Environmental conflicts and building peace: Pacific perspectives
On Tuesday 2 September, 11 participants who are citizens of eight countries participated in a workshop from 9am to 3pm to share knowledge and experiences related to the theme: Environmental Peacebuilding. This workshop was convened by Dr Anouk Ride, and is an initiative under the Department of Pacific Affairs (DPA) at Australian National University.
With renewed emphasis on security in international relations in the Asia-Pacific, relationships between Pacific peoples and their environments needs to be recognised. Environmental conflicts are experienced in many parts of the Pacific Islands, particularly in situations involving indigenous peoples and agreements regarding use of land and aquatic resources. Patterns of colonialism, economic development and international relations have contributed towards unsustainable mining, logging and fishing. This creates environmental damage and conflict, while climate change is also reducing productivity of the environment and food insecurity, as well as migration within and between countries.
The field of environmental peacebuilding includes “multiple approaches and pathways by which the management of environmental issues is integrated in and can support conflict prevention, mitigation, response and recovery”. Pacific peoples have long integrated sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems with culture and peaceful social relations, however, in concept and in the practice of development aid and economic development, these interlinks can be overlooked.
This workshop was a participatory forum for researchers deeply engaged with environmental conflicts and local solutions. Using Pacific methodological traditions of talking through issues in circles of sharing knowledge, participants discussed their ties to and research on the Pacific Island countries of Cook Islands, Kiribati, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands in particular.
Participants were all actively engaged in research about communities and countries experiencing conflicts around environmental change and natural resource use. These changes included climate change migration and mitigation, environmental damage and migration caused by mining, mediating conflicts around logging and plantation developments and issues arising around new technology and the environment, notably deep-sea mining and carbon credit schemes.
Peacebuilding options discussed included changing the architecture, processes and functions of natural resource management and development, to make these more islander-led and inclusive. In areas of conflict between Pacific peoples, there were calls for more attention to local and cultural processes of reconciliation, healing and counselling in order to move towards peace.
It was noted that despite seemingly large investments in climate finance, blue finance and development in the region, conflicts arising from climate change migration and effects, and/or from environmental damage and loss caused by extractive industries, are dealt with by local actors, often in the absence of funds for local conflict analysis and peacebuilding. The Pacific Islands Forum leaders have also nominated “environmental and resource security” as a priority in the Boe Declaration on Regional Security in 2018, however, regional cooperation on environmental resources has been successful in some areas, such as climate and fisheries negotiations, but absent in other sectors, such as extractive industries.
The activity was held thanks to funding support for travel of some participants and workshop costs from Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) a German political foundation with a mission to promote international dialogue, regional integration, sustainable development, good governance, democratic processes, social market economy and exchange of knowledge.