GundxChange: Defueling Conflict: Practical Advice for Environmental Peacebuilding in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings

Mar 6, 2026 | Gund Institute for Environment
Burlington, VT and online
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In these weekly talks, hosted by the Gund Institute for Environment, scholars and leaders exchange ("xChange") new research and solutions for people and planet. This week, Phoebe Spencer, an environmental economist with the World Bank, will discuss environmental peacebuilding and conflict sensitivity.

Natural resources and their management can serve as either powerful drivers of fragility and conflict, or critical instruments for promoting peace. Climate change, environment degradation, and conflict are strongly correlated: natural resources were a source of contention in one in four global crises and conflicts in 2014-18, and closely related to 40% of all intrastate conflicts in 1946-2006. In addition, as much as 70% of the most climate-vulnerable countries are also among the most fragile. The pressures of fragility, climate change, and environmental degradation are on the rise. Two reports, Defueling Conflict: Environment and Natural Resource Management as a Pathway to Peace, and the newly-released Defueling Conflict: Notes from the Field, support conflict-sensitive environmental action that avoids maladaptation, mitigates social conflict risks, and seizes opportunities for resilience building and peacebuilding.

Topics will focus mainly on Defueling Conflict: Notes from the Field, which sets out to:

  • Provide practical tools and guidance to integrate conflict sensitivity in natural resource management projects.
  • Demonstrate innovative methods for measuring and monitoring outcomes, and for building the evidence base.
  • Serve as a resource for institutions looking to build environmental peacebuilding and conflict sensitivity capacities.

The referenced publications were prepared with the support of the State and Peacebuilding Fund.

Phoebe Spencer (she/her) is an environmental economist at the World Bank working in the Middle East and North Africa region. Phoebe joined the World Bank in 2017 and is a member of the 2020 cohort of the World Bank Young Professionals Program. Her work centers on environmental sustainability operations in the Middle East, as well as understanding relationships between natural resource management, fragility, and conflict globally. Phoebe holds a PhD in Natural Resources and an MSc in Community Development and Applied Economics from UVM and a BA in Anthropology and Geography from McGill University. At UVM, Phoebe was a Gund Institute graduate student and member of the first Economics for the Anthropocene cohort (E4A Water Cohort) and worked with advisor Jon Erickson studying gender inequality as a social, economic, and ecological challenge.

For the best experience we recommend attending this event in person, however a Zoom link is available: https://uvm-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5odCquv0S-WMq1UMkeC5Mw