Environmental peacebuilding offers a promising framework to address deeply intertwined environmental challenges and conflict dynamics in Latin America and the Caribbean. So why has it not delivered fully on this promise? In an interview with ESCP, Julian Higuera-Florez, a research specialist in climate, peace, and security at the Alliance of Biodiversity and CIAT and CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, discussed a new policy brief, Environmental Peacebuilding in Latin America and the Caribbean: Bridging Gaps and Harnessing Opportunities, co-authored with the UNDP Latin America and the Caribbean Hub.

Higuera-Florez and his co-authors examine environmental peacebuilding’s ability to foster cooperation, strengthen governance, and build climate resilience—while also acknowledging its limitations in broader regional effectiveness. He says stronger evidence on environmental peacebuilding’s successes and the role of local and community-based solutions is needed and offers his key takeaways from recent international forums that tackled these issues.

Angus Soderberg: What role is environmental peacebuilding playing right now in the region? Can it be meaningfully integrated into broader policy efforts? 

Julian Higuera-Florez: Environmental peacebuilding is not a silver bullet. There are distinct challenges and limitations to this approach in the region. For example, it cannot solve deep-rooted and pervasive causes of conflict: economic inequalities, political exclusion, transnational criminal organizations, high rates of gender-based violence, high rates of violence against environmental activists, and institutional mistrust. A lack of research and evidence on the environmental and peacebuilding nexus in the region is an additional challenge that we still need to overcome.

If it is properly explored and deployed, however, the environmental peacebuilding approach can bring enormous benefits to policymaking in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its approach, which places an emphasis on creating local and grassroots solutions to environmental and conflict-related problems, can create opportunities for more effective governance through the greater participation of impacted communities.

Environmental peacebuilding flips the narrative around challenges and scarcity from an emphasis on links with conflict to a story that emphasizes cooperation. Its frameworks offer a chance to simultaneously address environmental issues and assist peacebuilding opportunities.

This approach, as the saying goes in English, is like killing two birds with one stone.

Soderberg: What needs to change for environmental peacebuilding to take hold in the region? How can these efforts be more effective? 

Higuera-Florez: One important task is to generate robust evidence about the effectiveness of environmental peacebuilding. There is a disconnect between the experience of on-the-ground practitioners of environmental peacebuilding mechanisms and the studies conducted by academics.

We need evidence with two characteristics. First, we need evidence that takes local knowledge into account, as well as firsthand accounts of the challenges that these communities are facing. We also need evidence of how these mechanisms are gathered and presented with local participation. In this sense, participatory qualitative methods, such as social learning ethnographic approaches, are essential.

Based on that evidence, we can better identify unwanted consequences or ineffective actions. We also can avoid generating benefits that come at the expense of local communities.

Finally, but equally as important, we must develop strategies that measure peace outcomes from any project or intervention—and be sure that this measurement process is inclusive of those impacted communities.

Soderberg: You and your co-authors identify opportunities to integrate environmental peacebuilding mechanisms in climate adaptation and other areas discussed at the recent Biodiversity and Climate COPs. Were these hopes for integration realized? What lessons emerged from these meetings to advance this work in the region?

Higuera-Florez: The debates around environmental peacebuilding have increasingly been integrated into discussions at the past three COPs. While different actors approach the connections between environmental management and peacebuilding from varying perspectives, the focus in the general COP negotiations still tends to lean more toward the conflict dimension—highlighting environmental degradation as a driver of conflict—while the cooperative potential of social and environmental relations remains underexplored.

That said, COP16 on Biological Diversity was a crucial moment to elevate environmental peacebuilding as a tool. The conference’s slogan, Peace with Nature, reflected this, and the fact that it was held in Colombia—a country with a strong tradition of peacebuilding research—created an enabling space for these discussions.

In our engagements at COP16, we sought to demonstrate that environmental peacebuilding is more than an abstract concept. In the events we participated, in we explored how environmental management strategies can contribute to crime prevention by strengthening both ecosystem and social resilience and shared concrete examples of how biodiversity conservation and natural resource management can generate co-benefits that mitigate conflict and forced migration.

Our hope is that these dialogues will lead to stronger commitments in future climate and biodiversity negotiations, the inclusion of environmental peacebuilding in national adaptation plans, and increased financial and technical support for initiatives that use environmental management as a pathway to peace.

The challenge now is ensuring that these perspectives are systematically included in decision-making processes and that practical solutions emerging from the ground are scaled up to drive lasting change in the region. Strengthening the link between research, policy, and implementation is crucial for advancing environmental peacebuilding as a core component of climate adaptation efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean.