Environmental Peacemaking

by Conca, Ken; Dabelko, Geoffrey D.

• ISBN13: 9780801871931
• ISBN10: 080187193X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-13
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

How can environmental cooperation be used to bolster regional peace? A large body of research suggests that environmental degradation may catalyze violent conflict. Environmental cooperation, in contrast, has gone almost unexplored as a means of peacemaking, even though it opens several effective channels: enhancing trust, establishing habits of cooperation, lengthening the time horizons of decisionmakers, forging cooperative trans-societal linkages, and creating shared regional norms and identities. This volume examines the case for environmental peacemaking by comparing progress, prospects, and problems related to environmental peacemaking initiatives in six regions--South Asia, Central Asia, the Baltic, Southern Africa, the Caucasus, and the U.S.-Mexico border. The regions vary dramatically in terms of scale, interdependencies, history, and kinds of insecurity. But each is marked by a highly fluid, changing security order, creating a potential for environmental cooperation to have a catalytic effect on peacemaking. Among the volume's key findings are these: that substantial potential for environmental peacemaking exists in most regions; that significant tensions from narrower efforts to improve the strategic climate among mistrustful governments can impair broader trans-societal efforts to build environmental peace; and that the effects of environmental peacemaking initiatives are highly sensitive to the ways they are institutionalized. Contributors include: Doug W. Blum, Providence College; Ken Conca, University of Maryland; Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Woodrow Wilson Center; Pamela M. Doughman, University of Maryland; Ashok Swain, Uppsala University; Larry A. Swatuk, University of Botswana; Erika Weinthal, Tel Aviv University; Stacy D. VanDeveer, University of New Hampshire.

Author Biography

Ken Conca is associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and director of the Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda. Geoffrey D. Dabelko is director of the Environmental Change and Security Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Table of Contents

Tables, Maps, and Figure	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
About the Editors and Contributors	xiii
The Case for Environmental Peacemaking	1	(22)
Ken Conca
Environmental Cooperation and Regional Peace: Baltic Politics, Programs, and Prospects	23	(38)
Stacy D. VanDeveer
Environmental Cooperation in South Asia	61	(25)
Ashok Swain
The Promises and Pitfalls of Environmental Peacemaking in the Aral Sea Basin	86	(34)
Erika Weinthal
Environmental Cooperation for Regional Peace and Security in Southern Africa	120	(41)
Larry A. Swatuk
Beyond Reciprocity: Governance and Cooperation around the Caspian Sea	161	(29)
Douglas W. Blum
Water Cooperation in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region	190	(30)
Pamela M. Doughman
The Problems and Possibilities of Environmental Peacemaking	220	(15)
Ken Conca
Geoffrey D. Dabelko
Index	235