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Environment, climate, conflict, and peace

Community of Practice on Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace (ECCP)

As part of its mandate on community management, the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform aims to strengthen networking and community building in different topics within the peacebuilding sector. The Community of Practice on Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace aims to foster inter-institutional collaboration and dialogue, promote shared learning and innovation, and mainstream these topics across the board between the environment, climate, conservation, conflict, security, and peace sectors. It is a rich network of more than 500 individuals across Geneva, Europe, and the world.

The ECCP is a constellation of convenings and connections. There are monthly, community-wide meetings meant to create a platform for networking and relationship-building. There are also three tracks through which participants can connect with like minded individuals and institutions: policy, practice, and evidence.

The policy track creates space for connection and collaboration in myriad policy processes, largely on the multilateral scale. The practice track convenes pracititioners from local communities as well as program designers, managers, and funders together to exchange on concrete methods and practices at the intersection of environmental degradation, human security, conservation, and more. Finally, the track on developing the evidence base is perhaps the largest and most well-known, particularly for its production of the White Paper on the Future of Environmental Peacebuilding, detailed below. The Community hosts its projects and publications on a separate website here.

Learn more about the history, structure, and function of the Community in its recent evaluation here.

Persons interested in joining the ECCP should contact Annika at annika[@]gpplatform.ch 
 

The White Paper on the Future of Environmental Peacebuilding

The White Paper is a collaborative, multi-author project which outlines a vision for the future of environmental peacebuilding. The process is designed to act as a vehicle through which stakeholders may collaborate and build cross-cutting relationships in order to craft a common vision for the future. It also recognises the variety of perspectives and backgrounds present in the environment, climate, conservation, conflict, security, and peace fields. The White Paper is a policy-oriented document, to be developed through a reflective, consultative, multi-stakeholder process. It delivered a strong, cogent message about the future of the field to the Stockholm+50 forum in June 2022. The White Paper project launched to the public on 1 February 2022. Find the White Paper and Compendium here.
 

Directory of actors working on ECCP

The World Academy for Art and Science created and maintains a database of over 2500 organizations and projects at the intersection of security and sustainability. Please visit the database here to see the organizations. 

Separately, the Platform developed and maintains an informal directory for professionals, scholars, students, and practitioners working at the intersections of environment, climate, conflict, and peace. The directory has dozens of members working across Geneva and beyond. In order to access the information, please submit yours here.
 

Upcoming briefings and convenings for researchers & practitioners

Public-facing webinar on Peace@COP28 - 21 September (register here)

COP28 Community Call - 26 September

Monthly Meeting - 10 October

Geneva Peace Week - 30 October to 3 November

Monthly Meeting - 14 November

Monthly Meeting - 12 December

All above dates are for the year 2023. Additional thematic briefings and workshops for 2023 will be announced throughout the year. 
 

Previous public briefings and convenings

Monthly Meeting - 12 September - Meeting Summary

COP28 Community Call - 29 August

COP28 Community Call - 25 July

COP28 Community Call - 22 June

Monthly Meeting - 20 June

In-person discussion with Gidon Bromberg, EcoPeace Middle East - 20 June 2023

Practitioner's Dialogue on Community-Based Conservation - 30 May 2023 - Meeting Summary

COP28 Community Call - 25 May 2023 - Notes available upon request

Discussion on nature-based solutions and peace - 23 May 2023 - Meeting Summary

Policy Track: UNSC Discussion - 22 May 2023 - Notes available upon request

Policy Track: UNEA Discussion - 10 May 2023 - Notes available upon request

Monthly Meeting - 9 May 2023 - Meeting Summary

Practitioner's Dialogue on FMNR - 13 April 2023 - Meeting Summary and Recording

Monthly Meeting - 11 April 2023 - Meeting Summary

COP28 Planning Meeting - 4 April 2023 - Notes available upon request

Monthly Meeting - 14 March 2023 - Meeting Summary

COP28 Planning Meeting - 14 March 2023 - Notes available upon request

Briefing on peace and the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty - 7 March 2023 - Meeting Recording

COP28 Planning Meeting - 2 March 2023 - Notes available upon request

White Paper Stocktaking Session - 2 March 2023

White Paper Stocktaking Session - 28 February 2023

COP28 Planning Meeting - 24 February 2023 - Notes available upon request

Monthly Meeting - 14 February 2023 - Meeting Summary

ECCP Practitioner Dialogue - 26 January 2023 - Meeting Summary

COP28 Planning Meeting - 25 January 2023 - Notes available upon request

COP28 Planning Meeting - 10 January 2023 - Notes available upon request

Climate security and peacebuilding briefing (in person) - 9 January 2023 - Notes unavailable

