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The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category peace parks.
  • Saleem Ali at TEDxUVM on Environmental Peacemaking

    ›
    Eye On  //  September 8, 2010  //  By Schuyler Null
    “The use of the term ‘peace’ is in many circles still considered taboo, because immediately people think you are talking about something that is utopian,” said University of Vermont Professor Saleem Ali at a recent TEDx event on sustainability. “But I’m here to tell you that peace is pragmatic. Peace is possible.”

    Ali points out the value of peace to every sector of society and, using an example from Ecuador and Peru, argues for the utility of the environment as a peacemaker. Other longstanding conflict areas like Cyprus, Iraq, Israel, and Korea are also ripe for environmental peacebuilding efforts, he says.

    Professor Ali has written for The New Security Beat before on the strengths and weaknesses of viewing conservation and sustainability efforts through a strictly security lens. He points out that environmentalists must tread a fine line when assigning causality between the environment and conflict, but even when natural resources or climate are not central to a conflict, environmental peacebuilding can still play a role in creating shared ground (sometimes literally) between combatants.

    “Treasures of the Earth,” Ali’s latest book, examines the thorny subject of how best to balance resource extraction in developing countries with long-term sustainability. Recent examples, such as Angola and Liberia’s blood diamonds, the DRC’s conflict minerals, and concerns over Afghanistan’s potential reserves have shown the difficulty in striking that balance.

    “Ultimately, conflict trumps everything else” in terms of what we ought to be concerned with, Ali argues, and therefore, anyone, no matter their profession or capacity, should keep the pursuit of peace in mind – and all options on the table – when making decisions that affect others.
    MORE
  • High Altitude Turbulence: Challenges to the Cordillera del Cóndor of Peru

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  April 16, 2010  //  By Tom Deligiannis
    In 1998, Peru and Ecuador settled a long-running border dispute in the Cordillera del Cóndor mountain range that had killed and wounded dozens on both sides in 1995. In addition to pledging renewed cooperation on deciding the final placement of the border, the agreement, the Acta Presidencial de Brasilia, committed both sides to establishing extensive ecological protection reserves on both sides of the border: A peace park of sorts was born.

    But now, indigenous groups fear that extractive industries in the area could threaten both the biodiversity and the ecological integrity of the forests and streams that they rely upon for their survival. They detail these charges in a new report, Peru: A Chronicle of Deception, and in a new video documentary, “Amazonia for Sale.”

    Located on the eastern slopes of the Equatorial Andes, the area is a recognized global biodiversity hotspot with large areas of pristine montane habitat. In 1993-4, Conservation International led a biodiversity assessment trip to the area and identified dozens of species new to science. Their report, The Cordillera del Cóndor Region of Ecuador and Peru: A Biological Assessment, noted the “spectacular” biodiversity of the area, and its key role in the hydrological cycle linking the Andes with the Amazon.

    Recognizing the region’s importance, the Acta Presidencial de Brasilia stipulated the need to create and update mechanisms to “lead to economic and social development and strengthen the cultural identity of native populations, as well as aid the conservation of biological biodiversity and the sustainable use of the ecosystems of the common border,” wrote Martin Alcade et al. in the ECSP Report.

    Indigenous communities in Peru are accusing the Peruvian government of reneging on those promises by allowing extractive industries extensive access to the region. They charge that the government gave in to gold mining interests who want to reduce the size of the protected area in the Cordillera del Cóndor. They also claim that the Peruvian government is violating promises made to include indigenous peoples in the governance and management of the area.

    Carefully managing extractive activities was a key priority for Peru and Ecuador when they negotiated an end to their border dispute. A management plan for the area with strong protection for key biodiversity areas was supposed to ensure everyone’s interests.

    However, Peru’s current president, Alan Garcia, has been aggressive in promoting extractive industries in Peru,to the point of inciting significant popular opposition among many indigenous peoples. Less than a year ago, protests over oil exploration in Amazonian lowlands city of Bagua killed and wounded dozens of Peruvians. This violence followed years of social conflict over mining development in a number of communities in Peru’s Andean highlands.

