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Abstract
The concept of environmental peacebuilding is becoming increasingly prominent among peacebuilding scholars and practitioners. This study provides a brief overview about the various discussions contributing to our understanding of environmental peacebuilding and concludes that questions of space have hardly been explicitly considered in these debates. Drawing on discourse-analytic spatial theory, I discuss how the social construction of scale, place and boundaries are relevant for environmental peacebuilding processes and outcomes. This theoretical approach is then applied to the Good Water Neighbours project, which aims at improving the regional water situation and at building peace between Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. The results suggest that discursive constructions of space are important in facilitating, impeding or shaping environmental peacebuilding practices. Analyses of environmental peacebuilding, but also of peacebuilding more general, are therefore encouraged to draw more strongly on the findings of spatial theory.
Notes
1. UNDPA and UNEP, Natural Resources and Conflict.
2. Bruch et al., Governance, Natural Resources; Troell and Weinthal, Water and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding; Unruh and Williams, Land and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding; and Young and Goldman, Livelihoods, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding.
3. McDonald, “Discourses of Climate Security.”
4. Floyd and Matthew, Environmental Security.
5. Ostrom, Governing the Commons.
6. Cox et al., “A Review of Design Principles”; and Ratner et al., “Resource Conflict, Collective Action.”
7. Carius, Environmental Peacemaking, 6.
8. Cox et al., “A Review of Design Principles”; and Dinar, “Conflict and Cooperation.”
9. Conca and Wallance, “Environment and Peacebuilding”; and Walters, “A Peace Park in the Balkans.”
10. Carius, Environmental Peacemaking, 8–9.
11. Conca, “The Case for Environmental Peacemaking,” 9.
12. Harari and Roseman, Environmental Peacebuilding.
13. Conca and Dabelko, “The Problems and Possibilities of Environmental Peacemaking”; and Schoenfeld et al., “A Place of Empathy in a Fragile Contentious Landscape.”
14. Ide and Scheffran, “On Climate, Conflict and Cumulation.”
15. Barquet et al., “Transboundary Conservation”; and Feil et al., Regional Cooperation on Environment.
16. Akçalı and Antonsich, “Nature Knows No Boundaries”; and Reynolds, “Unpacking the Complex Nature of Cooperative Interactions.”
17. Kelman, “Acting on Disaster Diplomacy,” 215.
18. Akcinaroglu et al., “Avalanches and Olive Branches”; and Kreutz, “From Tremors to Talks.”
19. Kelman, Disaster Diplomacy, 14–15; and Streich and Mislan, “What Follows the Storm?”
20. Ide and Scheffran, Climate Change, 16.
21. Conca, “The Case for Environmental Peacemaking,” 9.
22. Bruch et al., Governance, Natural Resources; and Young and Goldman, Livelihoods, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding.
23. Neumann, “Political Ecology.”
24. Norman, “Cultural Politics and Transboundary Resource.”
25. Williams et al., “Introduction.”
26. Engels, “Contentious Politics of Scale”; and Simmons et al., “The Amazon Land War.”
27. Björkdahl and Höglund, “Precarious Peacebuilding,” 297.
28. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn in Peace Building,” 774.
29. Norman et al., “Water Governance and the Politics of Scale,” 53.
30. Agnew, “The Territorial Trap,” 59.
31. Ali, “The Instrumental Use of Ecology”; and Conca et al., “Building Peace through Environmental Cooperation.”
32. Harris and Alatout, “Negotiating Hydro-Scales, Forging States”; and Zeitoun, Power and water in the Middle East.
33. Ali, “A Natural Connection between Ecology and Peace?”
34. Mason et al., “Linkages Between Sub-National and International.”
35. Bichsel, “It’s About More Water.”
36. Ratner et al., “Resource Conflict, Collective Action.”
37. Engels, “Contentious Politics of Scale.”
38. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism.
39. Williams et al., “Introduction,” 19.
40. Herb, “The Geography of Peace Movements.”
41. Massey, “Introduction,” 3.
42. MacKinnon, “Reconstructing Scale”; and McMaster and Sheppard, “Introduction.”
43. Harvey, Spaces of Capital; and Swyngedouw, “Power, Nature, and the City.”
44. Duffy, “The Potential and Pitfalls.”
45. McMaster and Sheppard, “Introduction,” 18.
46. Moore, “Rethinking Scale as a Geographical Category,” 214.
47. Brenner, “A Thousand Leaves”; and Newman and Paasi, “Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World.”
48. Marston, “The Social Construction of Scale,” 220.
49. MacKinnon, “Reconstructing Scale.”
50. McCarthy, “Scale, Sovereignty, and Strategy.”
51. Towers, “Applying the Political Geography of Scale.”
52. Harris and Alatout, “Negotiating Hydro-Scales, Forging States”; and Norman, “Cultural Politics and Transboundary Resource.”
