From climate conflicts to environmental peacebuilding: Exploring local dimensions

Abstract

Environmental change and armed conflict are major challenges of the 21st century. Meanwhile, scholars and practitioners increasingly recognize the environment and natural resources as not only sources of conflict and violence but also as potential means for peacebuilding. While research on both fronts is rapidly progressing, the literature on the climate–conflict nexus and environmental peacebuilding has remained disconnected, although climate conflicts will (and already) require peacebuilding efforts. We address this gap by identifying overlaps that open opportunities for an integrated research agenda. Particularly, we call for a deeper exploration of the local dimensions of climate-related conflicts and environmental peacebuilding. Local actors, knowledge, networks, and identities shape peacebuilding outcomes and are key in building climate-resilient peace. However, romanticizing the local sphere might also mask significant inequalities, power differences, and ethical concerns.

1. Introduction

The internatial community has struggled to adequately address global environmental change so far, which therefore remains a key challenge of the 21st century. Environmental stress has reached an alarming level, with continuously advancing deforestation, fast loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, desertification, air pollution, and the rising tide of plastics in the oceans (UNEP, 2019). The overwhelming threat, however, results from climate change and the crossing of other planetary boundaries (Rockström et al., 2023). Worldwide greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow despite considerable policy efforts to mitigate climate change. Rather than fulfilling the 2015 Paris Agreement by limiting global warming to 1.5°C or at least 2°C, global temperature is currently projected to rise by 2.7°C by 2100 (Climate Action Tracker, 2023). Such warming will further accelerate the loss of biodiversity, arable land, and freshwater, and increase the frequency and intensity of disasters. Already, these ecosystem losses affect human well-being, development, and security (Adger et al., 2022; Boccard, 2021; Steffen et al., 2015).

At the same time, armed conflicts remain a significant challenge to international, national, and human security, although their character has changed. Classic interstate warfare—like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Porter, 2023)—has become rare. Instead, violent intrastate and regionalized conflicts (like Syria, Afghanistan, and the Sahel insurgencies) have increased. From an annual average of 36 armed conflicts between 1990 and 2014, the number has risen to over 50 that have been ongoing every year since 2015. In 2022, fighting between states, rebels, and other non-state actors caused an estimated 237,000 casualties—the highest since Rwanda’s genocide in 1994 (Davies et al., 2023). In addition, these violent clashes incur long-term and indirect costs from injuries, collapsed education and health systems, and destroyed water, food, and energy infrastructure (Swee, 2015; Weinthal & Sowers, 2023). Although this necessitates strong responses, international peacekeeping engagement even declined lately, as evident in the UN’s withdrawal from conflict zones like Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In conceptual regard, armed conflict denotes a situation where two or more social groups perceive their interests as incompatible and interact using physical violence. This can range from fistfights in communities and local riots to full-scale wars. While our focus in this special issue is particularly on physical violence, we do not mean to discount the study of structural and cultural violence. Nor do we suggest that these various forms of violence can be neatly separated (Galtung, 1990). Moreover, our interest goes beyond the occurrence of violence, as we also consider its risk and prevention as well as alternative means of contestation like non-violent resistance.

With climate change and armed conflicts being key challenges of the coming decades, scholars and policymakers unsurprisingly have focused much attention on the linkages between environmental change and violence. Until the early 2000s, the debate centered on whether and how the environment and natural resources lead to violence through both scarcity and abundance (Homer-Dixon, 1999; Ross, 2004). Thereafter, scholars and practitioners increasingly sought to understand and promote the role of the environment in building and sustaining peace (Conca & Dabelko, 2002). This has grown into a highly active community of environmental peacebuilding researchers and practitioners since the mid-2010s (Ide, Bruch, et al., 2021; Swain & Öjendal, 2018). Largely disconnected from this strand, scholars have also explored the potential links of climate change, conflict, and violence since the mid-2000s (Barnett & Adger, 2007; von Uexkull & Buhaug, 2021).

In this introduction and the wider special issue, we advocate dialogue between these streams (Ide et al., 2023). We first combine the two research fields that have hitherto often been treated separately by connecting climate–conflict research to environmental peacebuilding. Second, we identify the local dimensions as relevant, yet often neglected for understanding the complex relationship between climate-related conflicts and environmental peacebuilding. Specifically, we argue that local actors and their knowledge, social structures, and identities are key for addressing conflicts over climate-related impacts, environmental degradation, and natural resource governance. Aside from the potentials, we also point out possible dark sides of a “local turn” and highlight further research needs.

