Authors

Nataliia Slobodian¹;  ¹ Canterbury Christ Church University, UK

Discussion

Relevance of the problem. Environmental security as an ability to cope with environmental risks, challengers or conflicts by individual, communities or nations is interdisciplinary by its nature. As well as it traditionally covers the dynamics of social, behavioral, economic, and political responses to environmental stresses and the degree to which they are constructive or exacerbate underlying fault-lines in social cohesion, economic activity and opportunity, as well as stability. These issues are of great interest to scholars and practitioners alike. Strategically, environmental risks are not only about international relations and development but human security as well.

The aim of the presentation is to identify gaps and provide possibilities to better understanding environmental peacebuilding practical implementation, particularly from social, economic and policy sciences perspectives. This aim includes the development of methodology / models of practical environment peacebuilding implementation provided by the case of environmental impacts of current war against Ukraine.

Key questions to focus include what motivates different actors to engage in environmental peacebuilding, the effectiveness and criteria for success for such environmental peacebuilding, and the extent to which environmental peacebuilding has mitigated or enhanced tensions in other topical areas of negotiation, what are the role and place of environmental peacebuilding in post-conflict approaches to recovery strategy.

Effective environmental peacebuilding is the basis for climate and sustainable resilience developments focused on preventing or repairing military damage to the environment, prevention or respond to the environment caused conflicts with a view on protecting environment and providing climate resilience.

There are six topical issues of using environment in peacebuilding that have emerged in the current research including security, politics, leadership, economy, technology and gender.

Policy-economy based model: policy and institutional framework through security guarantees and institutional architecture to provide economic recovery on the environmentally friendly and climate change adaptation and mitigation principles, geopolitical alliances for business-friendly environment and effective state-business relations (business as a peace provider), climate and energy diplomacy as tool for peaceful development.

Value based model: reputation as geopolitical positioning and imaging of peace facilitators, ideological balancing as exporting the model of development (Grean Deal as the basis for Ukraine`s post war recovery basis), education with the focus on institutional capacity and functional implementation of environmental peacebuilding paving the way to sustainable resilience.