The Many Voices of Environmental Cooperation: A Relational Analysis of 30 Years of Environmental Peacebuilding over Shared Waters in Israel, Jordan, and Palestine
Publisher: Environment and Security
Author(s): Laura E. R. Peters, Ken Conca, Aaron T. Wolf, Ari Lippi, and Jamon Van Den Hoek
Date: 2025
Topics: Basic Services, Conflict Prevention, Cooperation, Renewable Resources
Environmental cooperation is theorized to contribute to peacebuilding, but the complexity of how this linkage is realized for the people involved remains out of view. This article applies relational thinking—understanding individuals, systems, and concepts through their interconnectedness and mutual influence—to the field of environmental peacebuilding with the goal of contributing to theory building. This research focuses on nearly 30 years of EcoPeace Middle East’s environmental peacebuilding over shared waters in Israel, Jordan, and Palestine from 1994 to 2022. Based on interviews with 83 people involved in environmental peacebuilding programming, the analysis outlines the plurality of how participants perceive and practice their changing roles, responsibilities, and agency in relation to themselves, each other, and their shared environments. The findings are interpreted in three analytical categories: stagnation, shifts, and transformations. This research suggests that pathways from environmental cooperation to peacebuilding may not be tied as strongly to outcomes but the process of how they engage deeper relational networks of heterogeneous meaning making. We argue that the many voices of environmental cooperation together contribute to ongoing and nonlinear processes of peace and environmental sustainability even amid ongoing violence.