Linking Environment and Conflict Prevention: The Role of the United Nations.
Publisher: Mason, S., A. Muller, A. Schnabel, R. Alluri, and C. Schmid (ETH Zurich and Swisspeace)
Date: 2008
Topics: Conflict Causes, Conflict Prevention, Extractive Resources
Countries: Cambodia, Congo (DRC), Jordan, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Sudan
The relevance of how environmental factors influence violent conflicts tends to be either exaggerated or underestimated. Moreover, climate change and oil are often emphasized as the most important environmental conflict factors as they are presently high on international agendas. This report argues that different types of environment-related conflicts must be acknowledged in order to achieve appropriate responses from the United Nations and other actors. It underlines the need to consider lowlevel conflicts over the use of the environment as carefully as the more highly escalated ‘oil-type’ conflicts. Although they are often unspectacular – due to few battle deaths – they are nevertheless highly relevant in their aggregation, because they have the potential to destabilize local areas, which in turn may have regional and global repercussions.