2. Connecting the fields: Climate–conflict research and environmental peacebuilding

2.1. State of research

While environmental conflict research started in the early 1990s, climate security became a prominent topic in the political arena in the mid-2000s (Barnett, 2003; Salehyan, 2008). But only since the mid-2010s, interest in the nexus of climate change, environmental stress, peace, and conflicts has grown rapidly (McDonald, 2021; Vogler, 2023a). Today, a vast literature discusses whether, how, and in what contexts climate change affects the onset, duration, and intensity of intrastate armed conflict (Ide, 2023b; Koubi, 2019; Scartozzi, 2021). The research field was long divided between those claiming a strong link and those skeptical of a causal relationship between climate change and violent conflict. The skeptics also cautioned against securitizing climate change (Daoudy et al., 2022; von Lucke, 2020). Recently, there has been growing agreement that, along complex causal pathways, climate change and other environmental stress factors increase the risk of violent conflict (Ide, 2023a; von Uexkull & Buhaug, 2021). Still, a key observation is that political and economic circumstances remain more relevant for explaining conflict escalation (Mach et al., 2019; Wiederkehr et al., 2022).

The extensive research on climate change and armed conflict is paralleled by studies on climate change and peace but these bodies of literature ignore each other too often. As Barnett (2019: 930) criticized, many studies’ preoccupation with violence “reflects an ontology of social relations as inherently agonistic.”Adams et al. (2018) relatedly observed a sampling bias, as scholars have overly focused on places experiencing violence instead of studying nonviolent climate adaptation. These concerns align with a broader imbalance in peace and conflict research where conflicts are well-researched, whereas the study of peace requires more empirical and theoretical attention (Bright & Gledhill, 2018).

Environmental peacebuilding research investigates these intersections between environmental change and peace (Conca & Dabelko, 2002; Krampe et al., 2021). Emerging from a set of practices since the late 1990s (Dalmer, 2022), environmental peacebuilding “comprises the multiple approaches and pathways by which the management of environmental issues is integrated into and can support conflict prevention, mitigation, resolution and recovery” (Ide, Bruch, et al., 2021: 2-3). Typical examples are the joint administration of conservation areas (“peace parks”) and river basins that cut across the borders of rivaling states. In natural resource management, peace can be nurtured through economic development, inclusive governance, and intergroup cooperation. This offers opportunities for peacebuilding, especially after civil wars, if natural resource revenues serve to rebuild critical infrastructure, finance reconstruction, and secure post-conflict livelihoods for populations (Bruch et al., 2016; Johnson, 2021). Thereby, environmental peacebuilding can go beyond tackling physical violence (negative peace) by also addressing social injustice and intergroup inequalities that are key to positive peace (Johnson et al., 2021).

The literature shows recurring mechanisms of environmental peacebuilding, even if the processes are complex and outcomes difficult to predict (Krampe et al., 2021). A key mechanism is fostering cooperation to mitigate or resolve resource-related conflicts, both between states and at the communal level (Ide, 2019; Valencia & Courtheyn, 2023). Considering that environmental problems are often long-term and cross-border challenges, yet rarely considered as high or even security politics, they are well suited for facilitating cooperation and trust-building (Barquet et al., 2014; Ide, 2018). Environmental peacebuilding can also run through norm diffusion, especially when international actors intervene in post-war settings. For instance, the diffusion of human rights, fair access, and gender equality norms can reshape state–society relations in managing water, forests, minerals, and other environmental areas (Krampe et al., 2021). State service provision is another pathway. As armed conflicts may also damage resource management institutions (Weinthal & Sowers, 2023), there are environmental peacebuilding opportunities from redesigning institutions for increasing access to state services, improving public health, and enabling livelihoods, including for former combatants (Johnson et al., 2021; Marcantonio, 2022).

Practitioners have already advanced integrating work on climate–conflict linkages and environmental peacebuilding (Abrahams, 2020). For example, UNEP’s Environmental Cooperation for Peacebuilding program sought to mainstream environmental concerns across different policy areas in the UN system and among the wider peacebuilding practitioner community (Dalmer, 2021; UNEP, 2015). In contrast, research that integrates climate–conflict linkages and environmental peacebuilding is only emerging. Related studies examined challenges and nascent practices of addressing within climate change UN-led peacebuilding, particularly through climate-sensitive programming (Matthew, 2014; Scartozzi, 2022). Others cut across the divide when studying how pastoralists in Sub-Saharan Africa cooperated for sharing scarce resources during droughts, rather than fighting each other (e.g., Adano et al., 2012; Bukari et al., 2018). Still, there remains a relative disconnect, which has limited the potential of both research fields.

