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IUCN CEESP Environment and Peace Thematic Group

IUCN COMMISSION GROUP

IUCN CEESP Environment and Peace Thematic Group

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Overview and description

Description:
The IUCN CEESP Environment and Peace Theme focuses on the integration of natural resource management in conflict prevention, mitigation, resolution, and recovery to build resilience in communities ...
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The IUCN CEESP Environment and Peace Theme focuses on the integration of natural resource management in conflict prevention, mitigation, resolution, and recovery to build resilience in communities affected by conflict.
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Group leadership

Dr Elaine HSIAO

Chair
Elaine (Lan Yin) Hsiao is an Assistant Professor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies with a focus in environmental peacebuilding and international development. She is a critical socio-legal ...
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Elaine (Lan Yin) Hsiao is an Assistant Professor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies with a focus in environmental peacebuilding and international development. She is a critical socio-legal scholar and political ecologist, integrating peace and conflict studies with transboundary conservation and protected areas, Indigenous and community governance, human rights and rights of nature, and development alternatives. Much of her work seeks to address conflicts in conservation (e.g., human-protected area conflicts, human-wildlife conflicts), conservation in places of conflict (i.e., conflict-sensitive and conflict-resilient conservation), and conflict resolution through conservation (environmental peacebuilding). Prior to joining KSU SPCS, Dr. Hsiao was a Global Challenges Fellow at the Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID) and Honorary Research Fellow of the University of Rwanda’s Center of Excellence on Biodiversity and Natural Resources (UR CoEB), where she explored the disruption and revitalization of ICCAs (areas and territories conserved by Indigenous Peoples and local communities) in Rwanda, and the concept of ecological peace, evolving peace theory for inter-species or more-than-human relations. She led the IUCN WCPA Young Professionals Network from 2012-2016, developed and led a peace park learning expedition in Parque Internacional La Amistad (2011), held a Fulbright grant in Uganda (2010-2011) and co-produced a documentary film (“Transcending Boundaries”), worked to establish a peace park on the border of Honduras and Nicaragua while at the UN University for Peace, and served the Permanent Mission for the Union of Comoros at the UN.
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Ms Mirali SHUKLA

Deputy Chair

Mirali (USA) is an interdisciplinary researcher, exploring the linkages between IPLCs and the natural environment. Her projects focus on how this relationship affects wildlife research and ...

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Mirali (USA) is an interdisciplinary researcher, exploring the linkages between IPLCs and the natural environment. Her projects focus on how this relationship affects wildlife research and conservation, human rights, and conflict resolution. She is the founder and co-founder of several organizations that center around biocultural conservation, and has collaborated with the Environmental Peacebuilding Association, the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, The Society of Ethnobiology, The Rotary Club, The Matsunaga Institute of Peace and several academic institutions in order to develop a framework for marginalized community perspectives in conservation. She is currently the co-chair of the Young Professional's Interest Group at the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and is the Deputy Chair for the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy's (CEESP) Theme on Environment and Peace.. She also works in the field as a thermal drone pilot and project research assistant for both terrestrial and marine species. Mirali holds a BSc in International Relations with a focus on environmental conflict and is currently pursuing postgraduate study in endangered species conservation in conflict areas.

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Overview

Environment and peace are cross-cutting and relevant in all areas of conservation, sustainable development and security.  

The Theme on Environment and Peace focuses on the integration of conservation in conflict prevention, mitigation, resolution, and recovery to build resilience in communities affected by conflict. 

The theme is constituted on the understanding that building more effective environmental governance and policy can reduce conflict and ensure security from local to global levels. By reducing conflict and conflict potential and by strengthening environmental security we lay the ground for enduring social and environmental sustainability. 

As an international expert and volunteer driven network, the theme provides a platform for practitioners all around the world to share information, collaborate and innovate across the field.  We bring together leading scientific and local knowledge, aimed at addressing social conflicts around conservation, resource use and activities that damage environments and ecosystems.

Areas of Focus

We are working on a number of exciting projects and there are many opportunities for members to get directly involved.

  1. Conservation in places of armed conflict
  • A Union for Peace in Times of Conflict Report. A situation analysis of the IUCN’s work in relation to peace and conflict.
  • Developing a platform for Indigenous and local peoples conserving territories in places of armed conflict.
  1. Conservation conflicts
  • Rights-based conservation, conflict sensitive to conflict transformative conservation
  1. Migration, environmental change and conflict
  • Task Force on Migration, Environmental Change and Conflict co-led by TEP member Richard Matthew. This will enhance knowledge on interlinkages, drivers and impacts of environmental change, conflict and migration (human and other species). 

Join the Theme on Environment and Peace 

Why you should join the Theme on Environment and Peace Engage, network and collaborate with over 90 members from the Theme and an additional 30+ members in the Task Force on Environmental Change and Migration.

  • Join leading scientific and local knowledge experts and practitioners, actively addressing social conflicts around conservation, resource use and activities that damage environments and ecosystems.
  • Help build more effective environmental governance and policy to help reduce conflict and ensure security from local to global levels. Collaborate to reduce conflict and conflict potential and strengthen environmental security that underpins ecological sustainability. 
  • Make an impact on the work and thinking of IUCN and the policy arenas in which it is active, by bringing your expertise and experience to shape this theme’s work.

If you are working at the intersection of any of the issues listed below, we invite you to engage with the theme:

1. SOCIAL CONFLICTS & PEACE 

  • We address social conflicts and peace through inclusion, diversity, access, just conservation.
  • Transforming natural resource-based social conflicts (i.e., regarding access to and competing interests)
  • Transforming social conflicts involving indigenous peoples and local communities (i.e., impacts of conservation)
  • Transforming identity-based conflicts that relate to environment, natural resources or conservation

2. SECURITY & PEACE

  • Security is encouraged through resilience, livelihoods and access to resources
  • Natural resource security in situations of conflict
  • Livelihood and economic security of vulnerable communities affected by the impacts of humans on the environment (i.e., development, extraction)
  • Building resilience of communities affected by (environmental) conflict

3. ECOLOGICAL CONFLICTS & PEACE 

  • Through advocating coexistence, rule of law, monitoring and appropriate use of technology in conservation practice
  • Transforming human-wildlife interactions
  • Transforming unsustainable human activities: development, extraction, poaching, endangerment of species, climate change, etc.
  • Disaster Risk Reduction
  • Addressing wildlife trade and biodiversity threats - CITES / Wildlife Wars / Ecocide

4. PEACEBUILDING

  • Culture or Ethic of Peace and the Environment
  • Activities and strategies 

5. CONFLICT RESOLUTION

  • Rights-based approaches to conservation
  • Conflict prevention and transformation

At a glance

Official name:
IUCN CEESP Environment and Peace Thematic Group
Associated Commissions:
Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy
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