• Renewable Resources

 

Environmental Degradation

Environmental degradation is closely related to conflict. It can be a contributing cause of conflict. Conflict often causes environmental degradation through intentional targeting of the environment, coping strategies, and the breakdown of environmental governance. After conflict, environmental degradation can affect post-conflict livelihoods and other recovery efforts. Technologies from GIS to early warning systems can help track, understand, and redress environmental degradation.

There are 62 resources related to Environmental Degradation.


Catalogue of Nature-Based Solutions for Peace

2024 | PAX and UNEP

As the connections between environmental degradation and conflict become increasingly clear, the potential of nature in peacebuilding is more significant than ever.  This catalog of Nature-based…


Modelling Armed Conflict Risk under Climate Change with Machine Learning and Time-Series Data

2022 | Nature Communications
Quansheng Ge, Mengmeng Hao, Fangyu Ding, Dong Jiang, Jürgen Scheffran, David Helman, and Tobias Ide

Understanding the risk of armed conflict is essential for promoting peace. Although the relationship between climate variability and armed conflict has been studied by the…


Housing, Land and Property as War-Financing Commodities: A Typology with Lessons from Darfur, Colombia, and Syria

2022 | Stability: International Journal of Security and Development
Jon Unruh

The ongoing use of landscape-based conflict commodities -- diamonds and other minerals, timber, wildlife, etc. -- to finance wars continues to evolve. The success with…


Satellite Imagery in Conflict-Affected Areas: How Technology Can Support WFP Emergency Response

2020 | World Food Programme
Laure Boudinand and Amadou Ibrahim

The past decade has witnessed a boom in the availability of satellite data whether from established space agencies or from the private sector. Unique in…


Climate Security: The Role of Data and Disruptive Technologies for Climate Security

2020 | CGIAR
Alexandra Krendelsberger and Nam Nguyen

A systemic analysis of the role that climate, natural resource and food systems play in conflict and peace is key to design and implement interventions…


Backdraft #9: Joshua Busby on Mapping Hotspots of Climate and Security Vulnerability [Podcast]

2017 | New Security Beat
Gretchen Johnson

Maps help us to grasp complex ideas, such as patterns of risk and vulnerability, but the stories they tell can have significant implications. “It’s very…


Accessing and Using Climate Data and Information in Fragile Data-Poor States

2015 | International Institute for Sustainable Development
Simon Mason, Andrew Kruczkiewicz, Pietro Ceccato, and Alec Crawford

The vulnerability of populations in fragile states to weather and climate variability is typically much higher than in other countries. These countries, and their populations,…


Charting Environmental Conflict -- The Atlas of Environmental Justice

2016 | The Ecologist
Nick Meynen

On 22 June, 100s of people came together in Brussels to mourn for Jo Cox. There was a minute of silence even in the Belgian…


Early Warning Early Action in East Africa: Mechanisms for Rapid Decision Making

2014 | International Committee of the Red Cross, World Food Programme, Oxfam, Food and Agriculture Organization, Save the Children
International Committee of the Red Cross, World Food Programme, Oxfam, Food and Agriculture Organization, Save the Children

The crisis in the Horn of Africa and the declaration of famine conditions in parts of Somalia in 2011 provided renewed impetus to break, once…


Artificial Intelligence for Climate Security: Possibilities and Challenges

2023 | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Kyungmee Kim and Vincent Boulanin

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI)—largely based on machine learning—offer possibilities for addressing climate-related security risks. AI can, for example, be used for developing disaster…


Toward the Remote Monitoring of Armed Conflicts

2023 | PNAS Nexus
Valerie Sticher, Jan D. Wegner, and Birke Pfeifle

The war in Ukraine has pushed the role of satellite imagery in armed conflicts into the spotlight. For a long time, satellite images were primarily…


Artificial Intelligence for Climate Security: Possibilities and Challenges

2023 | SIPRI
Kyungmee Kim and Vincent Boulanin

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI)—largely based on machine learning—offer possibilities for addressing climate-related security risks. AI can, for example, be used for developing disaster…


Blockchain for Environmental Peacebuilding: Application in Water Management

2023 | Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance
Fariz Huseynov and Jeanene Mitchell

The purpose of this paper is to spur further exploration of blockchain technologies for environmental peacebuilding, specifically through water management. Although the environmental peacebuilding field…


Climate Change and Fragility: Improving Early Warning and Climate-Proofing Development and Conflict Interventions (chapter in "Handbook of Fragile States")

2023 | Elgar Handbooks in Political Science
Erin Sikorsky, Francesco Femia, and Brigitte Hugh

Climate change knows no political boundaries, yet political boundaries shape much of the response (or lack of response) to that change. In recent years, rapid…


The Power of Real-World Qualitative Assessments for Addressing Climate Security Risks

2023 | Climate Diplomacy
Hector Morales-Munoz

Qualitative research can uncover hidden drivers and connectors, reveal unintended consequences, and generate contextualised and actionable knowledge by delving into the lived experiences, perceptions, values,…


Projecting Long-Term Armed Conflict Risk: An Underappreciated Field of Inquiry?