More specifically, insights into climate conflict have rarely fed into broader environmental peacebuilding debates. Among the latter, scholars began to study the occasional, unintendedly maladaptive consequences of peacebuilding efforts (Ide, 2020). This research could benefit from the methodological prowess of recent climate conflict studies in making more systematic causal observations. In return, the environmental peacebuilding literature has identified specific pathways for furthering intergroup cooperation (to mitigate or adapt to environmental stress), managing natural resource conflicts, and strengthening livelihoods in conflict-prone settings (Johnson et al., 2021). Environmental peacebuilding hence offers important insights into conflict-sensitive adaptation, programming, and cooperative responses to climate-induced changes (Abrahams, 2020; Kalilou, 2021). The need for these research areas to interact more is already evident and will increase as climate change and armed conflict appear as key issues of the 21st century.

2.2. From climate conflict to environmental peacebuilding

The articles in this special issue work toward integrating climate conflict and environmental peacebuilding research. Drawing on debates from both areas, the contributions provide theoretical and empirical insights into how climate change and broader environmental degradation affect conflict and what enables peacebuilding. This is examined for diverse cases, ranging from climate security risk assessments (CSRAs; see Šedova et al., 2024), via the gendered conflict outcomes of environmental and climatic changes in Syria and Tunisia (Francis, 2024), to the relations of climate migrants and hosting communities (He et al., 2024).

The contributions connect these debates by employing diverse sets of theories (Ide et al., 2023). Political ecology perspectives are particularly prominent in this special issue. Political ecology challenges environmental determinism by highlighting that power differentials and marginalization related to global capitalist modes of production, and resistance against this, shape environmental changes and associated conflict (Peluso & Watts, 2001; Selby et al., 2022). Itself a diversified field, political ecology is characterized by a post-positivist approach, in-depth qualitative methodology, and normative commitment (Bridge et al., 2015). From this view, scholars showed, for example, how pastoralist conflicts in Africa are often driven by land enclosures rather than by climate extremes (Bergius et al., 2020), or how transboundary “peace parks” may marginalize local populations (Marijnen et al., 2020).

With this methodology and research focus, political ecology perspectives lend themselves well to study our theme, particularly regarding local actors and their collective identities, narratives, and struggles against state and corporate domination, which is also producing the climate catastrophe. Hence, authors in this special issue apply political ecology to illustrate how environmental conflicts in Ukraine result from great power politics, including Russia’s ongoing invasion (Flamm & Kroll, 2024) and how different knowledge practices can be integrated for environmental conflict management in Colombia (Amador-Jimenez et al., 2024).

Securitization approaches also bring together climate conflict and environmental peacebuilding in this special issue. Scholars of the various securitization schools examine how issues become socially constructed as security threats (Balzacq et al., 2015; Buzan et al., 1998). By now, state institutions and international organizations (IOs) widely regard climate change as a security threat, although they differ on what is threatened and what policy responses should follow (Vogler, 2023a, 2023b; von Lucke et al., 2014). Securitizing the environment, however, may entail counterproductive responses, particularly by legitimizing armed means and stigmatizing vulnerable populations (Daoudy et al., 2022; McDonald, 2021). These concerns motivate several contributions in this special issue that work toward more adequate representations of local conflict contexts (Amador-Jimenez et al., 2024; Francis, 2024; Šedova et al., 2024).

Beyond securitization and political ecology, the authors in this special issue apply feminist theory (Francis, 2024), postcolonial and decolonial perspectives (Amador-Jimenez et al., 2024; Nalbo, 2024), social learning theory (Medina et al., 2024), and earth system science (Amador-Jimenez et al., 2024).

While the contributions to this special issue are not confined to one single methodology, it is worth highlighting that they share a qualitative methodology, mostly through small-N analyses. This is relevant as climate conflict and environmental peacebuilding tend toward different methodological directions. While quantitative approaches are often utilized in the former (Koubi, 2019), environmental peacebuilding studies are mainly qualitative (Johnson et al., 2021). The case study methodology has strengths in accounting for case and context specifics (George & Bennett, 2005), whereas quantitative work helps to identify general patterns. However, several studies within this special issue (He et al., 2024; Medina et al., 2024) illustrate that qualitative research can also promise high external validity. Our qualitative focus, furthermore, is not meant to discount quantitative and mixed methods.

