while putting the focus on the needs of marginalized populations

The Future of Environmental Peace and Conflict Research

Interest in the intersections of environmental issues, peace and conflict has surged in recent years. Research on the topic has developed along separate research streams, which broadened the knowledge base considerably, but hardly interact across disciplinary, methodological, epistemological and ontological silos. Our forum addresses this gap by bringing into conversation six research streams on the environment, peace and conflict: environmental change and human security, climate change and armed conflict, environmental peacebuilding, political ecology, securitisation of the environment, and decolonizing environmental security. For each research stream, we outline core findings, potentials for mutual enrichment with other streams, and prospects for future research

Neue Kriege, neu betrachtet : Neubetrachtung des Forschungsstands und des Fallbeispiels Bosnien und Herzegowina

This study aims to review the state of art of the new wars debate from 1999 till today. In a critical reflection it analyses Mary Kaldor’s approach and identifies three core elements that guide the follow-up case study on the Bosnian war. It does so to critically reflect on the political naivety, which welcomed the concept of New Wars as a tool to justify policies and the lack of scientific accuracy and nobility by several study programmes. The study concludes that, firstly, identity politics are not a unique feature of new wars as Kaldor argues. Rather identity must be considered the main ingredient in each Conflict. Secondly it must be questioned in how far wars today can be compared to their predecessors since the quality those wars are analysed increased tremendously. Peace and Conflict Research are one of these features that came up within the 1960s as well as a globalised moralisation of war. Thirdly, Kaldor argument of a brutalisation of new wars is falsified. New studies clearly falsify this argument empirically for the Bosnian war. The study infers that ten years after Kaldor introduced the conception of New Wars, there are loads of theoretical and empirical doubts that question the theory as a helpful tool in Peace and Conflict Research

Building Sustainable Peace : Understanding the Linkages between Social, Political, and Ecological Processes in Post-War Countries

Post-war countries are among the most difficult policy arenas for international and domestic actors. The challenge is not only to stop violence and prevent violence from rekindling, but moreover to help countries reset their internal relations on a peaceful path. The indirect, long-term effects of wars further exaggerate this challenge. Many of these relate to political and social aspects of post-war countries. Lasting impressions of human rights abuses committed during wars continue to shape the relations among members of societies for decades to come. Both, socio-economic impacts and political impacts challenge the stability of post-war countries for many years. The challenges to public health have been found to be especially severe and affect disproportionately the civilian population of post-war countries. Environmental and climate change exposes post-war populations further to new risks, exaggerating the human costs of war long after active combat has ceased. These challenges are not new. The problem, however, is that in practice all these elements are simultaneously happening in today’s peacebuilding interventions. Yet, practitioners as well as researchers remain settled in a silo mentality, focusing only on one aspect at a time. As such they are unaware of the unintended consequences that their focus has on other important processes. The four essays that lie at the heart of this dissertation provide new insight into the linkages between the social, political and ecological processes in post-war societies and how the interactions of different groups of actors are shaping the prospects for peace. The argument drawn out in this dissertation is that to build peace we need to acknowledge and understand this long-term interplay of social, political, and ecological processes in post-war countries. It will be crucial to understand the potential and dynamics of natural resources and environmental issues in this context. As the essays in this dissertation show, the interactions of these processes divisively shape the post-war landscape. It is therefore essential to build a peace that is ecologically sensitive, while equally socially and politically relevant and desirable. I call this sustainable peace

Climate change, peacebuilding and sustaining peace

Eight of the ten countries hosting the most multilateral peace operations personnel in 2018 are located in areas highly exposed to climate change. As such, climate change is not just an issue of human security—it is transforming the entire security landscape. Nonetheless, international efforts to build and maintain peace are not yet taking these emerging challenges systematically into account. This policy brief illustrates how climate change impacts the efficacy of peacebuilding, specifically the aim (a) to provide peace and security; (b) to strengthen governance and justice; and (c) to ensure social and economic development. To better prepare for and adequately respond to what are increasingly complex peacebuilding contexts, peacebuilding efforts must become more climate-sensitive. Especially there is a need to (a) properly assess climate-related security risks; (b) increase cross-agency knowledge exchange and learning; and (c) maximize synergies and realize climate action as opportunities to build sustainable peace

