Toxic diplomacy through environmental management: A necessary next step for environmental peacebuilding

Abstract

The field of environmental peacebuilding (EP) addresses many of the critical issues related to negative human outcomes from environmental change, especially violent conflict. However, the direct health effects of human-produced pollution through resource extraction and/or material production and consumption are not a focus of the EP literature. This gap exists despite the fact that at least 7–9 million people die prematurely every year as a function of toxic pollution, making it the most important subset of the 13 million people whose deaths are caused by environmental hazards each year. Most of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, where are found many of the resource conflicts and post-conflict environmental peacebuilding programs that EP has historically focused on and investigated. Including toxic pollution among the conflict cycles susceptible to peacebuilding investigations and practice is a natural and necessary progression, one that offers broad and ample opportunity for new lines of investigation, peace programming, and, most importantly, improvement of human security.