Suchergebnisse

The question of ownership—that is, who is included and excluded from policy processes—has become one of the most pressing issues in the global discourse on peace and conflict. While research shows that the inclusion of domestic actors is critical to success, broader international processes often neglect these actors. Focused on environmental peacebuilding—the sustainable management of natural resources in post-conflict settings—as an emerging area, this article employs qualitative content analysis (QCA) to study four core reports of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)'s Environmental Cooperation for Peacebuilding Programme (2008–2015). The results reveal that the framing of environmental peacebuilding in these documents contributes to power inequalities being reinforced. The reports' language suggests that, overall, UNEP favors international ownership of environmental peacebuilding. By contrast, local actors—both state and non-state—appear to be considered a risk in the context of natural resource management. This article discusses the implications of this lack of inclusion for peacebuilding practice.

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.

This forum reflects upon the current state of research on post-conflict natural resource management. It identifies two dominant perspectives on environmental peacebuilding in the literature: one focused on environmental cooperation, the other on resource risk. Both perspectives share a concern for the sustainable management of natural resources in post-conflict settings and prescribe environmental cooperation at large as a means to foster peace and stability. Yet both perspectives also feature notable differences: The cooperation perspective is driven by a faith in the potential of environmental cooperation to contribute to long-term peace through spillover effects. The resource risk perspective, however, recognizes that resource-induced instability may arise after intrastate conflict; stressing the need to mitigate instability by implementing environmental cooperation initiatives. Despite the significant contributions of both perspectives, neither has provided any cohesive theoretical understanding of environmental peacebuilding. This article suggests a timely revision of the research agenda to address this gap.

Water resource management (WRM) has increasingly come to be considered within the realm of peacebuilding. Through investigating the case of water resource management in Kosovo after 1999, this study argues that the international community has treated post-conflict water resource management as a primarily technical issue, to the neglect of its complex political nature. This has impeded the peacebuilding process in three ways. First, it consolidated the physical separation of actors through allowing separate water governance structures. Second, it avoided conflictive issues instead of actively engaging in conflict resolution. Third, it incapacitated locals by placing ownership in the hands of external actors. To redress this tripartite dilemma, this study stresses the need for research that provides deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the political mechanisms that connect WRM to post-conflict reconstruction efforts.

Water resource management (WRM) has increasingly come to be considered within the realm of peacebuilding. Through investigating the case of water resource management in Kosovo after 1999, this study argues that the international community has treated post-conflict water resource management as a primarily technical issue, to the neglect of its complex political nature. This has impeded the peacebuilding process in three ways. First, it consolidated the physical separation of actors through allowing separate water governance structures. Second, it avoided conflictive issues instead of actively engaging in conflict resolution. Third, it incapacitated locals by placing ownership in the hands of external actors. To redress this tripartite dilemma, this study stresses the need for research that provides deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the political mechanisms that connect WRM to post-conflict reconstruction efforts.

Nachkriegsländer gehören zu den schwierigsten politischen Arenen. Die Herausforderungen bestehen nicht nur darin, diese Länder dabei zu unterstützen Kriege zu beenden und neue Gewaltausbrüche zu verhindern, sondern vielmehr zu einem friedlichen Zusammenleben zurückzukehren. In diesem Zusammenhang ist in den letzten Jahren das Interesse vieler Wissenschaftler als auch vieler internationaler Akteure gestiegen, das mögliche Potential des nachhaltigen Managements natürlicher Ressourcen zu nutzen um Friedensprozesse zu unterstützen. Die Hoffnung liegt dabei darin, dass eine gute Regierungsführung ("Good Governance") und insbesondere die nachhaltige Entwicklung und Nutzung von Ressourcen wie Wasser, Wald oder landwirtschaftlichen Flächen, Kooperation zwischen Konfliktparteien ermöglichen und dabei zum Neustart der internen Beziehungen beitragen. Die wachsende Bedeutung des Zusammenspiels zwischen der Entwicklung von Frieden und Umweltschutz sowie der nachhaltigen Nutzung von Ressourcen wurde erst kürzlich durch die Ziele nachhaltiger Entwicklung der Vereinten Nationen bestätigt.

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.

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.

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.

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.