“Neither climate impacts nor conflict just ‘happen’”: Insights from an Environmental Peacebuilding Workshop

In this blog, Juliane Schillinger (Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, and Board Member at the Environmental Peacebuilding Association) and Tom Ansell (The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre) discuss the outcomes of a workshop held in May 2026 at  ISS to explore commonalities and differences in the use of key concepts at the intersection of environment, climate, conflict, and peace. The workshop was convened as part of the launch of the new on Essential Concepts of Environmental Peacebuilding by the Environmental Peacebuilding Association, which contains more than 150 entries related to environmental conflict and peacebuilding, the workshop sought to find answers to a simple question: Are we all speaking the same language?

The intersection of environment, climate, conflict and peace attracts an increasingly diverse group of stakeholders, ranging from traditional security actors to environmental activists, humanitarians and development organisations, and from global policy conversations to local action. Researchers have been engaging in conversations around these themes from a variety of disciplinary and conceptual perspectives as well. The workshop attracted participants from each of these sectors, bringing diverse perspectives on environmental peacebuilding and climate security from their own sectors. Given this diversity, it is natural that such plastic terms as ‘security’ and ‘justice’ would be interpreted in various ways within the group. Do they mean the same to a traditional security expert, an environmental activist, or a humanitarian? Predictably, no!

A word cloud generated from key terms used by workshop participants across different discussions

Bringing all these perspectives together, though, can significantly enrich conversations and programmes designed to address the compound risks of environmental degradation, climate change and conflict. But they can also bring challenges, when diverging perspectives lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings when not everyone seems to be speaking the same language.

Why are we here?

To kick off the session, participants self-identified as being part of a stakeholder group (research, humanitarian/development, civil society, security) and freely responded to the prompt: “Why are you engaging at the intersection of environment, climate, conflict and peace? What are you hoping to achieve?” Five clusters of motivations emerged, often across sectors:

1) for advocacy purposes and to raise awareness of challenges and approaches at the intersection of climate and conflict

2) based on the strong presence of people working in civil society and social movements on the issue, and with the aim to show solidarity with affected communities and fellow activists

3) focusing on the resilience of and accountability towards affected populations, particularly in the context of disaster risk management and humanitarian practice in fragile and conflict-affected areas

4) to strengthen systems approaches that consider the intersection of environment, climate, conflict and peace holistically, and can create spaces for collaboration across sectors

5) motivated by the opportunities inherent to integrated approaches and how policy and technology could try to approach environment, climate, conflict, and peace together.

Next to humanitarian and development practitioners, many researchers were motivated by resilience strengthening and humanitarian concerns, with one summarizing their motivation as “[I want to] help people with ‘little’ agency to increase their adaptive capacity [to disasters]”. Overall, though, the group felt that the link between humanitarian action, climate, conflict, and the environment should still be made more explicitly in their day-to-day working lives.

The need for integrated and system-based approaches was the most common motivation among workshop participants, reflecting the desire to “avoid silo thinking”, and to work more holistically in contexts that are both fragile and climate-sensitive. One attendee expressly linked a causality between conflict and climate justice: “I work on climate justice. Conflict undermines it. The climate and energy transition can also generate conflict”.

Across all of the groupings, there was a general understanding that by interacting with climate and environmental concerns, they or their organisations could also contribute to longer-term and sustainable peacebuilding, and support advocacy on other environmental issues such as clean water. Some directly highlighted the role of environmental problems in dispute resolution in their work projects, and the wish to work closely with colleagues from other disciplines and sectors.

Perhaps indicative of the The Hague’s ecosystem, a couple of attendees expressed that they would like to try and ‘reclaim’ climate and environmental concerns from the military and security spheres. Others were more interested in building across sectors: “[I want to] link military and other security actors in cooperation / knowledge [sharing] with civil society and government actors, humanitarian, peace, energy transition, etcetera.”

 

For the analysts or for the campaigners?

Over the course of the workshop, participants took part in various interactive exercises to help the facilitators understand their (dis-)comfort in using terms and phrases related to the environment, climate, conflict and peace, such as “climate change causes conflict”, “security” in the context of the environment and climate, “environmental/climate justice”, and “decolonisation”. These discussions revealed that whilst most people in the room were ‘speaking the same language’ inasmuch as they broadly agreed on the meaning of the phrases, participants were quite divided on how and where the phrases should be used. Discussion around the statement “climate change causes conflict” ranged from calls for more nuance and differentiated assessments of causality to participants engaged in advocacy work highlighting that “it’s not a linear process, but the phrase is useful for justifying action and our work”, and “I work with activists, and simpler messages travel better”. One participant even noted that “the phrase is useful for proposals!”.

The discussion also provided the opportunity for disagreements to surface on the securitisation of climate and the environment and the role of security actors in this space. A number of NGO and civil society representatives vigorously expressed that they would like to see fewer military and security voices in discussions around the link between climate and conflict. “Security implies safeguarding the status quo, not transforming systems to climate justice”, was one clear expression of this. Meanwhile, another participant highlighted that using the security language within a Dutch context was quite useful to motivative people and local actors to take precautions at a personal or local level.

Several participants preferred to speak of “environmental justice” or “climate justice” instead of security, because it provides a frame of reference that can speak to other forms of vulnerability, inequality, or injustice. This is not necessarily incompatible with using simplified language to motivate larger groups: “our [humanitarian] line is that those affected the most are often the least responsible”.

“Decolonisation”, meanwhile, was found to be useful to motivate action and show the ingrained power relations within subjects often held to be ‘power neutral’, such as materiality and technology. Nonetheless, some attendees found it a still-uncomfortable term to use within their work. Participants were, however, united by the idea that “decolonisation” can be used to shine a light on practices that still bring about environmental destruction, and also subjectivise people: “imperial and colonised pasts have effects that last centuries, especially when talking about geographies and natural resources”. Similarly, a majority of attendees liked using terms that highlight the human factor in global phenomena, whether climate or conflict related. Relying on technical or neutral language can neutralise responsibility – or shift focus onto personal choices rather than systemic trends or policies.

As for the initial question of whether we are all speaking the same language on environment, climate and security, the primary reflection from the discussions for environmental peacebuilding scholars and practitioners would seem to be whether it is actually useful for everyone to speak the same language, or if it is more useful for multiple languages to be developed: that can appeal to a range of uses from more nuanced research and policy discussions to more direct public advocacy.

For more information about the Environmental Peacebuilding Association, check out their website.

Opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Environmental Peacebuilding Organisation, nor the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre

About the authors:

Juliane Schillinger is a transdisciplinary researcher at the intersection of the environment and conflict. As a Technical Adviser at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, her work focuses on climate action and disaster risk reduction in fragile and conflict-affected settings, and on humanitarian engagement with climate security and environmental peacebuilding. She is a member of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association’s Board of Directors and a The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre fellow.

Tom Ansell is Coordinator & Researcher at The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre. His work revolves around a ‘Societies in Crisis’ – led understanding of humanitarianism, with specific foci on humanitarian advocacy, Disaster Risk Reduction, and critical Vulnerability. He also Coordinates the International Humanitarian Studies Association.