Environmental conflict and peacebuilding in Africa: Connecting resources, issues, and ongoing governance initiatives

The ongoing acceleration of climate change, and debate raging about the massive human impacts on ecosystems from local to global sometimes denoted by the “Anthropocene” concept, are making the connections between human security, environmental change and resource exploitation and consumption increasingly apparent (Adger et al. 2014; Andrews-Speed et al. 2015; VanDeveer 2015). As such, environmental and resource-based factors seem likely to proliferate, with influences on violent conflict, conflict mitigation and peacebuilding activities. Research on environmental and resource-related causes of conflict, and on the peacebuilding opportunities presented by greater attention to environmental and resource-related cooperation, has produced a rich analytical literature over the last twenty-plus years (Krampe 2016, 2017; Ali 2007; Weinthal et al. 2013; Chalecki 2013; Matthew et al. 2010). However, many ongoing peacebuilding and conflict mitigation initiatives - and many existing transnational governance initiatives - remain unconnected to these areas of inquiry and uninformed by them. This chapter seeks to illustrate both this lack of attention to existing initiatives and the tremendous potential for learning in research and practice by making such connections more explicit.