    Earlier this decade, Peru made some progress in resolving extractive disputes. But Garcia’s strong promotion of the extractive sector in the face of indigenous opposition, like we currently see in the Cordillera del Cóndor region, suggests years of confrontations to come.

    Tom Deligiannis is adjunct faculty member at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica, and an associate fellow of the Institute for Environmental Security in The Hague.

    Photo Credit: “El vuelo del condor, acechando a su presa,” courtesy of flickr user Martintoy.
    MORE
  • Imagine There Are No Countries: Conservation Beyond Borders in the Balkans

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  March 19, 2010  //  By Todd Walters
    International peace parks have captured the imagination of visionaries like Nelson Mandela, who called them a “concept that can be embraced by all.” Such parks—also known as transboundary protected areas—span national boundaries, testifying to the peaceful collaborative relationship between neighboring countries and to the co-existence of humans and nature.

    Peace parks seek to simultaneously promote regional peace and stability, conserve biodiversity, and stimulate job creation. How can they accomplish such ambitious goals?
    • Biodiversity: The political borders and physical barriers within the park are removed, allowing animals and humans to migrate freely. In addition, surveys of the area’s biodiversity don’t stop at sovereign borders, but are instead conducted on an ecosystem basis.
    • Job creation: Developing eco-tourism—one of the fastest-growing industries in the world—provides people living near peace parks an incentivized alternative to exhausting the very resource base on which their survival depends.
    • Peace and stability: To jointly manage natural resources successfully requires countries to collaborate through cross-boundary committees on conservation, safety and security, finance, human resources, legislation, and tourism.
    My organization, International Peace Park Expeditions, uses experiential peacebuilding, academic programs, and professional trainings in international peace parks to integrate theory with practice. We seek to develop leadership and collaboration among three distinct, but complementary, groups: students and professors, transboundary protected area professionals, and youth from the peace park countries.

    Our Summer 2010 programs focus on the proposed peace park in the Western Balkans’ Prokletije/Bjeshket e Namuna mountains, between Albania and the newly independent countries of Montenegro (2006) and Kosovo (2008), which were formerly part of Yugoslavia. The Balkans Peace Park Project, a UK charity and their local network of partner organizations and individuals, first conceptualized the Balkans Peace Park, an area of approximately 4000 square km, in 2001.

    This summer, participants in our professional training symposium will collaboratively develop a more precise and dynamic map. Students and young leaders in our other two programs will learn about peace parks while trekking together across the borders into all three countries.

    Experiential Peacebuilding (July 19-25, 2010)

    Experiential Peacebuilding programs combine outdoor experiential education and practical skills training in peacebuilding to foster the development of a community of young leaders capable of catalyzing positive peaceful changes in their communities. This summer’s program is being developed in conjunction with our local partner organizations (ERA and Marimangut in Kosovo; Outdoor Albania and High Albania in Albania; and PSD Prokletija in Montenegro). The primary goals of these programs are to unite youth from conflict-affected communities to develop relationships across borders; transform negative attitudes and stereotypes; and create a core group of young leaders with the skills, tools, and motivation to generate and direct changes in their communities.

    Academic Expedition (June 7-26 and August 2-21, 2010)

    This three-week, three-credit course, “Conservation Beyond Borders,” will combine traditional academic teaching with proven experiential learning methodologies to create a unique, dynamic expedition that will provide students with a strong understanding of the theory and practice of international peace parks. Course readings and lectures will provide the academic base, and guest lectures from subject-matter experts working in the field will create the bridge; both will address sustainable forestry management, biodiversity surveys, eco-tourism plans, development and infrastructure planning, environmental conservation, water resource management, peacebuilding initiatives, and cross-border projects. First-hand experience trekking through the proposed Balkans Peace Park, crossing the borders of Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro, and living among the local people will bring theory to life.

