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Chiota, Matias Javier

Community Development and Applied Economics

2006

MS

The environmental security theorists have traditionally dominated incorporating the environment into the international security and conflict resolution discourse. Environmental security is delineated by a truncation by a theoretical dichotomy between abundance vs. scarcity proponents. Both groups have exclusively focused upon trying to clarify environmental conflict causalities in an effort to both better understand ongoing conflicts as well as help policymakers predict potential future conflicts globally. While the assertions made by environmental security school of thought are rational, their failure to produce empirical studies that support their central premises has consequently reduced their influence amongst policymakers. Environmental peacemaking is an emerging alternative that has arose in response to the limited policy options offered by the environmental security scholars. Environmental peacemaking represents a second attempt by scholars and practitioners to integrate conflict resolution and environmental management / conservation principles. This marks a reorientation in the central questions posed by theorists, focusing on cases where hostile parties may choose to cooperate around key environmental issues despite a wider conflict envelope. Moreover, environmental peacemaking studies how that cooperation may in the long-run promote peaceful resolution of conflict through increased trust, understanding, the dispelling of rumors, increased disputant contact and communication, empathy, catharsis, and the formation of epistemic communities. Therefore, the central tenet of environmental peacemaking is that a shared environment can lead acrimonious parties to cooperate and thus representing multiple conflict resolution opportunities (Conca and Dabelko, 2002).
These studies examine the possible role of environmental peacemaking within the contemporary protracted Middle East conflict. The first article, co-authored with Dr. Saleem Ali of the University of Vermont examines how collaborative education experiences can transform environmental ethnographies and participant perceptions across the Middle East and North Africa [MENA] region. The second article examines how a semi-autonomous institution within a globally significant eco-region can promote trans-boundary natural resource cooperation through its policies and activities. These studies utilize qualitative environmental ethnographies interviewing as the data collection methodology. Collected data in both studies is analyzed through a taxonomical approach [nationality, gender, age, sector] that helps reveal key convergence and divergence of participant perceptions regarding their relationship to the environment. These studies modestly provide insights into where participant defined environmental cooperation is necessary as well as possible.