Environment, Economy and Natural Resources in Regional Peacebuilding

Environmental peacebuilding rests on an appealing proposition: rivers, ecosystems and markets ignore borders, so cooperation around them can pull hostile neighbours into habits of trust. Donors have funded transboundary water projects, joint energy ventures and regional trade schemes on exactly this logic, often invoking the European Union’s own history as proof that economic interdependence can bury old enmities.

Whether the logic holds in practice was the subject of a 2009 synthesis report by Moira Feil, Diana Klein and Meike Westerkamp, drawing together case studies from the Andean region, the African Great Lakes, the Middle East and the South Caucasus, produced by Adelphi Research and International Alert for an EU-funded research programme. Its central finding deserves to be printed on every project document in the field: the peacebuilding outcome of regional cooperation cannot merely be assumed. Poorly conceived initiatives do not simply fail to build peace. They can make conflict worse.

Three kinds of regional cooperation, and why the difference matters

The research sorted the initiatives it studied into three types. Some use regional cooperation as a direct vehicle for peace, accompanying the economic or natural resource components of a peace agreement with systematic confidence-building. Some pursue a technical goal, cleaner water or more trade, while anticipating peacebuilding side effects, a category that covered most of the cases studied. A third group has no peacebuilding ambition at all, aiming purely at economic development or resource management.

Each type can be legitimate. The danger sits in the gaps between rhetoric and design. Initiatives that proclaim a peace objective without building mechanisms to pursue it disillusion participants and discredit future efforts, while technically framed projects in conflict-affected regions can do real harm if nobody has asked how they interact with the dispute around them. Conflict-sensitive methods are well developed in the humanitarian and development sectors; the research found few examples of them being applied to regional cooperation at all, and called the omission a serious gap in policy and practice.

What different resources offer

Water

In the Middle East, water has repeatedly brought conflict parties to the same table, and unilateral management of shared basins is both inefficient and inflammatory when scarcity is treated as a zero-sum game. The Regional Water Data Banks Project, intended to share hydrological data among Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian institutions, showed the model’s promise and its fragility at once: Palestinian participants were at times unable to attend meetings because travel permits were not issued, and expectations of a genuinely joint data bank foundered on reluctance to share information. The journal examines this case further in its piece on water cooperation in the Middle East.

Energy

The Great Lakes region of Africa carries a long history of joint energy ventures. A hydropower dam shared by Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda kept producing through years of war, proof that technical cooperation can survive political rupture. Yet survival is not transformation: the cooperation never translated into political trust. Around Lake Kivu, a joint venture created to oversee methane extraction generated new grievance instead, as only Rwanda invested in extraction and Congolese perceptions of a shared resource being taken fed existing resentments. The wider record is assessed in the journal’s review of regional cooperation in the Great Lakes.

Environment and biodiversity

The South Caucasus, a recognised biodiversity hotspot, has attracted many donor-backed projects on nature protection and water monitoring, chosen partly because such “low politics” seems a safe entry point. The trade-off is reach: low-priority topics in a region of protracted conflict tend to involve small circles of officials and specialists, and rarely scale into anything politically meaningful.

Minerals, oil and gas

Colombia, Ecuador and Peru share nearly identical problems in managing non-renewable resources without deepening the marginalisation of poor communities, yet their regional cooperation, and EU support for it, did not address the issue. The report noted a paradox familiar from extractive economies everywhere, including those examined in this journal’s analysis of Canadian mining companies in Latin America: large projects operate overwhelmingly in the poorest areas, and those areas usually stay poor.

Cross-border trade

“Peace through commerce” is an old idea with real, if conditional, force. The Caucasus Business and Development Network used regional economic ties as a deliberate peacebuilding instrument, while Great Lakes institutions pursued both macro-level integration and support to small cross-border traders. Trade offers a rare double dividend: poverty reduction plus a visible peace dividend for populations along the boundary.

Six obstacles that recur everywhere

Across all four regions, the case studies kept encountering the same failure patterns:

• Asymmetry among participants, in power, capacity, benefits and information. When Burundi joined the East African Community in 2007, ministry staff lacked computers and the English skills needed to process the paperwork, let alone negotiate as equals.
• Lack of trust, which common interests do not automatically overcome. Shared incentives brought parties into projects; they did not make them partners.
• Lack of ownership, where externally launched initiatives earn only lip service. The Economic Community of Great Lakes Countries suffered chronic underfunding and thin political support from the very states it was meant to bind together.
• Lack of a strategy for change, leaving technical projects politically isolated. After the 2006 fires around Nagorny Karabakh prompted a UN General Assembly resolution, Armenian and Azerbaijani experts conducted a joint OSCE-led assessment on both sides of the line, a genuine first. No political follow-up came, and the window closed. The surrounding diplomacy is traced in the journal’s account of mediation efforts over Nagorno Karabakh.
• Lack of inclusiveness. Germany’s Caucasus Initiative deliberately excluded the non-recognised entities at every level, reinforcing the very asymmetries a peace-oriented programme would need to address.
• Lack of systematic conflict sensitivity, the thread connecting all the others.