The contributions showcased in this special issue also address some of the sampling biases of both environmental peacebuilding and climate conflict research. Scholars so far have paid disproportionate attention to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, particularly to certain countries, including Kenya, Sudan, Israel/Palestine, and Colombia (Adams et al., 2018; Ide, 2023c). While we focus much on these regions too, the special issue comprises less-often studied cases such as Bolivia, Guatemala, Nepal, Tunisia, and Senegal. Moreover, we include a European case study, namely on Ukraine (Flamm & Kroll, 2024), and evidence on other Western countries regarding climate migration (He et al., 2024). The stronger focus on the Global South, both in our special issue and the broader literature, partly results from these countries’ higher vulnerability to environmental changes and armed conflict. However, we do not seek to suggest that the Global South is inherently prone to violence, nor that there are no climate–conflict risks and environmental peacebuilding needs in the Global North. Contributions of this special issue also document known geographic biases prevalent in knowledge production. Western-based scholars and institutions have been highly influential, especially in the field of climate conflict (Adams et al., 2018), as demonstrated regarding CSRA tools (Šedova et al., 2024).

Finally, the contributions in this special issue align with the recent environmental peacebuilding interest in intrastate processes (i.e., dynamics and actions that happen within the recognized boundaries of a country). While early research focused mainly on interstate cooperation (Conca & Dabelko, 2002), intrastate efforts have become central to the literature since the early 2010s (Ide, Bruch, et al., 2021). The articles in this special issue reflect this intrastate focus but also include a case of interstate war (Flamm & Kroll, 2024) and evidence of transnational entanglements, for instance through investment projects (Nalbo, 2024). This highlights the need to examine climate-related conflicts and environmental peacebuilding processes in their transnational context and across multiple spheres from local to global (Schilling et al., 2018).

3. Exploring local dimensions

In recent years, both research streams have increasingly focused on the local level. This local turn responds to the widespread top-down approach, especially in environmental peacebuilding practice. So far, the key actors of environmental peacebuilding are IOs, high-level state institutions, and international NGOs (INGOs), which have tended toward technical, depoliticized, and short-term projects (Ide, 2020). As a result, such “initiatives risk missing the priorities and needs on the ground and fail to reconcile actors at different levels” (Dresse et al., 2019: 110). By the prevailing approach, practitioners and scholars also easily overlook that “[l]ocal communities are frequently successful in managing natural resources” and that “bottom-up approaches have also empowered marginalized and vulnerable communities who lack seats at decision-making tables” (Ide, Bruch, et al., 2021: 8).

This resembles earlier critiques of post-conflict peacebuilding. Post-Cold War interventions for peacebuilding have largely followed a liberal and top-down model of outsider-driven state-building and democratization (Paris, 2004). Yet, the disappointing results and questionable legitimacy of outside intervention led critics to call for bottom-up approaches based on local communities, traditional authorities, and indigenous institutions (Richmond, 2009). This literature strand sees grassroots credibility and legitimacy as crucial for effective dispute resolution (Mac Ginty, 2008). Considering ethical and capacity issues of local actors, however, scholars subsequently also explored the middle ground of hybrid peacebuilding, “in which liberal institutions incorporate local social realities including local power brokers, grassroots organizations and reconciliation initiatives” (Hasenclever & Sändig, 2012: 233).

A similar debate has engulfed the development and humanitarian aid sectors, which have also classically been dominated by professionalized, Northern-based organizations, and top-down efforts (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Sändig et al., 2018). Given the slow development progress of aid-receiving countries, critics have called for a shift away from outsider planning toward on-the-ground solutions (Easterly, 2007). Indeed, Northern donors have increasingly emphasized local ownership since the mid-2000s (Booth, 2012). In parallel, humanitarian agencies have endorsed the principle of localization, although (as with ownership) the practice often lags behind the rhetoric (Granzow, 2018). Here again, there is a middle ground in which local activists and people from directly affected communities team up with INGOs to ensure more legitimate and presumably more effective actions (Sändig & Hönke, 2024; Schramm & Sändig, 2018).