COP28 Planning Meeting - 20 December 2022 - Notes available upon request

Monthly Meeting - 20 December 2022 - Meeting Summary

COP28 Planning Meeting - 13 December 2022 - Notes available upon request

Follow-up discussion on FMNR - 6 December 2022 - Notes available upon request

COP27 Debrief Meeting - 29 November 2022 - Notes available upon request

Geneva Peace Week 2022 - 31 October to 4 November 2022 - Thematic Track Summary

In-person launch of SIPRI report - 28 October 2022

Workshop and roundtable on farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) - 27 October 2022 - Workshop Summary

Monthly Meeting - 25 October 2022 - Meeting Summary

Briefing on climate security at COP27 by Champa Patel, International Crisis Group - 24 October 2022 - Meeting Summary

In-person briefing by adelphi - 7 October 2022

Online briefing by adelphi on new report - 27 September 2022 - Meeting Summary

Community Call on COP27 - 26 September 2022 - Notes available upon request

Monthly Meeting - 20 September 2022 - Meeting Summary

Discussion on climate finance and peace - 19 September 2022 - Meeting Summary

Community Call on COP27 - 1 September 2022 - Notes available upon request

Facilitated Discussion on climate finance and peace - 20 July 2022 - Notes available upon request

Briefing and demo of UNEP's Strata platform - 19 July 2022 - Meeting Summary and PPT presentation

Monthly Meeting - 12 July 2022 - Meeting Summary

Community Call on Stockholm+50: Debrief - 16 June 2022 - Notes available upon request

Monthly Meeting - 14 June 2022 - Meeting Summary

White Paper Launch at Stockholm+50 - 2 June 2022

Facilitated Discussion (in person) - 18 May 2022 - Meeting Summary

Briefing on Somali Greenpeace Association - 17 May 2022 - Meeting Summary

Monthly Meeting - 10 May 2022 - Meeting Summary

Community Call on Stockholm+50 - 9 May 2022 - Notes available upon request

Community Call on Stockholm+50 - 27 April 2022 - Notes available upon request

Monthly Meeting - 12 April 2022 - Meeting Summary

Community Call on Stockholm+50 - 7 April 2022 - Notes available upon request

Community Call on Stockholm+50 - 3 March 2022 - Notes available upon request

Community Call on Stockholm+50 - 28 February 2022 - Notes available upon request

Community Call on Stockholm+50 - 16 February 2022 - Notes available upon request

White Paper Roundtable - 4 February 2022 - Recording here

White Paper Formal Launch - 1 February 2022 - Recording here

International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding - 1-4 February 2022, online 

Monthly Meeting - 25 January 2022 - Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 16 November 2021 - Meeting Summary

ECCP Panel - 9 November 2021 - at COP26, Chatham House Climate Security Virtual Pavilion 

White Paper Consultation - 9 November 2021 - Open Consultation 

Geneva Peace Week Opening Ceremony -  1 November 2021 - Panel presentation by Lindsey Cook, QUNO

White Paper Consultation - 3 November 2021 - at Geneva Peace Week 

White Paper Consultation - 21 October 2021  - at the International Leadership Association Conference

Facilitated Discussion - 19 October 2021 - Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 23 September 2021 - Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 22 September 2021 - Meeting Summary

Briefing - 29 June 2021 - Lindsey Cook, Human rights, climate change, and peacebuilding: Meeting Summary

Update and Information Session - 21 June 2021 - White Paper Update Presentation

Facilitated Discussion - 15 June 2021 - Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 8 June 2021 - Geneva Peace Week 2021 Planning Session

Briefing - 18 May 2021 - Claire McAllister, An update from SIPRI on the Environment of Peace project: Meeting Summary and Presentation

Facilitated Discussion - 11 May 2021 - Meeting Summary

Briefing - 20 April 2021 - Catherine-Lune Grayson, Climate security and humanitarian action: Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 13 April 2021 - Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 16 March 2021 - Wim Zwijnenburg, Exploring nature-based solutions: Meeting Summary

Briefing - 2 March 2021 - Erika Weinthal and McKenzie Johnson, The environmental peacebuilding policy landscape: Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion and Presentation - 16 February 2021 - Environmental peacemaking meeting summary

Briefing - 9 February 2021 - CGIAR Climate Security, Food and climate security: Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 26 January 2021 - Meeting Summary

Briefing - 8 December 2020 - Serge Stroobants, Institute for Economics and Peace: Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 1 December 2020 - Ruth Miller, Native Movement: Meeting Summary

Briefing - 17 November 2020 - Dina Ionesco and Alice Baillat, International Organisation for Migration: Meeting Summary and Presentation

Briefing - 13 October 2020 - Silja Halle, United Nations Environment Programme: Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 6 October 2020 - Doug Weir, The Conflict and Environment Observatory: Meeting Summary available upon request

Facilitated Discussion - 28 September 2020 - Tobias von Lossow, Clingendael Institute: Meeting Summary

Briefing - 10 June 2020 - Beatrice Mosello, adelphi: Meeting Summary

Facilitated Discussion - 27 May 2020 - Roberto Forin, Mixed Migration Centre: Meeting Summary

Participants may contact Annika (annika@gpplatform.ch) for additional summaries of meetings not listed here.