    Professional Training Symposium (July 8-9, 2010)

    This year’s Professional Field Training Symposium, “Critical Transboundary Environmental Linkages,” will bring together experts, policymakers, and stakeholders from the Prokletije/Bjeshket e Namuna region to discuss cross-border ecotourism, biodiversity mapping, and sustainable forestry management. The symposium seeks to build trust through cross-border collaboration, and to improve environmental management in the peace park region. Participants will create a Google Earth map to house shared environmental data and visit two project sites in the proposed peace park.

    Todd Walters is the founder and executive director of International Peace Park Expeditions. He holds a master’s degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from American University’s School of International Service, and is a National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) certified wilderness guide. While at AU, he worked as an intern for the Environmental Change and Security Program.

    Photos courtesy IPPE/Cory Wilson.
    MORE
  • Peace Through Parks on Israel’s Borders – Dream or Reality?

    ›
    Eye On  //  January 27, 2010  //  By Julien Katchinoff
    In areas fraught with conflict, is it possible to advance conflict resolution through environmental discourse? A recent conference hosted by Tel Aviv University’s Porter School of Environmental Studies explored this question through an examination of existing peace parks, as well as possible future preserves.

    The wide-ranging discussion sought to apply theories of conflict resolution and environmental peacemaking to local conflict in the Middle East. Touching on conservation, conflict resolution, local history, geography, ecology, and diplomacy, the participants underscored the importance of restoration efforts, local environmental maintenance, and the pursuit of peace through environmental cooperation.

    For more, watch these presentations on YouTube (in English; with Timestamps):

    Event Part One:

    0:15:50

    “Conservation to Conflict Resolution: Understanding the Theory and Practice of Peace Parks”
    Dr. Saleem Ali, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont

    1:36:28
    “Peace Parks on Israel’s Borders: Lessons from South Sinai”
    Dr. Dan Rabinowitz, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University

    1:55:49
    “The Jordan River Peace Park: Post-conflict environmental peacebuilding between Israel and Jordan”
    Gidon Bromberg, Israeli Director, Friends of the Earth Middle East

    Event Part Two:

    0:01:12

    “The Golan Heights – A critical habitat with global significance”
    Dr. Tamar Ron, Ecologist, biodiversity conservation consultant

    2:11:01
    Session Response:
    Valerie Brachya, Director, Environmental Policy Center Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies

    Photo: Golan Heights Panorama, Courtesy Flickr User Vad_Levin.
    MORE
  • An Island of Peace in a Sea of Conflict: The Jordan River Peace Park

    ›
    Eye On  //  January 13, 2010  //  By Dan Asin
    Saleem Ali filmed this video on his visit to the “peace island” between Jordan and Israel, which Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME) is working to convert into an international peace park.

    FOEME co-Director Gidon Bromberg will be at the Wilson Center today to discuss the peace park and other FOEME water cooperation initiatives in more detail as a panelist participating in “Pathways to Peace: Stories of Environment, Health, and Conflict,” an event discussing field-based lessons for addressing environment, health, development, and conflict.

    Video: Filmed by Saleem H. Ali (University of Vermont, editor of the MIT Press book Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution) with commentary by Elizabeth Ya’ari (FOEME), January 2010.
    MORE
  • Science Diplomacy: An Expectations Game

    ›
    June 19, 2009  //  By Geoffrey D. Dabelko
    In “The Limits of Science Diplomacy,” SciDev.net Director David Dickson argues that scientific collaboration can achieve only very limited diplomatic victories. A conference hosted by the Royal Society in London earlier this month, entitled “New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy” (agenda), seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion.

    But I think this view of science diplomacy is overly pessimistic. It sets unrealistically high expectations such dialogue could never hope to achieve. Science diplomacy is not meant to solve all aspects of conflicts or distrustful relationships, so setting such a high bar is a bit of a straw man. Science, as well as dialogue on the management of shared natural resources, remains an under-utilized and under-studied tool for trust-building, so it is premature to declare it a failure before we have sufficient evidence for evaluation.

