By Rachel Weaver, Larry Swatuk, Carl Bruch, Erika Weinthal, and Richard Matthew 

In environmental peacebuilding, language does a great deal of heavy lifting. The same term–whether it is resilience, sustainability, or conflict–can carry sharply different meanings depending on whether it is being used by a climate scientist, lawyer, researcher, or local official navigating post-conflict land disputes. These differences in meaning are not merely academic. When people use the same words but mean different things, coordination becomes more difficult, misunderstandings can multiply, and opportunities for collaboration can be lost.

This is one reason why the development of a dedicated glossary for the field of environmental peacebuilding matters, and why the process of creating it turned out to be as instructive as the final product itself.

What is Environmental Peacebuilding?

Environmental peacebuilding examines the ways environmental challenges, including natural resource governance, climate change, conservation, pollution, and environmental degradation, interact with conflict and peace. It explores how environmental factors can contribute to insecurity and violence and how shared environmental interests can create opportunities for dialogue, cooperation, and durable peace.

Since its early articulations in the 1990s, environmental peacebuilding has developed into a vibrant field of research and practice. Governments, international organizations, civil society, researchers, and local communities increasingly grapple with issues that lie at the intersection of environmental change, conflict, and peace. As the field has expanded, linking multiple disciplines, actors, geographies, and scales, so too has its vocabulary. Despite the growing use of environmental peacebuilding concepts in academic literature and institutional reports, there has been no comprehensive resource dedicated to defining and contextualizing the key terms in this rapidly growing field.

Essential Concepts of Environmental Peacebuilding: An A-Z Guide was developed to fill that gap. “Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers must address the challenging intersection of environment, conflict, and peacebuilding dynamics worldwide. Designing innovative responses requires all actors to transcend traditional disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. At a time when the environmental peacebuilding community is navigating shifting global priorities and resource constraints, Essential Concepts of Environmental Peacebuilding: An A-Z Guide provides a shared foundation for dialogue, collaboration, teaching, research, and practice across the rapidly evolving field,” said Geoffrey Dabelko, Professor at the Voinovich School of Public Service, Ohio University.

Building a Shared Vocabulary

Developing a shared vocabulary is not about imposing a single set of definitions. Rather, it is about creating a common reference point that allows differences in interpretation to be recognized and discussed openly. For a field as interdisciplinary as environmental peacebuilding, this kind of clarity is essential.

A shared vocabulary also helps connect a diverse community of researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and students, and provides a gateway into the breadth of the field itself. Environmental peacebuilding draws on multiple disciplines and areas of practice, and people both new to the field and more immersed in it often encounter concepts, institutions, and approaches that are unfamiliar to them. By bringing these ideas together in one place, the glossary supports communication across the field and creates opportunities for learning and discovery.

The resulting publication provides definitions and contextual explorations for 152 foundational and emerging terms used by those working at the intersection of environment, conflict, and peace. It also includes entries on 35 institutions that have helped shape the field. To broaden accessibility, terms were translated into ten languages, creating opportunities to reflect on how concepts travel, and sometimes change, across linguistic and cultural contexts.

What the Process Revealed

While the glossary serves as a reference resource for the field, the process of creating it offered valuable insights into the field itself.

The publication was developed through a collaborative effort involving more than 220 contributors from around the world. Contributors worked together to identify and define concepts, describe institutions, review drafts, and refine entries through multiple stages of feedback.

One lesson that emerged repeatedly was that language is never merely descriptive. Terms help shape how problems are understood, what solutions are considered legitimate, and whose voices are included in decision-making. The process of defining concepts therefore became an exercise not only in clarification, but also in reflection on the assumptions and perspectives embedded within the field itself.

Take, for example, peace parks. According to the entry written by Hsiao and Ali, “Peace parks have been conceived of in many ways, ranging from inspirationally named urban spaces, commemorative landmarks, and green spaces to cross-border conservation areas dedicated simultaneously to the lofty goals of strengthening biodiversity and peaceful relations between countries.” Yet, they also point out that “[w]hile the aspirations of peace parks are laudable … critiques of peace parks are also predicated on the view that the term can be co-opted to justify state-sanctioned encroachment on community land and dispossession of customary rights.”

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https://www.eli.org/vibrant-environment-blog/making-environmental-peacebuilding-glossary