 

 

Resources, newsletters, and events in environment, climate, conflict, and peace 

Resources:


Related Newsletters

Environmental Peacebuilding Association's Road to Geneva
Environmental Peacebuilding Association's general newsletter
SIPRI Research Bulletin 
Geneva Environment Network weekly newsletter


Major Events for the ECCP in 2021-2022

To add other events and resources to this page, please get in touch with Annika (email above).
 

International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding

From 1 to 4 February 2022, practitioners, scholars, decision makers, and the Geneva community gathered online for the second International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding. The week featured more than 75 planned conversations, presentations, launches, and high-level dialogues across the field and served as the major contact point for those working at the intersections of environment, climate, conservation, conflict, security, and peace. It also allowed the field to connect and innovate, building momentum towards the Stockholm+50 Conference in June 2022.  Please learn more about the conference here. 
 

Stockholm+50

Stockholm+50 commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Environment, providing a stocktaking moment for the international community on progress made over the past five decades. One of the three primary aims of the ECCP is to "mainstream" understanding of peace and conflict into the environmental field (and vice versa, environment and conservation understanding into the peace and conflict fields). Stockholm+50 has long represented a moment on the ECCP's calendar to bring peace to an environmental agenda. The ECCP community coordinated a number of peace opportunities for the Conference, which was held in Stockholm from 2-3 June 2022. Read more here.
 

GPW22: Digital Series on Environmental Peacebuilding

Video: Ecosystem for Peace: The Future of Environmental Peacebuilding, a video by Strategic Agenda for International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), PeaceNexus Foundation, Geneva Peacebuilding Platform (GPP), Environmental Law Institute (ELI), Environmental Peacebuilding Association (EnPAx), DCAF - Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, and Alp Analytica Peace, conflict sensitivity, and environmental management are interdependent. Now is the time for policy makers to invest in initiatives that promote peaceful natural resource management. Together, we can all create a sustainable ‘ecosystem for peace’.

Video: Environment of peace. This video provides an overview of SIPRI’s Environment of Peace policy report, highlighting key messages, as well as principles and recommendations to guide governments and other decision-making organizations in navigating the new era of risks.

Video: Green minerals: Justice and opportunity in the renewable energy transition, created by Wilson Center Environmental Change and Security Program, United States Institute of Peace, and the Andean Information Network. This explainer video offers an overview of the risks posed by green mineral mining and possible avenues to promote more peaceful and inclusive development. It highlights pathways forward from the perspectives of local actors, researchers, and practitioners. As such, the video represents a collaborative effort, bringing together insights from a range of individuals and organizations, including a Bolivia-based non-profit, a foreign policy think tank, a global peacebuilding organization, a community-based organization in South Africa, and a United Kingdom university.

Video: Reshaping the approach to water cooperation for peacebuilding, created by Geneva Water Hub. Water is central to peacebuilding efforts. In order to address people’s vulnerability, ensuring cooperation and proper management of water resources at local levels is key to support transboundary water cooperation and coordination on the international scene. Cooperation on water at different levels is even more needed in fragile settings and complex emergencies. History has shown that water is mostly a vector for cooperation and a useful tool on which to base a peacebuilding approach. This is also true in contexts like the West African region where cooperation around water helped to overcome tensions.

Podcast: Food security for peace: Exploring pathways to build peace through food and agricultural interventions, created by FAO, CGIAR, Geneva Graduate Institute, Interpeace, WFP, and the Geneva Water Hub. This podcast aims at increasing understanding of how agriculture and food systems are linked to climate and conflict dynamics and explores pathways through which food security and agricultural interventions can support the dual processes of building resilience to climate change and sustaining peace. It brings together the expertise and experience of interdisciplinary actors from across international Geneva, and from around the world, to examine both promising past interventions and consider lessons for the future.

