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or 30 years, a community of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers have been working to untangle the complex relationships between environmental change and human and national security, and find entry points for policies and programs that build on these connections to create a more resilient and sustainable peace,” said Lauren Risi, Project Director of the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change & Security Program at a recent event that featured contributors to a new special issue of International Affairs on environmental peacebuilding. With 28 contributors and 11 articles across disciplines and representing geographically diverse perspectives, the special issue provides a real opportunity, said Geoff Dabelko, Professor and Associate Dean at the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University and ECSP Senior Advisor. “It’s one that I think makes a real contribution, carries us forward, and at the same time represents the best of the past waves, as we call them, and charts a path going forward.”
Environmental peacebuilding has been really thought about as state-building or building institutional capacity at the state level, said McKenzie F. Johnson, an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While institutional reforms have enhanced environmental sustainability and human security, the narrow focus has come at the cost of largely ignoring community-level practice.To view the full article visit the New Security Beat.