Transforming Environmental Peacebuilding: Addressing Extractivism in Building Climate Resilient Peace
Publisher: Ecology and Society
Author(s): Barbara Magalhaes Teixeira and Christie J. Nicoson
Date: 2024
Topics: Assessment, Conflict Causes, Extractive Resources, Governance
The authors examined the role of anti-extractivism as environmental peacebuilding through a conflict transformation framework. Environmental peacebuilding aims to foster peace through addressing environmental issues to remedy root causes of conflict; such efforts must further account for and respond to the changing climate. To this end, the authors explored how community-level movements encounter structural constraints, oppressions, or opportunities. Rather than relying on existing structures as a means to resolve conflict, the authors suggest that environmental conflict transformation presents an opportunity to foster climate resilient peace responding to differing needs of various groups, extending beyond the absence of war, and responding to the realities of climate change. The authors conducted case studies with the organizations Casa Pueblo in Puerto Rico and Movimento Bem Viver in Brazil to explore how conflict transformation helps shift environmental peacebuilding toward both being able to respond to destructive patterns and to achieve a more peaceful future through a process of change. The authors argue that the act of negating extractivism is a positive action toward transformation for peace. The authors thus contribute theoretical and empirical insight to the study of environmental peacebuilding, broadening ongoing discussions on building climate resilient peace that is beneficial to both humans and the environment.