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Zelli, F., and T. Krause. 2025. The nature of peace: post-conflict peacebuilding and its implications for environment and livelihoods. Ecology and Society 30(4):15.ABSTRACT
This editorial introduces the special feature’s main objective: to provide latest research findings on the dynamics between environmental protection and post-conflict peacebuilding processes after internal armed conflicts. In the feature, we propose a broad understanding of environmental peacebuilding that takes all cycles of the peacebuilding process into account and puts stronger emphasis on the long-term social and environmental impacts. Based on this conceptualization, the contributions to this special feature analyze a series of environmental, social, political, and economic dimensions of post-conflict environmental peacebuilding processes in a diversity of geographical contexts.
Building on a wide mix of methods from various disciplinary angles, the feature provides the reader with a range of important and novel results: on different types of impacts on ecosystems and livelihoods (e.g., largely detrimental consequences across Uganda or for environmental human rights defenders in Colombia as a whole, but also decreasing deforestation in Colombia’s Sumapaz territory); for various timings and cycles of peacebuilding processes (e.g., ongoing violent conflicts around Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Iraq’s Kurdistan region, a recent truce in Tigray in late 2022, less than a decade of peacebuilding in Colombia, and over 20 years since the peace agreement in Uganda); at different political levels (from local areas like DRC’s Virunga region or Colombia’s Sumapaz area to national politics and international law contexts); and for a large set of actors (such as local farmers, indigenous communities, civil society groups, rebel groups, and local and national governmental actors). One core overarching finding across these contributions is the dominance of nature-neglecting, instrumentalizing and extractivist narratives with their far-reaching impacts on post-conflict societies. These impacts are not only environmental, e.g., deforestation and biodiversity loss, but also social, in the form of threats to livelihoods of vulnerable communities, and they re-produce old but create also new forms of physical, structural, and cultural violence.
OBJECTIVES AND MOTIVATION
The overarching aim of this special feature is to provide some of the key latest research on the dynamics between environmental protection and post-conflict peacebuilding processes after internal armed conflicts. Internal armed conflicts are recurring phenomena in the history of mankind, with large numbers of fatalities and devastating social consequences. At the time of writing, the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights counts more than 110 ongoing non-international armed conflicts in 34 countries.
The linkages of such conflicts to the natural environment are mutual and complex. They may entail direct environmental destruction as well as indirect impacts on ecosystems, for instance through population displacement (Sowers and Weinthal 2021). Furthermore, natural resources or environmental degradation may represent major drivers of conflict, as is the case when militias battle for access to, and control over, natural resources and lands to widen their influence spheres or enrich themselves (cf. Junne and Verkoren 2005, Bernauer et al. 2012, Krampe 2016, von Uexkull et al. 2016, Ide et al. 2021, 2023, Johnson 2021, Zelli and Krause 2025).
This said, internal armed conflicts may as well provide a counter-intuitive protection for ecosystems like forests and wetlands (McNeely 2003, Burgess et al. 2015, Zelli and Krause 2025). During ongoing hostilities, infrastructure construction, extensive agricultural activity, external investments, and land-grabbing are often severely limited, particularly in frontline areas or demarcated ceasefire zones (LeBillon 2000, Sanchez-Cuervo and Aide 2013, Milne et al. 2015).
Against this backdrop, a post-conflict peacebuilding process may offer a unique opportunity to bring ecosystems to the fore, for a double purpose: to ensure their protection, for instance by strengthening or introducing respective legislation and institutions; and to promote stability and peace, for instance by targeting the sustainable and equitable distribution of resources, supporting the livelihoods of vulnerable communities, and facilitating environmental cooperation and co-management. Steps to pursue this dual goal not only include environmental peacebuilding in the narrower sense, i.e., measures specifically geared toward the natural environment (Carius 2006), but also the mainstreaming of environmental protection into other efforts like rural development or reintegration of ex-combatants (Morales-Muñoz et al. 2021, Sadaqat Huda 2021).
The contributions to this special feature provide novel and policy-relevant analyses on this mutual constitution between peacebuilding and environmental protection, guided by the following research questions:
- Taking stock: To which extent are concerns of environmental protection integrated or neglected in the peacebuilding process after an internal armed conflict?
- Environmental consequences: How does the post-conflict peacebuilding process impact a country’s or region’s natural environment?
- Social consequences: Which consequences do the peacebuilding activities and their environmental implications have for the livelihoods of local communities that depend on respective ecosystem services or natural resources?
- Sustainable peace: How do these various developments feed back into the peacebuilding process and, ultimately, affect its objective of avoiding or mitigating different forms of violence?
- Drivers: What are the major drivers underlying the integration or neglect of environmental concerns and the trajectories leading to respective environmental, social, and peace-related consequences?
- Lessons and responses: Which lessons can we draw from these drivers and consequences to safeguard the environment and associated livelihoods in peacebuilding processes and reach sustainable peace?