Designing for peace rather than assuming it

“Regional cooperation initiatives only become mechanisms for peacebuilding if they clearly address it in their strategic design, processes and implementation. If poorly conceived or executed, regional cooperation efforts can backfire and exacerbate conflict.”

The recommendations follow from that warning. Donors should claim a peacebuilding objective only when a genuine strategy and mechanism stand behind it, and should drop the claim, freeing resources, where evaluation shows it to be decorative. Themes should be chosen for their joint incentives after real political-economy analysis. Design should mainstream conflict sensitivity from partner selection through impact assessment, actively build symmetry between weaker and stronger parties, promote local ownership, include all parties to the conflict, and plan for spoilers.

The field has matured since, with a dedicated research community now organised around the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and continued casework by organisations such as the OSCE under the Environment and Security Initiative. The synthesis report’s discipline still applies. Shared rivers and power grids create opportunities for peace; only deliberate, conflict-sensitive design converts them.

Frequently asked questions

What is environmental peacebuilding?

Environmental peacebuilding is the use of cooperation over shared environmental issues and natural resources, such as river basins, energy or biodiversity, to build trust, create mutual stakes in stability and open channels of communication between parties to a conflict.

Does regional cooperation automatically contribute to peace?

No. The 2009 synthesis research found that peacebuilding outcomes cannot be assumed from cooperation alone. Initiatives contribute to peace only when it is addressed explicitly in their strategic design, processes and implementation, and badly designed efforts can deepen conflict.

What types of regional cooperation initiatives exist?

The research distinguishes three: initiatives that use cooperation directly as a peacebuilding vehicle, initiatives pursuing technical goals with anticipated peacebuilding side effects, and initiatives with no peacebuilding objective at all, which still need conflict-sensitive design in affected regions.

Why is water considered a promising area for peacebuilding?

Because river basins and aquifers are physically interconnected, unilateral management is inefficient and can inflame animosities. Joint water management offers concrete mutual benefits in supply and quality, which is why water has repeatedly brought Middle East conflict parties into negotiation.

Can technical cooperation survive during war?

Sometimes. The hydropower dam shared by Burundi, the DRC and Rwanda continued operating through recent conflicts. But the Great Lakes evidence shows technical continuity does not translate into political trust by itself; without deliberate strategy, cooperation stays sealed off from politics.

What is the link between natural resource management and conflict?

Resources create both incentives to cooperate and grounds for grievance. Where benefits are shared asymmetrically, as with methane extraction under Lake Kivu, or where extraction disadvantages already poor communities, as in the Andean region, resource management can feed mistrust and conflict rather than easing it.

What are the main obstacles to peacebuilding through regional cooperation?

Six recur across regions: asymmetry among participants in power, benefits and information; lack of trust; weak local ownership of externally driven initiatives; absence of a strategy for effecting political change; lack of broad inclusiveness; and missing conflict-sensitivity throughout design and implementation.

What happened after the 2006 Nagorny Karabakh fires?

The fires prompted a UN General Assembly resolution and a joint OSCE-led environmental assessment in which Armenian and Azerbaijani experts worked on both sides of the line. The mission recommended joint fire monitoring, but no political follow-up materialised and the opening was lost.

Why does excluding conflict parties undermine regional initiatives?

Because peace ultimately depends on all parties. Germany’s Caucasus Initiative excluded the non-recognised entities entirely, which reinforced diverging development paths and asymmetry between the recognised states and the breakaway regions, weakening any peacebuilding effect.

What is conflict-sensitive design in resource cooperation?

It means analysing the conflict context before designing a project, choosing partners and themes with that analysis in mind, monitoring the initiative’s effect on conflict dynamics, addressing asymmetries between parties, and evaluating peace impacts rather than only technical results.

When should a project drop its peacebuilding claim?

When evaluation shows the peacebuilding objective is an unsubstantiated add-on used to raise the project’s profile. The research advises dropping the claim in such cases to avoid disillusionment among parties and to free resources for channels that genuinely support peace.