By Rebecca Froese and Janpeter Schilling

Environmental peacebuilding combines environmental projects with peacebuilding. The German government currently perceives climate change as an intensifier of conflict, but it should also see it as an opportunity for cooperation to overcome common challenges and integrate environmental peacebuilding into security and development policy.

A well-known saying goes: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life." Helping people to help themselves is an important and correct approach - but it only works as long as the resources and basic structures on which self-help is based are available. However, if the lake dries up - if the resources disappear - alternatives must be sought. This raises the question: "Will this search be peaceful or violent? If you ask political decision-makers, a violent conflict seems more likely. This is because climate change and the associated environmental changes are increasingly perceived in political circles as a risk to peace. In his speech at the UN General Debate in September 2019, Foreign Minister Maas stated: "If people no longer have access to clean drinking water, entire harvests fail due to permanent drought and conflicts begin over the few remaining resources, the wars of the future will be climate wars." The German government's guidelines on crisis prevention and peacebuilding have also identified climate change and violent conflicts as key threats to human well-being.

Environmental changes can exacerbate conflicts, but can also give rise to cooperation

The German government has correctly recognized that the deterioration in the environmental and resource situation caused by climate change poses a risk to peace. However, this perspective is one-sided. The current state of research does indeed suggest that climate change causes or intensifies environmental changes and can therefore exacerbate and possibly trigger conflicts. Nevertheless, German policy is overlooking two key points here. Firstly, there is no direct and compelling link between climate change and conflicts. Secondly, environmental problems exacerbated or triggered by climate change can be seen as a common challenge and thus have a positive impact on cooperation and peace. is referred to as environmental peacebuilding and is defined by the United Nations Environment Programme as a "process of governing and managing natural resources and the environment to support durable peace". Environmental peacebuilding can be divided into two types: First, peace as a primary objective, meaning that environmental projects explicitly serve to promote sustainable peace. Secondly, peace as a side effect, i.e. measures in environmental cooperation also contribute to peace as unifying elements. Although environmental peacebuilding can also be applied to environmental issues in general, we focus here on climate-related environmental changes, as these dominate international agendas, as described above.

Example projects in water management and adaptation to climate change show that environmental peacebuilding can work: Environmental peacebuilding can work

The example of transboundary rivers and lakes shows that cooperation between states is the rule, and although wars over water are often warned against, they have so far remained the exception. A good example of the first type of environmental peacebuilding (peace as the main goal) is the "Good Water Neighbors" project in Israel/Palestine. As part of the project run by the organization EcoPeace Middle East, communities from Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan worked together to tackle the problem of water scarcity and conserve local water resources. At the same time, various measures were implemented to increase mutual trust and understanding between the groups. The project is also considered so successful because cooperation at municipal level has ultimately led to cooperation in water management at intergovernmental level. For example, in 2013, Israel released fresh water from the Sea of Galilee into the Lower Jordan River for the first time in 49 years. The project also supported a change at institutional level: a sub-committee on the rehabilitation of the Jordan River was created within the joint Israeli-Jordanian Water Committee.

An example of the second type of environmental peacebuilding (peace as a side effect) is the "Buena Milpa" project in Guatemala, which shows that environmental peacebuilding is not only a concept for crisis prevention, but can also actively promote peace. The project uses the reintroduction of traditional drought- and pest-resistant maize varieties not only as a measure to adapt to climate change, but also to strengthen local institutions (peace as a side effect), such as a seed bank for managing agrobiodiversity. The networking of the dynamics of local actors with the wider institutional governance context has borne fruit here: in a society torn apart by decades of violent conflict, not only have measures to adapt to climate change been successfully implemented, but approaches to reduce mutual mistrust between the communities involved have also been pursued.

