Environment, Conflict and Peacebuilding
Promoting the role of ecosystem management and natural resource governance is necessary to moving fragile societies onto pathways of resilience.
The connections between environmental issues and conflict are many and complex. Environmental factors themselves are rarely, if ever, the sole cause of violence. But natural resources and other environmental factors are linked to violent conflict in a variety of ways often obscured by more visible issues, such as ethnic tension and power politics. Our experts reveal the links among environmental change, natural resources and security. We also focus on what can be done about these links: namely, trying to better understand how peacebuilding practitioners, working in fragile states, can integrate climate risks and considerations into their work to ensure that it is sustainable and that it supports the transition from fragility to peace.
- Policy Brief
Managing the Trade-Offs of Transformation Through Foreign Policy
This climate diplomacy essay aims to inspire actors around the world to work together to initiate, manage and monitor the necessary changes needed for a sustainable world.
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Is Vanadium the “Valyrian Steel” of the Energy Transition?
In Game of Thrones, a sword forged out of Valyrian steel is recognized for its unparalleled strength and light weight. It is this advantage that denotes it as one of Westeros’s most sought-after materials. In the real world, its equivalent just might be vanadium.
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Dead Batteries Deserve a Second Life
Batteries should be recycled, so the valuable minerals therein—including cobalt and lithium—can stay in the economy.
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Sustainability and Second Life: The case for cobalt and lithium recycling
Adopting recycling in the mining sector and in supply chains is essential to ensure the transition to a low-carbon economy is responsible and sustainable for the longer term.
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Green Conflict Minerals: The fuels of conflict in the transition to a low-carbon economy
This reports seeks to understand how the transition to a low-carbon economy—and the minerals and metals required to make that shift—could affect fragility, conflict and violence dynamics in mineral-rich states.
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Electric Vehicles vs. Fuel-Efficient Used Cars: Which really drives sustainability?
Debates surrounding the merits of electric vehicles versus fuel-efficient used cars have typically focused on carbon emissions and energy use only—but what of the conflict implications?
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Five Steps We Must Take to Protect Refugees in the Future
This year, a new reality, based on a new international paradigm regarding refugees futures, must emerge. Here are five steps that need to be set in motion to make this happen.
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Connecting the Dots: Natural resources, women and peace
To celebrate International Women’s Day, we spoke with Silja Halle of UN Environment to discuss the opportunities presented by environment and natural resources to strengthen women’s participation in peace processes.
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Conflict-Sensitive Conservation in the Maiko–Tayna–Kahuzi–Biega Landscape: Conflict analysis
This conflict analysis provides guidance for advancing conflict-sensitive conservation in the Maiko–Tayna–Kahuzi–Biega landscape.
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Digging up the Dirt on Conflict Minerals Worldwide
A series of recent reports has revealed a new complexity to the familiar topic of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s “conflict minerals.” Clare Church explores how the trade now not only proliferates outsides of the mobile phone industry, but also outside of the country itself.
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