    Veterans of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and other Cold War-era scientific dialogues might suggest we are neglecting some rich experiences from this era. It bears remembering that Pugwash was awarded the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize (and current U.S. Science Adviser John Holdren delivered the acceptance speech as then executive director of Pugwash).

    A distinct but related arena for further policy attempts and research inquiries is environmental peacebuilding, where mutual interdependence around natural resources provides pathways for dialogue in the midst of conflict. The establishment of the Cordillera del Condor Transboundary Protected Area between Ecuador and Peru was a result of integrating joint environmental management structures in the 1998 peace agreement that ended a long-festering border conflict. Negotiation over shared resources, such as water, can be a diplomatic lifeline for otherwise-hostile countries, such as Israel and Jordan, which held secret “picnic table” talks to manage the Jordan River while they were officially at war. And the U.S. military has successfully uses environmental cooperation to engage both friends and adversaries.

    Collaboration on scientific and environmental issues won’t solve all our problems. And defining and identifying success remains a fundamental challenge when success is the absence of something (conflict). But let’s not retreat to the common church-and-state division where scientists fear being “contaminated” by participating in policy-relevant dialogues. And let’s certainly not declare science diplomacy a failure—and stop trying to make it a success—based on unrealistic expectations for the benefits such efforts might produce.
    MORE
  • VIDEO: Gidon Bromberg on the Jordan River Peace Park and the Good Water Neighbors Project

    ›
    March 13, 2009  //  By Wilson Center Staff
    The Jordan River Peace Park will help “rehabilitate the river, create economic opportunities for communities on both sides of the river’s banks” and serve “as a concrete example of peacebuilding,” says Gidon Bromberg in this short expert analysis from the Environmental Change and Security program. In this short video, Bromberg, co-director of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) – which recently received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship – explains how the new Jordan River Peace Park will help build peace by bringing together Jordanian, Israeli, and Palestinian environmentalists.

    To learn more about the Jordan River Peace Park, please visit:
    • Friends of the Earth Middle East
    • The Jordan River Peace Park Charrette (Design Workshop)
    • FoEME’s Peace Park Proposal (Power Point)
    MORE
  • Dispatches From the World Conservation Congress: Geoff Dabelko on Wartime Environmental Protection, Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

    ›
    October 8, 2008  //  By Geoffrey D. Dabelko
    The lawyers are out at the World Conservation Congress Forum in Barcelona. Carl Bruch of the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, DC, was one of several speakers at “Armed Conflict and Environment: Protecting the Environment During War and Improving Post-Conflict Natural Resource Management.”

    Bruch is leading a forward-leaning initiative entitled “Strengthening Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and Recovery Through Natural Resource Management” that is collaborating with Tokyo University and the UN Environment Programme’s Conflicts and Disasters Programme to analyze cases from around the world where the environment is key to causing, extending, ending, or recovering from conflict. Bruch and his team of authors are trying to glean lessons for peacebuilding by examining natural resource management in post-conflict societies. Bruch emphasized that the goal is to provide actors on the ground who are not environmental practitioners with the practical means to integrate natural resource management into their operations.

    Michael Bothe, an expert on the environment and laws of war from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, suggested IUCN could play a positive role in using the parks-for-peace process to establish parks as demilitarized zones. He noted that peacetime treaties often remain in effect in times of conflict, but that obligations in international environmental treaties are promotional and therefore have limited impact during war. Bothe called for more work in three areas:
    1. Passing laws that use parks-for-peace mechanisms to prevent valuable habitats from becoming military objectives;
    2. Clarifying how the military doctrine of proportionality of response applies to environmental damage; and
    3. Specifying the application of customary (i.e., traditional) law regarding environmental protection during armed conflict.

    Illustrating the diversity of participants at the World Conservation Congress, questioners from Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Angola, Georgia, and Germany focused on environmental damage from conflicts in their regions.

    MORE
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