Overall, these debates reflect the same issues, namely that local actors (usually from the Global South) and their knowledge, identities, and capacities for change are too often neglected by Northern-based institutions who follow their practices and agendas (see Šedova et al., 2024). Since these actors (like IOs, development agencies, and INGOs) are also central to environmental peacebuilding efforts and climate–conflict responses, it is not surprising to find similar critiques across these areas.

In response, environmental peacebuilding scholars have increasingly studied the local sphere. There have been several perspectives in this research. Some scholars have focused on bottom-up approaches, that is, self-organized and independent grassroots actions. For example, agroecology schools in Colombia have educated peasants, thereby strengthening the social cohesion and resilience of rural communities affected by the complex challenges of warfare, climate change, and other environmental stress (Chavez-Miguel et al., 2022). In Ghana, where resource scarcity and climate change fuel communal violence, some farmer and herder groups have managed to share resources, forge social ties, and build trust, whereby they preserved peaceful relations (Bukari et al., 2018). In the post-war context of Timor-Leste, local communities held customary tara bandu ceremonies to collectively ban environmentally and socially detrimental actions (Ide, Bruch, et al., 2021). Initially a bottom-up approach, outside donors have increasingly supported tara bandu. Thereby, this is becoming a hybridized environmental peacebuilding practice that combines Western liberal and local customary logic.

Other scholars investigated the local dynamics and localization processes of top-down actions. These studies, for instance, find ambivalent peace outcomes of state-supported micro-hydropower projects in Nepal; while the projects both strengthened livelihoods and increased community cohesion, they also widened the gap with the state (Krampe, 2016a). Similarly, the internationally supported creation of Afghanistan’s first national park nurtured community cohesion and shared identities through joint park management, yet the conservation efforts also eroded the confidence in the state, as locally expected social benefits did not materialize (Johnson, 2022). Other studies illustrate missed opportunities and future options for involving local actors in water, mangrove, and desert management (Huda, 2021; Krampe, 2016b).

Still others focused on the (un)willingness and (in)ability of communities to initiate environmental cooperation, benefit from national and international environmental policies, and improve intergroup relations in the process (Dresse et al., 2021; Johnson, 2019). When affected by environmental stress, local communities have the agency to engage in (often complex mixes of) confrontational and cooperative responses. Local-level factors like trust in government or household resilience impact the response to climate-related drought and other extreme weather events (Döring, 2020; von Uexkull et al., 2020). Overall, the grassroots efforts of environmental peacebuilding seem more often successful than top-down projects (Ide, 2019; Johnson et al., 2021). ¹

In the following, we take a closer look at such local dimensions of environmental peacebuilding and climate–conflict resolution. In line with the literature, we explore both grassroots-based bottom-up approaches as well as the local effects of top-down and often outsider-driven efforts. Studying the local dimensions, we argue, promises to improve the analytics as well as policy, yet it also raises questions on constraints and risks.

3.1. Understanding conflict dynamics and environmental peacebuilding outcomes

Several contributions in this special issue illustrate how local actors and their knowledge, institutions, identities, and social networks shape environmental conflicts and related peacebuilding outcomes. This is demonstrated in case studies that range from water projects in Nepal via gendered responses to climate impacts in Syria and Tunisia.

Nalbo (2024) compares the strikingly different outcomes of top-down and bottom-up water projects regarding climate change-related water scarcity in the city of Dharan, Nepal. Adopting a postcolonial perspective and indigenous methodology, he focuses on “both physical and spiritual values that humans attach to the environment", which is "a space where power, positionalities, development, cultures, values and visions of future meet and clash” (Nalbo, 2024: 2). Thereby, he shows why a top-down investment project by the Asian Development Bank, which infringed indigenous lifeworlds, became conflictive. This starkly contrasts with a community-organized, self-funded initiative that increased the water supply in particularly disadvantaged neighborhoods. The initiative strengthened local livelihoods, increased solidarity, and mitigated water-related conflicts at the family and community levels. Hence, the cases show the need for considering communities’ sociocultural connections with the environment to understand peacebuilding outcomes.

Amador-Jimenez et al. (2024) propose a transdisciplinary perspective that integrates varieties of knowledge production into environmental peacebuilding. Examining global policy efforts of preventing deforestation to curb climate change, the authors observe that state actors and IOs have increasingly used remote sensing (such as satellite images) to track ecosystem changes. Yet, in the Colombian Amazon, this tends to produce one-sided data and securitized approaches. These raise ethical issues and may prove counterproductive to address complex conflicts. Therefore, the authors develop a theoretical framework that rests on political ecology, decolonial, and peace and conflict research for studying local power relations, communities’ knowledge, and communal narratives of environmental change. They argue that these sociocultural views from “below” need to complement the technological view from “above” for adequate analysis and effective peacebuilding efforts.