The special feature comprises various articles that summarize findings of the inter-disciplinary research program “Nature of Peace,” which put particular focus on environmental peacebuilding processes in Colombia and Uganda (Nardi et al. 2024, Samper et al. 2024, Krause et al. 2025, Nardi and Kasznar 2025; Sjöstedt, unpublished manuscript, Valencia et al., unpublished manuscript). In addition, the feature includes solicited contributions on a series of further geographical contexts (Eklund and Dinc 2024, Magalhães Teixeira and Nicoson 2024, Schulte to Bühne et al. 2024, Verweijen and Hoffmann 2024). The feature’s synthesis article summarizes major findings across all contributions and provides further details on the underlying research program and its analytical framework (Zelli and Krause 2025).
ENVIRONMENTAL PEACEBUILDING
In this special feature, we understand our key theme of post-conflict peacebuilding as a range of measures undertaken “on the far side of conflict” (United Nations General Assembly and Security Council 2000:3) by different actors, external and domestic, governmental and non-governmental, to reduce the risk of relapsing into armed conflict and to create conditions for sustainable peace. Notably, this understanding takes all cycles of the peacebuilding process into account and puts a strong focus on its long-term and sustainable outcomes.
Post-conflict peacebuilding measures can be roughly distinguished along three purposes: those stabilizing the post-conflict zone (e.g., through disarmament and reintegration programs); those restoring or building state institutions (e.g., through technical assistance to support governance functions and the rule of law, or programs to promote the transparency, accountability, and legitimacy of institutions); and those supporting the reconstruction and development of a socioeconomic infrastructure (e.g., through trauma counselling, supporting transitional justice, reconciliation and community dialogue, strengthening civil society organizations and vulnerable groups, promoting human rights, environmental awareness, and gender empowerment; Barnett et al. 2007).
There is a growing body of literature that extends this understanding to environmental aspects of post-conflict peacebuilding, linking environmental change and degradation to the rise or perpetuation of armed conflicts (e.g., Schwartz and Randall 2003, Raleigh and Urdal 2007, Bernauer et al. 2012, von Uexkull et al. 2016, Ide et al. 2021, 2023). These studies demonstrate that many post-conflict reconstruction efforts experience tensions between addressing immediate needs (e.g., access to clean water, employment) and tackling the root causes of the conflict (e.g., resource scarcity or unequal distribution; Junne and Verkoren 2005, Krampe 2016). The focus of many researchers has eventually shifted from resource scarcity as a conflict cause to the cooperation potential that natural resources management can bring to post-conflict societies (cf. Altpeter 2016, Ide et al. 2023).
In parallel to these scholarly efforts, the vital and complex interlinkage between peace, poverty, and the environment has been increasingly recognized by domestic and international practitioners and stakeholders. The manifold ecological, social, political, and economic implications of this interlinkage have been most notably identified in the Sustainable Development Goals, as they combine the management of natural resources and ecosystems on land (SDG goal 15) with poverty eradication (SDG goal 1) and the promotion of peace (SDG goal 16).
CORE CONTRIBUTIONS
Notwithstanding the increasing acknowledgement and urgency of environmental peacebuilding in research and practice, we largely lack both theoretical frameworks and policy-relevant systematic comparative empirical analyses that capture the nexus between post-conflict peacebuilding and the natural environment more comprehensively, i.e., along the lines of the broader definition we introduced above.
Leading scholars concede that we know too little about when, how, and why peace processes can contribute to environmental sustainability, and vice versa, how an integration of environmental protection concerns can work for sustainable peace and local livelihoods (e.g., Salehyan 2008, Theisen 2008, Gleditsch 2012, Matthew 2014, Hartard and Liebert 2015, Young and Goldman 2015, Beevers 2019, Ide et al. 2023). In the same vein, researchers have acknowledged the ongoing disconnect between the scholarships on peacebuilding and on environmental governance (cf. Bruch et al. 2009).
Important efforts have therefore been made to initiate and strengthen a research community on environmental peacebuilding, most notably the creation of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association (EnPax) and its organization of the recurring International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding, along with important concerted publications (Bruch et al. 2016, Swain and Öjendal 2018, Ide et al. 2021, 2023, Krampe 2021, Krampe et al. 2021).
This special feature builds on the insights of this topical and growing strand of research, sharing its community’s core assumption and concern: a thorough understanding and sustainable achievement of post-conflict peacebuilding and environmental protection is not possible without addressing the mutually reenforcing dynamics between both goals. The contributions advance this sprawling research community through a series of conceptual, theoretical, methodical, and empirical added values:
- Conceptually and theoretically, the contributors analyze how diverse valuations of nature inform approaches and policy proposals to peacebuilding. Both Nardi et al. (2024) and Samper et al. (2024) show how currently dominant instrumental understandings of nature, territory, and peace impede transitions toward more sustainable peace after conflicts or even legitimize the continuation of violence. Verweijen and Hoffmann (2024) further caution that exaggerated faith in science and technology also impacts the academic field and knowledge production on environmental peacebuilding. As a holistic alternative to narrow instrumental perspectives, Magalhães Teixeira and Nicoson (2024) suggest climate resilient peace as a notion that more widely acknowledges the different needs of affected groups and the realities of environmental degradation.
