Soundscapes of Peace: Reimagining Environmental Peacebuilding Through the Power of Music
Ann Le, University of California, Irvine (United States)
Angela R. Robinson, University of California Irvine (United States)
Richard Matthew, University of California, Irvine (United States)
Anna Kamanzi, University of California, Irvine (United States)
Amid the compounding challenges of shifting political landscapes, funding uncertainties, and deteriorating multilateral cooperation, this poster presentation draws upon the interdisciplinary framework of the Alec Glasser Center for the Power of Music & Social Change at the University of California, Irvine. Through this framework, it advances music as a culturally embedded, scientifically validated, and radically inclusive entry point for fostering connection, healing, and collective action. Music operates across all dimensions of environmental peacebuilding — educating communities about ecological interdependence, mobilizing grassroots coalitions in conflict-affected and disadvantaged settings, building cross-cultural bridges essential to environmental diplomacy, and celebrating shared humanity in ways that reduce the social distances enabling environmental destruction and conflict alike. Grounded in research spanning neurological development, social behavior, cognitive resilience, and environmental sustainability, this poster presents evidence for how music-based programming and music-centered collaboratives can reinvigorate peacebuilding practice in authoritarian contexts, counter anti-science dynamics, and advance localization among marginalized communities, while illustrating through case examples how music-centered approaches can be effectively integrated across humanitarian, development, and environmental sectors. The poster serves as a formal research and practice agenda for music as an instrument of environmental peacebuilding, inviting scholarly dialogue on monitoring, evaluation, ethical implications, and the responsible scaling of such approaches through digital technologies and artificial intelligence.