53. Feitelson and Fischhendler, “Spaces of Water Governance”; and Swyngedouw, “Scaled Geographies.”
54. Harris and Alatout, “Negotiating Hydro-Scales, Forging States.”
55. Dunn, “Identity, Space and the Political Economy.”
56. Newman and Paasi, “Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World,” 187–94.
57. Abdelal et al., “Identity as a Variable.”
58. Chatterjee, “How Are They Othered.”
59. Campbell, Writing Security, 88.
60. Morozov and Rumelili, “The External Constitution of European Identity.”
61. Donaldson, “Re-thinking International Boundary Practices”; and Newman and Paasi, “Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World,” 194.
62. Zeitoun, Power and Water in the Middle East.
63. Selby, “Dressing up Domination as ‘Cooperation’.”
64. Lautze et al., “Water Allocation, Climate Change.”
65. Zeitoun, Power and Water in the Middle East, 45–57.
66. Selby, “Cooperation, Domination and Colonisation.”
67. Sharon Udasin. 2013. “PA Accuses Israel of Blocking Water Resources,” The Jerusalem Post. March 24.
68. Isaac and Shuval, Water and Peace in the Middle East.
69. Aggestam and Sundell-Eklund, “Situating Water in Peacebuilding”; Feitelson and Fischhendler, “Spaces of Water Governance”; and Reynolds, “Unpacking the Complex Nature of Cooperative Interactions.”
70. Schoenfeld et al., “A Place of Empathy in a Fragile Contentious Landscape.”
71. Djernaes et al., “Evaluation of Environmental Peacemaking”; and Harari and Roseman, Environmental Peacebuilding.
73. FoEME, Community Based Problem Solving.
75. Keller, Doing Discourse Research.
76. Cohen and Arieli, “Field Research in Conflict Environments.”
77. Keller, Doing Discourse Research.
78. Ibid.,Citation 129ff.
79. Glaser and Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory, 101–15.
80. Keller, Doing Discourse Research, 115–20.
81. Watercare, Water, 6.
83. Feitelson and Fischhendler, “Spaces of Water Governance,” 731.
84. Towers, “Applying the Political Geography of Scale,” 26.
85. Fröhlich, “Security and Discourse.”
86. Towers, “Applying the Political Geography of Scale,” 26.
87. Feitelson and Fischhendler, “Spaces of Water Governance.”
88. Feitelson, “The Four Eras of Israeli Water Policies”; and Waintraub, “Water and the Middle East Peace Process.”
89. FoEME, Neighbors Path’s.
90. Zeitoun, Power and Water in the Middle East.
91. Harris and Alatout, “Negotiating Hydro-Scales, Forging States.”
92. FoEME, Why Cooperate Over Water?, 7.
93. Feitelson, “The Four Eras of Israeli Water Policies”; and Fröhlich, “Security and Discourse.”
94. Aviram et al., “Desalination as a Game-Changer”; and Waintraub, “Water and the Middle East Peace Process.”
95. Bar-Tal, “Societal Beliefs in Times of Intractable Conflict”; and Newman, “In the Name of Security.”
96. Korf, “Who is the Rogue?”; and Newman and Paasi, “Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World.”
97. Selby, “Cooperation, Domination and Colonisation.”
98. Gerber, “Zionism, Orientalism, and the Palestinians”; and Reynolds, “Unpacking the Complex Nature of Cooperative Interactions.”
99. Barquet, “Yes to Peace?”, 18.
100. Carius, Environmental Peacemaking, 7.
101. Harari and Roseman, Environmental Peacebuilding; and Lazarus, Intractable Peacebuilding.
102. Selby, “Cooperation, Domination and Colonisation.”
103. Feil et al., Regional Cooperation on Environment.
104. Fröhlich, “Security and Discourse.”
105. Duffy, “The Potential and Pitfalls.”
106. FoEME, Community Based Problem Solving.
107. Aggestam and Sundell-Eklund, “Situating Water in Peacebuilding”; and Aldrich, “The Externalities of Strong Social Capital.”
108. Megoran, “War and Peace?”
109. Walters, “A Peace Park in the Balkans.”
110. Björkdahl and Höglund, “Precarious Peacebuilding”; and Leonardsson and Rudd, “The ‘Local’ Turn in Peacebuilding.”
111. Donais, Peacebuilding and Local Ownership.