Taken these insights together, Zelli and Krause (2025) introduce an analytical framework to identify recurring trajectories that lead from the integration (or lack thereof) of environmental concerns in peacebuilding efforts to environmental and social consequences of these efforts, and to ultimate chances for achieving a sustainable peace. Under the currently prevalent trajectory, nature-neglecting, instrumentalizing, and extractivist narratives have far-reaching impacts, not only in environmental terms, e.g., deforestation and biodiversity loss, but also socially, e.g., threats to livelihoods of vulnerable communities, and, ultimately, by producing old and new forms of physical, structural, and cultural violence. - Methodically, the special feature’s ambition to scrutinize different (social, ecological, political, economic) dimensions of post-conflict environmental peacebuilding is met by a variety of approaches to capture these dimensions. The contributors’ disciplinary backgrounds range from environmental and international law (Samper, Sjöstedt), sociology (Hoffmann, Vargas Falla), and political science (Dinc, Magalhães Teixeira, Nicoson, Zelli) to environmental and sustainability science (Darbyshire, Kasznar, Krause, López, Schulte to Bühne, Valencia), human geography (Nardi, Verweijen, Weldemichel), physical geography and geology (Eklund, Nyssen, Weir). The collaboration among these authors allowed them to combine a variety of methods across their articles, such as interviews, participant observation, ethnographic analysis, qualitative document analysis, policy analysis, legal analysis, spatial analysis, and Geographical Information Systems.
- Empirically, the contributions to this special feature break important new ground, as they provide novel and up-to-date insights from conflicts and peacebuilding efforts in a series of geographic contexts, including Colombia (Krause et al. 2025; Sjöstedt, unpublished manuscript) and in particular the Putumayo department (Samper et al. 2024) and Sumapaz region (Valencia et al., unpublished manuscript), Uganda (Nardi and Kasznar 2025), the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Verweijen and Hoffmann 2024), the Tigray region in Ethiopia (Schulte to Bühne et al. 2024), the Kurdistan region of Iraq (Eklund and Dinc 2024), and selected areas in Brazil and Puerto Rico (Magalhães Teixeira and Nicoson 2024).
These diverse foci provide the reader with a broad scope of findings: with different types of impacts on ecosystems and livelihoods (e.g., largely detrimental consequences across Uganda or for environmental human rights defenders in Colombia as a whole, but also decreasing deforestation in Colombia’s Sumapaz territory); for various timings and cycles of peacebuilding processes (e.g., ongoing violent conflicts around Virunga National Park or Iraq’s Kurdistan region, a recent truce in Tigray in late 2022, less than a decade of peacebuilding in Colombia, and over 20 years since the peace agreement in Uganda); at different political levels (from local areas like Virunga or Sumapaz to national policy contexts and international law contexts); and for a large diversity of actors (such as local farmers, indigenous communities, civil society groups, rebel groups, and local and national governmental actors).
Based on these novel angles and results, this feature will be of relevance for researchers, teachers, and students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Moreover, the contributions discuss and develop recommendations useful for practitioners, stakeholders, and groups in situations of vulnerability to better understand and address the mutual connections between peacebuilding, the natural environment, and livelihoods (cf. Zelli and Krause 2025).
RESPONSES TO THIS ARTICLE
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are highly indebted to the Swedish research council Formas (Grant number 2018-00453 & Grant number 2022-01684) and to the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies at Lund University for their generous financial and logistical support for the research program “The Nature of Peace.” We are deeply grateful to all project members and contributing authors to this special feature of Ecology and Society for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article, their groundbreaking research and the excellent collaboration over more than four years: Richard J. Anderson, Eoghan Darbyshire, Pinar Dinc, Lina Eklund, Alejandro Fuentes, Kasper Hoffmann, Alice Kasznar, Jesica López, Barbara Magalhães Teixeira, Anna Maria Nardi, Christie J. Nicoson, Jan Nyssen, Rolando Rodriguez Cruz, Micael Runnström, Juan Antonio Samper, Henrike Schulte to Bühne, Britta Sjöstedt, Sandra C. Valencia, Ana María Vargas Falla, Judith Verweijen, Doug Weir, Teklehaymanot G. Weldemichel. Our sincere thanks go to the anonymous reviewers of all contributions to this special feature for their invaluable suggestions and all the time they invested. Finally, we are very grateful to the editorial team of Ecology and Society, especially Patricia Balvanera and Jennifer Mullie, for their great support and guidance, and for giving us and our colleagues the chance to publish our work on environmental peacebuilding as a special feature in their prestigious journal.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted Tools
We have not used any AI generative or AI-assisted technology to write this editorial article.
DATA AVAILABILITY
This is an editorial that refers to content of other cited contributions in the same special feature and otherwise does not include any original or additional data or code.
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