Thinking environment and peace together, expanding crisis prevention to include peacebuilding, integrating environmental peacebuilding across ministries

The environmental peacebuilding approach has not yet found its way into German foreign and security policy, nor into environmental, economic or development policy. This is a missed opportunity. Although the German government's interdepartmental guidelines on crises, conflicts and peace warn in a brief section on "Population dynamics, climate change and natural disasters" of climate change as a risk intensifier, they fail to see environmental issues as a starting point for peacebuilding. Environmental peacebuilding offers the potential to break up the purely negative narrative of "crisis prevention" and expand it to include "peacebuilding". This would be particularly relevant in projects with peace as the main goal, in which crisis prevention is often based on so-called "negative peace", i.e. solely on the absence of violence. The use of environmental peacebuilding could build on this approach. Environmental peacebuilding does not stop at achieving the minimum - the absence of violence - but goes further and focuses on additional trust and thus on more long-term and sustainable peace. Or, to put it in the words of Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times): "The only source of lasting security is [...] relationships of trust between neighbors that create healthy interdependencies - ecological and political. They are the hardest things to build, but also the hardest things to break once in place." In concrete terms, this means that the German government should focus environmental protection, development cooperation and crisis prevention on environmental peacebuilding across all departments.

To stay with the image of the introductory proverb: If the lake dries up, the fisherman has two options: Either he (violently) provides himself and his family with access to alternative livelihoods and thus triggers a chain of violence. Or all those involved see the decline in water levels as a common challenge and develop strategies to overcome the scarcity of resources for the benefit of all. This in turn leads to a strengthening of relations between the communities.

Critically questioning environmental peacebuilding too

Environmental peacebuilding enables a shift in perspective away from the mere perception of environmental change as an inevitable intensifier of conflict and towards seeing it as an opportunity to build trust and cooperation. Nevertheless, the approach should not be seen as a panacea. Like any project in the field of development cooperation, environmental protection and crisis prevention, environmental peacebuilding measures can lead to depoliticization, discrimination, delegitimization of states and displacement of local communities. For example, the Cordillera del Cóndor Peace Park was established in 1998 to support demilitarization and confidence-building between Ecuador and Peru. The park overlaps with the territories of the local indigenous population, but was demarcated without their consultation. As a result, the people lost (legal) access to areas where they gathered food, wood and medicinal plants. This discrimination against the indigenous population by the state prompted local resistance, weakened the legitimacy of the state and endangered the livelihoods of the local population.

Include environmental peacebuilding in the German EU Council Presidency, prevent funding cuts for civil violence prevention, highlight the peace-building potential of environmental measures

Environmental peacebuilding should therefore be applied in an integrative and context-specific manner. If this is successful, environmental peacebuilding can both contribute to environmental protection and promote peaceful and cooperative relations. For Germany's upcoming EU Council Presidency, this would mean that Germany should work to strengthen civil crisis prevention, peacebuilding and human rights and explicitly consider environmental peacebuilding in this context. Specifically, Germany should work to ensure that funding for civilian violence prevention and transformation in the EU's Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) (2021-2027 ) is not cut as planned and replaced by massive investments in security and defense. Germany can also advocate for the consideration of peace as a side effect in the context of the European Green Deal and in the MFF section on natural resources and the environment. Similar to the concept of environmental security, environmental peacebuilding can establish environmental protection as an increasingly desirable, cross-border and thus unifying goal and gain a firm place in the EU's cohesion policy. A good example of EU funding is the Danube Transnational Program. This has strengthened economic, social and territorial cohesion with measures for sustainable and integrative economic activity and environmental management in the entire Danube catchment area and thus in various post-conflict societies in Eastern Europe. Such approaches promote the development of joint solutions that lead to mutual dependencies and the building of trust. Particularly in times of growing populism within the EU's borders, it seems appropriate to increase rather than reduce the EU's cohesion policy budget. The focus of the European Peace Facility (EFF) on military or defense policy priorities is also questionable; civilian prevention of violence and peacebuilding should be included to a much greater extent. The peace-building potential of environmental measures should be utilized. At the global level, Germany can also use its current membership of the United Nations Security Council to present climate change not exclusively as a driver of conflict, but as a common challenge and an opportunity for environmental peacebuilding. This would send a strong signal towards a sustainable commitment by the German government to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular the 16th goal "Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions".

This article was first published on the PeaceLab blog. Thanks to the author and the editors of the PeaceLab blog for the permission to repost.