2022 | Global Environmental Change
Sophie P. de Bruin, Jannis M. Hoch, Nina von Uexkull, Halvard Buhaug, Jolle Demmers, Hans Visser, and Niko Wanders

Little research has been done on projecting long-term conflict risks. Such projections are currently neither included in the development of socioeconomic scenarios or climate change…


Understanding the Nexus of Energy, Environment and Conflict: An Overview

2021 | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
Samuel W. Kerber, Alexander Q. Gilbert, Mark R. Deinert, and Morgan D. Bazilian

Energy, environment, and conflict are each the subject of significant research efforts. However, their nexus has received relatively little attention, and even less when climatic…


GIS in Colombian Post-Conflict Land Use Planning

2021 | Procedia Environmental Science, Engineering and Management
Hernán Granda-Rodriguez, Jenny Patricia-Vanegas, Daniel Robledo-Buitrago, John Jairo Castañeda, Edier Fernando Ávila-Vélez, and Miguel A. De Luque-Villa

This research collected and interpreted geographic and temporal data on changes in land use coverage in order to improve sustainable development and land use planning in…


Food and Water Insecurity as Causes of Social Unrest: Evidence from Geolocated Twitter Data

2021 | Journal of Peace Research
Ore Koren, Benjamin E. Bagozzi, and Thomas S. Benson

Research often fails to account for the specific pathways by which climatic factors can cause social unrest. One challenge lies in understanding the distinct effects…


Violent Natural Resource Conflicts: From Definitions to Prevention

2020 | Stockholm University
Marie K. Schellens

General scientific consensus is growing that natural resources play an important role in violent conflicts. Both scarcity and abundance contribute to violent conflict, depending on…


Revisiting the Contested Role of Natural Resources in Violent Conflict Risk through Machine Learning

2020 | Sustainability
Marie K. Schellens and Salim Belyazid

The integrated character of the sustainable development goals in Agenda 2030, as well as research in environmental security, flag that sustainable peace requires sustainable and…


Eyes in the Sky (Chapter in "Talking Tactics: Environmental Protection and Armed Conflicts")

2020 | environmental SCIENTIST
Eoghan Darbyshire

Regions of active conflict are typically data poor, access for environmental measurements is limited and many contemporary conflicts show no sign of conclusion. Earth observation…


Experiential Education in the Context of Environmental Peacebuilding: A Case Study of Tejedores de Vida in Colombia

2020 | Malmo University
Romane Boyer

An innovative approach has emerged to consolidate peacebuilding efforts in conflict-affected context using experiential education with an environmental perspective. Yet, little research has explored the…


Colombia's Cyberinfrastructure for Biodiversity: Building Data Infrastructure in Emerging Countries to Foster Socioeconomic Growth

2020 | Plants People Planet
Jose De Vega, Robert P. Davey, Jorge Duitama, Dairo Escobar, Marco A. Cristancho‐Ardila, Graham J. Etherington, Alice Minotto, Nelson E. Arenas‐Suarez, Juan D. Pineda‐Cardenas, Javier Correa‐Alvarez, Anyela V. Camargo Rodriguez, Wilfried Haerty, Juan P

Colombia is a “megadiverse” country with vast natural resources. A history of recent conflict means that information is only now being collected on the natural…


Yemen’s Disappearing Date Palms: Applied Environmental OSINT

2020 | bellingcat
Wim Zwijnenburg

The lush, idyllic region in Hudaydah, on the west coast of Yemen, featuring wadis and fertile valleys, was a place known for its date palm…


How Big Data and New Technologies Can Advance Climate Security [Audio]

2020 | UN Dispatch
Mark Leon Goldberg

How can data and novel technologies be put to better use in the service of peace building, resilience, and other aspects of climate security? In…


Soils of the Southern Syria – A Big Database for the Future Land Management Planning

2020 | Data in Brief
Safwan Mohammed, Hassan Habib, Haidar Ali, Sami AlHennaw, Samer Kiwan, Samar Ghanem, Karam Alsafadi, Eric C. Brevik, Magboul M. Suleiman, and Endre Harsányi

As non-renewable natural resources, restoring Syrian soil quality is a vital issue for sustainable future planning after conflict ends. The data provided in this research…


Assembling Drones, Activists and Oil Palms: Implications of a Multi-stakeholder Land Platform for State Formation in Myanmar

2020 | European Journal of Development Research
Joan Bastide, Lara Lundsgaard-Hansen, and Stefan Bächtold

Amid Myanmar’s political transition and despite its new government’s discourse of inclusion and dialogue, land conflicts have increased across the country’s ethnic-minority areas. We argue…


Complexity Analysis of Sustainable Peace: Mathematical Models and Data Science Measurements

2019 | New Journal of Physics
L. Liebovitch, P. Coleman, A. Bechhofer, C. Colon, J. Donahue, C. Eisenbach, L. Guzmán-Vargas, D. Jacobs, A. Khan, C Li, D. Maksumov, J Mucia, M. Persaud, M. Salimi, L. Schweiger, and Q. Wang

Peace is not merely the absence of war and violence, rather 'positive peace' is the political, economic, and social systems that generate and sustain peaceful…


Spatial and Political Factors in Forest Resource Conflicts: The Eastern Mau Forest Case 1992–2014

2019 | Society and Natural Resources
R. Kweyu, K. Kiemo, T. Thenya, J. Emborg, and C. Gamborg

This paper examines conflicts and forest resource politics in Eastern Mau, which is part of the Mau forest complex in Kenya. Conflict hotspots are mapped…