Natural resources are one of a country’s most critical assets for peacebuilding. Land, forests, minerals, oil, water, and other resources are the foundations for rebuilding livelihoods and national economies. The protection of the environment and cooperation efforts in that direction can serve to improve governance and build lasting and sustainable peace. Conversely, maintaining peace in fragile post-conflict societies requires consideration of natural resource management and governance, as conflicts involving natural resources have also been found to be twice as likely to relapse.

Building upon this evidence, environmental peacebuilding integrates natural resource management in conflict prevention, mitigation, resolution, and recovery to build resilience in communities affected by conflict. Researchers, practitioners, and decision makers in that field will gather virtually from 1 to 4 February 2022 for the 2nd International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding.

In this context, the Geneva Environment Network and partners invite you to a session to showcase the contribution of International Geneva as a global hub of environmental governance to the field of peacebuilding. Gathering a large pool of expertise on both environment- and conflict-related issues, organizations in Geneva can indeed play an important role in promoting environmental peacebuilding and exploring the interlinkages with other workstreams and to New York. Invited experts will discuss how synergies within the International Geneva community can be reinforced and developed to support environmental peacebuilding.

This event, is also organized in the run-up to the Stockholm + 50 Conference, five decades after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment had declared that to defend and improve the human environment for present and future generations has become an imperative goal for mankind, a goal to be pursued together with, and inharmony with, the established and fundamental goals of peace and of worldwide economic and social development.

SPEAKERS

By order of intervention. Additional speaker to be announced.

• Philippe ROCH, Former Swiss State Secretary for the Environment, Member of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy Board
• Felix BAUMANN, Head, Multilateral Division, Switzerland Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva
• H.E. Amb. Purevsuren LUNDEG, Permanent Representative of Mongolia to the United Nations in Geneva
• Annika ERICKSON-PEARSON, Head of Community Management, Geneva Peacebuilding Platform
• Bruno POZZI, Europe Director, United NationsEnvironment Programme

REGISTRATION

The event will take place online. Kindly register on the 2nd Environmental Peacebuilding Conference platform: tiny.cc/GEN3Feb22Reg