GPW21: Digital Series on Environmental Peacebuilding

Video: Science diplomacy to support environmental peacebuilding projects & the prevention of local conflict, created by UNESCO chair SIMEV (France), the Clingendael Institute (Netherlands), Chemistry Research Department of University of Montpellier (MUSE-France) and NGO Pentagon Wave for Research and Development (Colombia). During this session, we  discuss some projects in which science diplomacy provided the basis for successful initiatives that contributed to create a climate of trust, entrepreneurship and collaboration to propose solutions linked to water and plastic pollutions and its management for sustainability. 

Video: Using media and communication to address climate-affected drivers of conflict, created by BBC Media Action and Fondation Hirondelle. Based on recent research conducted by BBC Media Action (commissioned as part of SIPRI's Environment of Peace Initiative), experience from projects in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Mali supporting media and journalism to address these issues, and work supporting climate scientists to communicate information more effectively, this session seeks to understand how media communication strategies can engage, inform, and support communities to take part in and enact change to address both climate and environmental challenges and the conflict risks they generate (or are exacerbated by).

 

Podcast: Creating an interdisciplinary, international collaboration to address island climate migration, created by GCSP and the University of Geneva. Listeners are invited to follow the journey of Jessica Libertini (US), Emma Ortuño Lattur (Spain), Eduardo Meñez (Philippines), Adriana Hondora (Zimbabwe), and Abubakar Yakubu (Nigeria) as they arrive in Geneva for UNIGE's MAS in International and European Security and the GCSP's Leadership in International Security Course. In this podcast, this international team learns about international security and inclusive leadership, and then applies those lessons to examine the complex issue of climate migration in the context of small island developing states (SIDS). After introducing climate migration in the SIDS and the courses in which this team met, the five team members share some of the lessons they learned, their inclusive groupwork processes, the policy recommendations resulting from their foresighting analysis, and some challenges the team faced. The podcast closes with reflections on the feasibility, importance, and value of the intentional creation of diverse teams in addressing the globe's most pressing security challenges.

Video: Climate Dilemma: Challenges and Impacts on Migration, created by CD4Peace and Association Y30. The video presents two different perspectives of the legal, cultural and social dimensions of climate displacement, thus demonstrating the complicated nature of the issues at stake for climate change and migration. The experts also propose the ways in which possible solutions and mitigative measures could be adopted at international and local levels while simultaneously insisting on the urgency of adopting such measures. This presentation gives a nuanced exploration that seeks to raise awareness about the multidimensional consequences of climate change.

Video: Korea DMZ Peace Incubator: Seeding the Future, created by University of Vermont, Women's Federation for World Peace International. This interactive project seeks to engage actors and stakeholders in the visioning of a new future in the Demilitarized Zone of Korea through the creation of a peace zone where women from North and South Korea can meet and interact with women and youth from all over the world. It aims to gather experts in environmental peacebuilding and future ecologies of the DMZ zone, as well as experts and practitioners in peacebuilding, reconciliation, reconstruction and humanitarian service. The goal is to go beyond the political, physical and mental barriers to co-create a landscape and infrastructure for Korean women, as well as an international hub for Women, Peace and the Environment. The objective is to gather solutions, ideas and visions for this space from local, regional and global actors building on existing visions for the Korean DMZ and engaging the opinions and visions of North Koreans.

Video: Faith and Natural Resources: Unlocking the Peacebuilding Potential, created by World Vision International, World Evangelical Alliance, UNEP. This short video showcases promising practices from Pakistan and the Sahel region, which illustrate how the complex and intricate issues of the climate crisis in fragile contexts can be addressed through the active engagement of community members and faith actors.

 

GPW20: Digital Series on Environmental Peacebuilding

Geneva Peace Week 2020 Closing Ceremony, with guests including Inger Andersen (Executive Director of UNEP), Ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan (Permanent Representative of the Republic of Fiji ), Johanna Lissinger Peitz (Ambassador, Government Offices of Sweden, Ministry the Environment), Juan Mayr Maldonado (former Environment Minister for Colombia), Hani Abbas (Cartoonist), Irene Ojuok (Climate resilience and land restoration specialist), Carl Bruch (Environmental Law Institute and President of Environmental Peacebuilding Association), and more.

 

Video panel: 'A legal framework for environmental peacebuilding,' created by The Conflict and Environment Observatory. This film introduces the legal principles on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts that are being developed by the UN's International Law Commission, and considers how they could help support environmental peacebuilding, and be implemented. Through interviews with leading experts, it also examines the principles’ relevance for regulating the extractives industry, for protecting environmental human rights in conflict and during occupations, and for supporting peacebuilding through biodiversity conservation.

Infographic on relevant podcasts on the topic of 'climate risk management and peacebuilding'. See the infographic here.
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Geneva Peace Week

30 October - 3 November 2023
  
   
       

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