Francis (2024) examines the potential role of gender in climate-related conflict and environmental peacebuilding outcomes. He hypothesizes that gender roles work as an intervening variable within the climate-conflict nexus. In particular, he argues, existing conflicts are more likely to escalate into violence if rigid traditional masculinities prevail. By contrast, less rigid gender norms and higher gender equality could allow more flexible masculinities that entail nonviolent responses to environmental stress. The paper assesses this hypothesis regarding the different pathways of Syria and Tunisia during and since the Arab Spring protests. In Syria, there is a plausible connection between climatic changes, hyper-masculinity, and warfare, whereas Tunisia’s more gender-equal society has also faced environmental stress yet evaded armed conflict. The paper thereby raises concerns about securitized state responses (McDonald, 2021) and contributes to the neglected study of gender in environmental peacebuilding (Ide, Lopez, et al., 2021). Civil society and policy actions that increase gender equality and community resilience appear promising to prevent the escalation of conflicts over climate and other environmental changes. While Francis focuses mostly on national politics, further research can also test the argument for local settings where gender roles can significantly vary among and within indigenous groups, rural communities, or urban neighborhoods.

3.2. Considering the local in policymaking

Several papers in this special issue are also policy-oriented to inform legislators, development and humanitarian agencies, civil society, and think tanks. Broadly, these contributions argue that local contexts and actors (especially from the Global South), alongside their capacities and knowledge, must be better considered for effectively addressing climate conflicts and building environmental peace.

He et al. (2024) examine peacebuilding efforts regarding climate-driven migration, mainly in the Global South. As migrants need access to land and other resources for their livelihoods, they often compete with host communities (Wiederkehr et al., 2022). Moreover, distributional conflicts can arise within newly created migrant communities. Humanitarian agencies, government bodies, and civil society groups typically respond through varied aid programs, relocation initiatives, and conflict resolution mechanisms. In this regard, the authors review the literature for success factors of effective programming. They find that community-led natural resource management and local support networks are crucial for fostering peaceful relations between climate migrants and host communities. In many places, governance gaps, complex natural resources regulation, and inadequate land laws also reinforce the need for such local initiatives and networks.

Turning toward Ukraine, Flamm & Kroll (2024) explore the heavy environmental impacts of Russia’s invasion and the opportunities for environmental peacebuilding (Rawtani et al., 2022). Taking an international political ecology perspective, they revisit Ukraine’s history, showing how imperial actors long exploited the country’s environment for industrialization, infrastructure development, and agriculture. Against this background, the paper uses environmental peacebuilding research to focus on critical problem-solving and to explore pathways for local peacebuilding that are both environmentally and socially just. In this regard, the authors critically examine the EU’s current planning for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. Along with its Green Deal, the EU envisions a transformative reconstruction that also makes Ukraine climate neutral. The authors, however, caution that EU-led reconstruction and the prioritization of economic recovery could reproduce historical asymmetries to the detriment of Ukrainians and the environment. Although Ukraine’s civil society is already part of the reconstruction planning, the authors advocate more thorough involvement, especially of disadvantaged groups. The reconstruction efforts should be as independent and locally oriented as possible, rather than donor driven.

In this collection, Šedova et al. (2024) evaluate CSRAs, which aim to inform policymakers about threats from climate conflicts to enable preventive measures. These risk assessment tools have been developed by think tanks, government agencies, and IOs recently. As the evaluation shows, CSRAs already combine huge amounts of data, especially when using mixed methods. Yet, there are shortcomings too, particularly regarding inclusivity. CSRAs have been mainly developed by and for Northern-based institutions. Few tools have involved actors from the Global South at all—and if they did, it was only to provide information and not to develop the original tools. Relatedly, the tools lack “specific recommendations on how to interact and engage with the goals of local actors, or discuss how international organizations should navigate domestic political challenges”; consequently, “(t)his is limiting the types of questions asked, solutions proposed, and ultimately the effectiveness of the tools” (Šedova et al., 2024: 13). Hence, the authors call for involving actors from the Global South (including underrepresented communities) in the development of CSRAs.

