The international legal dimensions of environmental peacebuilding

Abstract

Environmental factors increasingly define today’s global security landscape. In recognition of the role that environmental factors play in triggering, fueling and sustaining armed conflicts at the local, regional and even global level, environmental peacebuilding has emerged as a new field of research and practice. This chapter introduces the reader to the growing scholarship in this field and discusses the contributions that international normative and institutional frameworks make to it. In this way, it sets the scene for more detailed discussions on the role of these normative and institutional frameworks in the other chapters in the book. It concludes with an appraisal of the contributions that the book makes to existing scholarship and identifies future areas for research.