Environmental Peacemaking

Rating:
Summary: A worthy but scattered effort
Review: Using environmental issues as a means of catalyzing cooperation among adversaries is a plausible goal that deserves greater attention. This book is an initial attempt at this emerging field of inquiry. The authors are affiliated with one of the most well-recognized research programs in this field at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

However, the title is a bit deceptive since much of the discourse in the book is a reflexive continuation of the environmental security literature, rather than offering a fresh theoretical path towards an instrumental vision of environmental issues in conflict resolution. A major cause of this lapse is the choice of case studies that are presented. All except one (India and Pakistan) are low level conflict situations where cooperation is far easier to engage. Even in the chapter on South Asia, the authors do not address the question of why cooperation over the Indus has NOT led to a larger cooperative mood between India and Pakistan?

Much of the text presents historical material and some "thick description" of cases and a literature review rather than involved analysis or recommendations. To be fair to the authors, they admit that this is an embryonic work -- but perhaps they should have waited a couple of years and chosen better case studies before producing the volume. Some suggestions for closer analysis would be "peace parks" between Ecuador and Peru or more localized cases such as the alliance between "red-neck" fishermen and Native Americans over preservation of the wild rice plantations in Northern Wisconsin (two sides which were previously inveterate adversaries).

Nevertheless, the book offers a workable starting point for further research.