Eyes at the Last Mile: Ethical Impact Storytelling for Environmental Peacebuilding (A Path to Ottawa Event)

Jun 1, 2026

Please join us for this Path to Ottawa event on Tuesday June 2, 2026, from 16:00 -17:00 PM EAT (9:00 AM EST). Please register here. 

Event Description: 

Eyes at the Last Mile: Ethical Impact Storytelling for Environmental Peacebuilding is proposed as a pre‑ENPAX side event designed to intentionally precede and feed into the Path to Ottawa initiative. Environmental peacebuilding operates at the intersection of environmental stress, conflict, health, and resilience, yet the lived realities of communities at the last mile are often mediated through distant, institutional 
narratives. Storytelling plays a decisive role in shaping whose knowledge is legitimized, which interventions are resourced, and how peacebuilding challenges are understood. When storytelling is unethical, it can extract trauma, reinforce stereotypes, and erase agency, causing harm not only to communities but also to the quality of evidence informing policy and practice. Positioned ahead of Path to Ottawa, this session creates a critical moment for collective reflection on how narratives shape the conversations, priorities, and power dynamics participants carry into Ottawa. Rather than treating ethics as a communications add‑on, Eyes at the Last Mile frames ethical storytelling as a 
core environmental peacebuilding practice. The session is designed as an experiential, immersive engagement that invites participants to see, experience, and reflect on how stories function, where power sits within them, and how narrative choices influence peacebuilding outcomes. Through curated visual media, short film, and 
participant‑led narratives, the event foregrounds conflict sensitivity, dignity, agency, and participation. By hosting this engagement before the Path to Ottawa convenings, the session intentionally sharpens ethical awareness and recalibrates narrative practices, ensuring participants arrive in Ottawa better attuned to whose voices they amplify, how they represent communities, and what responsibilities storytelling carries in shaping 
peacebuilding policy and action. 

Speakers:
Dr. Paul Kibati (Amref) 
Erick Achola (Amref) 
Agnes Penda (BBC)
Annika Erickson Pearson (ECCP) 
Larry Swatuk (Editor, Essential Concepts of Environmental Peacebuilding) 

Hosts:
Faith Kathambi Mutegi and Rachel Weaver