As COP17 of the Convention on Biological Diversity begins in the Armenian capital Yerevan, Doug Weir considers the rising profile of nature, peace and security, and its relevance to the successful implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
What needs to be in place for the idea of environmentally sustainable conflict recovery to take hold? Anna Ackerman and Doug Weir examine why sustainable recovery processes are needed and whether lessons from Ukraine could be applied to other conflict areas.
Is there a pattern to fires on military sites across Europe? And is it changing in response to the climate crisis and increasing military spending? Students Sara Niknam, Adam Krid and Ritchie Davelaar from Utrecht University’s Open-Source Global Justice Investigations Lab consider the evidence.
CEOBS’ WISEN tool can help systematically identify and map conflict-linked environmental harm. Lydia Millar explores how this data could be used to improve accountability at local, national and international levels, and the challenges of holding those responsible to account.
Countries enduring conflict are hit harder and suffer more deaths when disasters such as storms and earthquakes strike. Rebekah Harries asks whether disaster risk reduction frameworks doing enough to acknowledge this link between conflict and disaster risk?
The idea that humanity and the environment are separate facilitates wartime environmental destruction, argue Samira Siddique and Simon Watkins. But it can also help us understand why communities must be at the heart of post-conflict recovery decision-making.
At a time where many are questioning the extent and value of legal protection for the environment during war, Lydia Millar explores the potential of IHL’s due regard rule for minimising harm, and why it’s worth fighting for.
As governments turn their attention to the intersections between nature, peace and security, civil society needs to speak up if we’re to avoid the dead-end securitisation of the climate crisis; to do so, argues Doug Weir, many of us will need to learn a new language.
