As climate-related disasters swell in scale and intensity, the countries and communities impacted by fragility or conflict are among the most vulnerable. The explicit focus on relief, recovery, and peace at COP28 offered the international community a clear acknowledgement that climate and conflict increasingly overlap.

In this context, the field of “environmental peacebuilding” arises. The concept can be described as a framework by which management of environmental issues is integrated into, and can support, efforts aimed at conflict prevention, mitigation, resolution, and recovery.

As a growing body of knowledge emerges, the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and Environmental Peacebuilding Association (EnPax), with support from the United States Institute of Peace (USIP),  recently launched a Toolkit on Monitoring and Evaluation of Environmental Peacebuilding. It is a comprehensive framework to equip global practitioners with tools to effectively monitor, evaluate, and learn from environmental peacebuilding policy.

Figure 1: Intervention Cycle

The new toolkit is oriented around an “intervention cycle.” (Figure 1.)  This framing of the environmental peacekeeping process provides guidance on future design, monitoring, evaluation, and learning method applied across contexts in the essential work. Key components—including conflict sensitivity, participation and inclusion, and gender—are integrated throughout the toolkit to ensure environmental peacebuilding efforts protect the communities which are most vulnerable to climate change.

Plotting a Future Course

The new environmental peacebuilding toolkit is the first of its kind, and it represents a step forward in understanding of what role monitoring and evaluation (M&E) should play in larger efforts. Beyond providing guideposts for policymakers in creating initiatives, the new resource also “lays out a future to professionalize the field,” according to Tegan Blaine, Director of Climate, Environment & Conflict at USIP.

Contributors to the report noted that although the field is still emerging, formalizing the activities aligned with the environmental peacebuilding agenda may encourage practitioners already practicing either environmental conservation or peacebuilding to effectively integrate the other discipline into their work.

Since environmental peacebuilding has emerged only in the last 30 years, the framework provided in the new toolkit remains far from complete. For instance, the evolving and flexible nature of the field means that the toolkit cannot provide a checklist of M&E actions – particularly when considering the unique needs of each community that may be utilizing such a guide. To combat this challenge, the new guide emphasizes “learning” from the M&E process. This approach ensures not only that stakeholders create sustainable environmental peacebuilding processes, but also allows them to learn from their mistakes and share them to promote future growth.

The toolkit is tailored towards practitioners, including staff who are responsible for designing and implementing interventions, as well as the M&E professionals who are called upon to design these processes for environmental peacebuilding interventions. The tool not only offers practitioners a chance to learn about a new concept and effectively incorporate it into their own community, but also broader growth in the body of knowledge on environmental peacebuilding itself.

As the international community becomes increasingly aware of the interconnectedness between environment and peace, the Toolkit on Monitoring and Evaluation of Environmental Peacebuilding lays out a framework to both educate and guide practitioners in designing, monitoring, evaluating, and learning from the important initiatives.