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.”
Some entries came together quickly because contributors approached a concept from broadly similar perspectives. Others generated substantial discussion. In several cases, disagreement was not a sign of failure but evidence that the field is actively evolving. As highlighted above regarding peace parks, the glossary, wherever appropriate, sought to acknowledge varying interpretations rather than force consensus.
One particularly revealing moment involved the term conflict prevention, a concept that has long been central to peacebuilding practice. Accidentally, two contributors independently submitted separate entries. What was striking was not how different the entries were, but how similar they were. Both authors described the concept in largely the same way, yet one placed greater emphasis on its transnational dimensions and the other focused more on its broader application within peacebuilding practice. The editors requested that they work together to produce a single entry, which ultimately they did. The experience illustrated how contributors can bring complementary perspectives to even well-established concepts and enrich entries by highlighting nuances that might otherwise have been missed.
Conversations with contributors also highlighted productive differences between researchers and practitioners. For example, while several scholars emphasized the importance of clarifying concepts and distinguishing among competing definitions, some practitioners emphasized how language functions in real-world contexts where trust, history, and local relationships matter most. Bringing these perspectives together strengthened many entries and underscored the value of dialogue across theory and practice.
The process of translating the terms (into 10 languages) offered a reminder that terminology does not always move neatly across linguistic and cultural contexts. Some terms had well-established equivalents in multiple languages. Others, particularly newer concepts or field-specific terms such as backdraft, decolonization, environmental peacemaking, and weaponization of natural resources generated rich discussions among translators. Some terms lacked agreed-upon equivalents in certain languages or carried connotations that shifted depending on cultural context. Working through these cases became an exercise in itself and raised broader questions about how concepts travel across languages and what is gained or lost in translation.
Perhaps the most exciting outcome was the sense of community, and, in many cases, shared purpose, that emerged through the process itself. The project created opportunities for conversations across disciplines, regions, and professions, and many contributors who collaborated for the first time during the glossary’s development have continued to collaborate in the rollout. What began as a writing and review process has, for many, grown into a lasting network of collaborators.
Why Now
As the field has evolved, the scope of environmental peacebuilding has grown substantially. Climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and energy transitions increasingly intersect with questions of conflict, cooperation, and justice. The need for a common reference point becomes increasingly important as more institutions and communities engage with these challenges.
Essential Concepts of Environmental Peacebuilding: An A-Z Guide will not resolve the complex challenges that environmental peacebuilding seeks to address, but it can help those working on them communicate more effectively, learn from one another, and collaborate across disciplines and regions. Rather than a definitive endpoint, it is best understood as a snapshot of evolving conversation and a foundation for future dialogue, reflecting the collective contributions of the many communities engaged in environmental peacebuilding.