Several contributions in this collection provide theoretical and methodological reflections on how to enable community participation in environmental peacebuilding and conflict resolution. Drawing on social learning theory, Medina et al. (2024) propose and evaluate a participatory appraisal method. This uses field visits and focus group discussions to create an inclusive setting for local people to identify climatic and other environmental changes and develop joint but differentiated bottom-up solutions. As the authors argue, “climate adaptation interventions are most effective when they prioritise local experiences from the outset,” because this “enables the development of action proposals that resonate with local populations, align with their own understanding of peace and leverage their existing adaptive capacities” (Medina et al., 2024: 23).

Other papers in the special issue echo the need for enhancing methodologies in studying the local. Nalbo (2024) advocates indigenous methodology to understand local belief systems, knowledge, and history; Amador-Jimenez et al. (2024) propose an interpretative heuristic based on ethnographic practices and transdisciplinarity, which also challenges the limiting nature–culture divide of modern sciences; and He et al. (2024) highlight that community-based evaluation metrics are required to design programs that adequately address local needs and, ultimately, climate conflicts.

3.3. The dark side: Romanticizing the local?

At the same time, there is the risk of romanticizing and overstating the potential of the local turn. Bottom-up approaches to environmental peacebuilding and climate–conflict resolution run into ethical concerns, trade-offs, and structural constraints. These could lead to unintended and perhaps counterproductive effects, known as the dark sides of environmental peacebuilding (Ide, 2020). For the following discussion, we again draw on insights from the earlier debate regarding post-conflict peacebuilding (Hughes et al., 2015).

First, delineating local and supra-local actors, institutions, and practices is not straightforward. Rather, manifold connections exist through administrative structures, trade and other economic relations, social networks, media, and shared ethnic, religious, and other identities (Schilling et al., 2018). This encompasses national and transnational connections, for example, with foreign states, IOs, and global activist networks (Sändig et al., 2020). Hence, “[the local] is often much less ‘local’ than imagined, and is the product of constant social negotiation between localised and non-localised ideas, norms and practices” (Mac Ginty & Richmond, 2013: 770).

A major risk lies in romanticizing the inclusiveness of local communities. As mentioned, local actors’ ability to raise their voices and contribute to climate conflict mitigation and environmental peacebuilding influences the legitimacy and impacts of these efforts. Yet, local actors and solutions are not necessarily broadly legitimate, as local communities are not homogeneous. Rather, they comprise diverse subgroups, including typically disadvantaged segments (e.g., youths, women, migrant workers, landless peasants, and artisanal miners). Local communities thus often mirror broader societal inequalities based on gender, ethnicity, religion, and social status (Daoud, 2021). Against this background, Medina et al. (2024: 5) make the case for social learning approaches that integrate “a plurality of voices in addressing problem situations,” center on “lived experiences, motivations and rationales of the various affected populations,” and promise environmental peacebuilding through “the joined design of solutions that build upon collective action and existing adaptive capacities.”

Relatedly, local knowledge can be idealized. For local actors who are immediately confronted with environmental changes, it is easily assumed that they know best about issues and solutions. Indeed, communities can be reflective of the diverse causes of climatic changes (Nef et al., 2021). Yet, their knowledge may also be parochial, partisan, and insufficient for tackling complex and multi-level problems such as climate change and related conflicts. Moreover, local actors sometimes understand environmental changes through cosmologic belief systems, for example, God’s will and wrath (Bankoff, 2004). While these views should not be discounted, it can be challenging to reconcile them with a science-based approach. Finally, local communities can have pragmatic views, for instance, welcoming deforestation if it offers them economic opportunities (Amador-Jimenez et al., 2024).

Traditional institutions and conflict resolution practices are not always benign and peaceful, which raises ethical concerns. As a positive example, the above-mentioned tara bandu from Timor-Leste contributed to local peacebuilding while respecting human rights standards (Ide, Palmer, & Barnett, 2021). Yet, traditional conflict resolution can also comprise blood feuds, forced displacement, segregation, and mass killing (Džuverović, 2021). This illustrates the need to scrutinize local peacebuilding approaches for ethical acceptability.

In cases of protracted environmental conflict and violence, it can be counterintuitive to expect significant local peacebuilding capacities. Armed conflict often indicates the failure of traditional institutions and leads to their collapse or instrumentalization for warfare (Ellis, 1999). Relatedly, protracted conflicts entail socio-psychological rifts as the belligerents adopt negative views of outgroups, enemy images, and even justifications for violence (Bar-Tal, 2007). It is still important to search for civil society’s peacebuilding potential in such extreme cases, yet outsider assistance may also be indispensable here.

