Embodying Environmental Justice: Collective Action and Community Resilience as Forms of Peacebuilding

Date & Time
Jun 19, 2026 | 14.00 - 15.30

Participants
Chair: Becca Farnum, Queen Mary University of London (United Kingdom)
Austin Willacy, EnPAx Arts Initiative (United States)
Jacob Yen Alier, Konybaai Education Initiative (South Sudan/Uganda)
Anjali Vurden, FemWise-Africa (Mauritius)
Breanna Riddick, Climates of Resistance (United States)

This discussion will question the boundaries of environmental peacebuilding, exploring the field’s spatial, temporal, and thematic scope through a range of case studies.

Key dimensions in environmental justice will be used to consider:

• the unequal distribution of risks and resources as a contributor to conflict, including through ‘quiet’ forms of systemic violence;
• the recognition — or lack thereof — for various actors, beneficiaries, victims, victors, etc. in environmental peacebuilding policy and practice; and
• the role of inclusive participation in decisionmaking about peacebuilding processes and human-nature relations.

Attention to ‘obvious’, accepted issues in environmental peacebuilding (e.g., militarized conservation and campesinos peacemaking efforts in post-treaty Colombia; intercommunity tree-planting workshops in post-genocide Rwanda) will be presented alongside topics that might not be labelled as ‘environmental peacebuilding’ (e.g., the role of collective singing in boosting stamina for protestors; the intersections of climate justice with reproductive justice).

This juxtaposition — with each presentation connected through the environmental justice framework — will produce a rich dialogue about the benefits and drawbacks of defining the field too broadly…or too narrowly.