Climate Change Mitigation, Peacebuilding, and Resilience

How are our efforts to reduce the impact of climate change affecting post-conflict societies? Thinking and research about the possible impacts of climate change adaptation and mitigation on post-conflict societies is almost nonexistent. Most attention remains on climate change and variability and their link to war.1 In this article I discuss the link between climate change mitigation and building peace. Drawing on new empirical data of micro hydropower development in post-conflict Nepal I inquire further if climate change mitigation contributes to peacebuilding. The findings show that micro-hydropower development in Nepal has not contributed to peacebuilding on a state level. This is because these measures do not strengthen the political legitimacy of the post-conflict authorities, a crucial measure for successful peacebuilding. Actually, in the short run this measure of climate change mitigation has led to new informal spaces of peace beyond the reach of the Nepali state. This puts policy decision makers into a dilemma: Should they consider abandoning climate change mitigation policies if they might in fact risk the peacebuilding process? Or is it worth the bigger cause of reducing CO2 emissions globally? As this article shows, the answer might be more nuanced

Climate Change Mitigation, Peacebuilding, and Resilience

How are our efforts to reduce the impact of climate change affecting post-conflict societies? Thinking and research about the possible impacts of climate change adaptation and mitigation on post-conflict societies is almost nonexistent. Most attention remains on climate change and variability and their link to war.1 In this article I discuss the link between climate change mitigation and building peace. Drawing on new empirical data of micro hydropower development in post-conflict Nepal I inquire further if climate change mitigation contributes to peacebuilding. The findings show that micro-hydropower development in Nepal has not contributed to peacebuilding on a state level. This is because these measures do not strengthen the political legitimacy of the post-conflict authorities, a crucial measure for successful peacebuilding. Actually, in the short run this measure of climate change mitigation has led to new informal spaces of peace beyond the reach of the Nepali state. This puts policy decision makers into a dilemma: Should they consider abandoning climate change mitigation policies if they might in fact risk the peacebuilding process? Or is it worth the bigger cause of reducing CO2 emissions globally? As this article shows, the answer might be more nuanced

Water Service Provision and Peacebuilding in East Timor : Exploring the Socioecological Determinants for Sustaining Peace

This article presents an examination of post-conflict water resource management in East Timor through the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) with the aim of contributing to our understanding of the opportunities and challenges inherent to the sustainable management of water resources in post-conflict countries and of gaining insight into its potential long-term benefits for sustaining peace. The article contributes one of the first theory-centred, empirical analyses of post-conflict water resource management, in which the challenges and failures of UNTAET in East Timor shed light on the opportunities and risks inherent to post-conflict water service provision for peacebuilding

The Environment and Peace - Environmental Policies in Peace Processes and their contribution to Building Peace

Does peacebuilding in the environmental sector influence perceptions of popular legitimacy of post-conflict authorities? Guided by this question this research plan addresses a gap in the literature on peacebuilding and environmental studies. Only limited research has been conducted on the link between the environment and peacebuilding. Generally, scholars and practitioners assume addressing environmental issues during peacebuilding processes contributes to the success of peace (Conca & Dabelko, 2002; Conca & Wallace, 2009; Ejigu, 2006; Kostić, Krampe, & Swain, 2012; Machlis & Hanson, 2008; Matthew, Barnett, & McDonald, 2009a; Matthew, Brown, & Jensen, 2009b; A. Swain & Krampe, 2011). Yet, findings in the peacebuilding literature show that externally driven peacebuilding often leads to a lack of popular legitimacy of governing authorities and the creation of new substructures of legitimacy, a development that has been termed hybrid or post-liberal peace (Kappler, 2012; Kostić, 2007; MacGinty, 2010; Richmond, 2011). These adverse effects of peacebuilding have been identified and studied in many sectors, but are they similarly present in the environmental sector? Or do environmental peacebuilding activities contribute in fact to more popular legitimacy? This study contributes knowledge and understanding about peacebuilding in the environmental sector and its influence on local perceptions of legitimacy. The focus is specifically on projects of renewable energy production that utilize manageable natural resources (i.e. water and biomass). If and how these project influence popular legitimacy will be assessed through within and cross case comparisons of four case studies in the peacebuilding process of Nepal through data based on fieldwork.