Scholars and practitioners of environmental peacebuilding and climate–conflict prevention need to consider these risks and trade-offs. Yet, disregarding local dimensions and continuing with liberal top-down and technocratic interventions would be no alternative either. Rather, we advocate for increased research on bottom-up initiatives and opportunities for hybrid peacebuilding that combines liberal frameworks, donor support, and customary conflict resolution mechanisms. In this vein, several papers in this special issue call for co-producing knowledge across multiple levels (Amador-Jimenez et al., 2024; Medina et al., 2024; Šedova et al., 2024). Authors in this special issue also warn of instrumentalizing local actors for outsider-driven agendas (Flamm & Kroll, 2024)). Šedova et al. (2024) already find such limited forms of “invited” participation of Global South actors regarding inputs for CSRAs.

Hence, there is a need for bottom-up and hybrid environmental peacebuilding approaches that balance the various risks, ethical concerns, and trade-offs, while seeking to enable intersectional participation within locally led initiatives. The debates on hybrid post-conflict peacebuilding (Mac Ginty & Richmond, 2016), ownership and localization in aid (Granzow, 2018; Hasselskog, 2022), and affectedness for transnational advocacy (Sändig et al., 2020) provide ample insights to inform the discussion further.

4. Outlook

There is insufficient dialogue between the climate conflict and environmental peacebuilding literature. The special issue, therefore, shows how peacebuilding efforts can address climate-related (and broader environment-related) conflict risks. Specifically, the contributions demonstrate diverse peacebuilding efforts by state and civil society actors regarding climate migrants, participatory appraisals, formal climate security assessments, and local participation in green post-war reconstruction. Bottom-up initiatives that strengthen community cohesion while addressing climate impacts and environmental degradation appear most promising (Johnson et al., 2021). Moreover, the contributions illustrate that outside actors need to take local conflict narratives and community-based solutions into account to achieve climate-resilient peace (Barnett, 2019). In theoretical regard, the papers employ different perspectives—including political ecology, securitization, postcolonial approaches, and social learning theory—that can bridge these disconnected literatures and help identify peacebuilding opportunities.

We particularly explore the local dimensions, given that environmental peacebuilding (especially in practice) has been dominated by top-down, technical approaches. Contributing to a local turn in this field (Chavez-Miguel et al., 2022; Ide, Palmer, & Barnett, 2021), we argue that the local dimensions are highly relevant for understanding the dynamics and outcomes of peacebuilding in the context of climate change and environmental degradation. Considering these local dimensions promises both improving the analytics of complex causal mechanisms and informing policymakers of legitimate and effective measures. We particularly show the relevance of local knowledge, narratives, networks, and collective identities. Moreover, contributions within this special issue seek to refine methodologies for grasping local lifeworlds and integrating them into state and civil society efforts. Yet, we also find notable limitations and dark sides of such a local turn (Ide, 2020): it remains challenging to delineate different spheres; the local legitimacy and capacity of traditional conflict resolution are easily overestimated; and ethical concerns can arise over exclusionary, partisan, or even violent solutions. In this regard, hybrid approaches to environmental peacebuilding, which combine outsider intervention with local capacities, offer further opportunities but are no panacea either.

Since research at these intersections is still at an early stage, there are numerous further research needs. Most importantly, more systematic studies are needed on possible overlaps, synergies, and tensions of climate conflict, environmental peacebuilding, and related fields (Ide et al., 2023). Further case study evidence of climate-related peacebuilding efforts, especially bottom-up initiatives, will also be helpful (Matthew, 2014). Relatedly, hybrid approaches deserve more attention: Bringing together IOs, state actors, and high-level civil society with locally rooted groups, institutions, and social practices is easier said than done. Hence, both academics and practitioners would benefit from more evidence on best practices, challenges, and the potential dark sides of such cooperation. Regarding peacebuilding mechanisms, there is a need for more consideration of norm diffusion and state service provision.

Finally, the special issue demonstrates that especially state actors urgently need to go beyond the widespread securitized approaches to tackling climate-related insecurity (Vogler, 2023b). As our collection shows, legitimate and effective responses more often require social engagement with local actors rather than militarized means.