The growing risk of environmental conflict is a threat to democracy and peace worldwide. In fragile contexts, climate-driven events, such as droughts and flooding, can increase social tensions, overburden public agencies and reduce access to scarce resources. In turn, this can drive displacement, enable the proliferation of armed groups, disempower certain groups such as Indigenous populations, youth, women, and ethnic and racial minorities, and break down the democratic social contract.
To address these increasingly pressing threats, this toolkit is a comprehensive resource for policymakers and practitioners designing or implementing democracy, rights and governance (DRG) policies and programs in contexts affected by environmental conflict, with an emphasis on natural resources that do not require large-scale infrastructure or investment to use or obtain. It is meant to provide users with a deeper understanding of resource-based environmental conflict and its various manifestations, as well as corresponding DRG strategies that can support peacebuilding. Given that many environmental conflicts are rooted in weak or ineffective governance structures, improving the capacity of democratic systems to address the drivers of tensions over natural resources is paramount to achieving stability and peace.
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