Join Us! : Integrating Gender Perspectives - 2026 EnPax Conference
Sep 4, 2025
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Gender Interest Group
The five core themes for the 4th EnPAx Conference (in Ottawa) have been set - how will our Gender Interest Group ensure gender is in each? We’re looking for 5 people to give our group one 5-minute survey of the gender intersections for each theme at our Sept 4 meeting…
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Join us virtually September 4, 2025 @ 11 am EDT for an exciting collaborative session where we'll strategize how to meaningfully integrate gender perspectives throughout the 2026 EnPax Conference, moving beyond tokenism to create transformative programming that centers gender in environmental peacebuilding. This Session and the Conference are your opportunity to connect with fellow researchers and practitioners to brainstorm innovative session ideas, workshops, and collaborative abstracts that will showcase the critical intersections of gender, environment, and peace.
The five core themes for the 4th EnPAx Conference (in Ottawa) have been announced (see below and here), and we want your help to think about how to represent gender in each of them.
(1) Extractivism, Emerging Technologies, and the Energy Transition
(2) Environmental Change, Displacement, and Mobility
(3) Law, Power, and Decolonialization
(4) Reimagining Environmental Peacebuilding
(5) Conservation, Conflict, and Cooperation
We’re meeting on September 4, 2025, @ 11 am EDT (virtually) to discuss this as a group.
Not only do we want you all to join us for the September 4th meeting, but we are also looking for five people to provide a 5-minute survey on the most salient gender intersections for each of the conference themes (one person for each theme). We want to hear from the experts in our group!
If you are able to provide a 5-minute run-down of the gender intersections for one of the above thematic areas, please email Maryruth and Natalia before July 27th to express your interest.
*Please send your proposals to the following addresses:
mbp@axxelerate.org
n.jimenez27@uniandes.edu.co
Further details on the themes and cross-cutting lenses follow:
(1) Extractivism, Emerging Technologies, and the Energy Transition: As the need to shift away from fossil fuels to address the climate crisis is increasingly acknowledged, global demand for critical minerals is on the rise. Driven by technological innovation and expanding green infrastructure, critical minerals are not only necessary for renewable energy, but also for artificial intelligence and digital technologies. Access to and use of these minerals are often contested and securitized. As a result, the Age of Intelligence and the green energy transition are exacerbating social tensions, injustice, and conflict. This theme comprises a range of issues, including contestation over critical minerals; the leveraging of critical minerals for security support; artificial intelligence, digital technologies, and renewable energy technologies (especially as driving the need for critical minerals); the human and environmental impacts of using these technologies; and pathways for a just energy transition.
(2) Environmental Change, Displacement, and Mobility: Environmental change, conflict, displacement and mobility, and conflict are frequently linked. The ability to access different resources, move freely, and make choices is shaped by the specific place and prevailing power dynamics. The Conference invites abstracts related to a wide range of topics, such as: climate change (including climate justice, the rights of climate migrants, and responsibility of states and other actors); urbanization and environmental peacebuilding; food and water security; droughts, wildfires, and other disasters; migration related to sea level rise; resilience; early warning systems; mobility and agency; migration with dignity; forced displacement; refugee camps and informal settlements; and relationships between migrant and host communities.
(3) Law, Power, and Decolonization: Statutes, customary law, and institutions hold great potential for supporting and sustaining peace. But for many populations around the world, law has also been a source of violence, furthering power imbalances and inequities. This theme is interested in the use – and limitations – of law for environmental peacebuilding. The Conference invites abstracts addressing topics such as: treaties, peace agreements, and agreements with First Nations/Indigenous Peoples; environment, human rights, and peace; the rule of law in conflict-affected settings; how policy shapes environmental peacebuilding; environmental justice; the roles of non-state actors; post-peace accord governance structures; legal pluralism; the origins, impact, and enforcement of colonial-era treaties; property rights; power dynamics; New Humanitarianism; transitional justice; Indigenous sovereignty; land, property, and access rights; legal recognition for Indigenous Peoples; legal protections for nature and non-human beings; regulation of natural resources; ecocide; and emerging legal concerns related to the use of AI, surveillance technologies, and climate engineering.
(4) Reimagining Environmental Peacebuilding: The field of environmental peacebuilding has grown rapidly in the last two decades, prompting discussions about its future directions. Questions about the relationship between environmental peacebuilding and the humanitarian, security, development, and environmental sectors are particularly timely to consider amidst the recent changes to funding, multilateral cooperation, and political priorities. As the field navigates these changes and uncertainties, the Conference will explore ways of reimagining the framing and practice in environmental peacebuilding, such as: visions of the future of environmental peacebuilding; why and how organizations engage in environmental peacebuilding; issues around communication, language, and framing; environmental peacebuilding in increasingly authoritarian contexts; protections for environmental defenders; localization of environmental peacebuilding; environmental diplomacy (including climate diplomacy and water diplomacy); intersectionality in the environmental peacebuilding ecosystem (humanitarian, security, political economy, etc.); monitoring, evaluating, and learning from environmental peacebuilding; opportunities and risks presented by artificial intelligence and digital technologies; and navigating anti-science dynamics. In addition to presentations, panels, and roundtables, the Conference envisions trainings and workshops on this topic.
(5) Conservation, Conflict, and Cooperation: Even amidst conflict related to natural resources, there is growing experience in considering conflict in conservation activities, as well as an enhanced emphasis on human-nature relations beyond resource use. The Conference will examine issues related to: the interactions between biodiversity and sustaining peace; forestry; militarized conservation; conflict-sensitive conservation; urbanization; land use and land grabbing; effects of carbon markets on forests and biodiversity; disconnects between human and non-human beings and their relationships to each other and to others (including human-wildlife conflict); Indigenous management of protected areas; the intrinsic value of Nature, fauna, and flora beyond their utility to humans; adaptive management; management of fisheries and other marine resources; and Arctic cooperation and the future of the Antarctic Treaty.
(6) Open: Environmental peacebuilding is an expansive and quickly evolving field. While the Fourth International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding will highlight particular topics, all areas of scholarship, policy, and practice addressing the interactions between the environment, conflict, and peace are welcomed. Abstracts submitted under this intentionally broad theme might consider issues such as the environmental impacts of armed violence; economic dimensions of environmental peacebuilding; nature as an entry point for collaboration; post-conflict environmental recovery; benefits of reducing militarism or demilitarization; de-escalation strategies; degrowth strategies; and capacity-building for environmental peacebuilding; among others.
(i) Including Diverse Perspectives: Holistic understanding and successful implementation of environmental peacebuilding is possible only with the active inclusion of a variety of perspectives. All proposals submitted to the Conference should consider issues of representation and participation in their analysis, conclusions, and presentation style. The Organizing Committee encourages attention to the role of gender dynamics; Indigeneity, race, and ethnicity; young people and intergenerationalism; and non-human beings and interspecies relations. Convenors of special sessions are encouraged to consider diverse engagement in the moderator and speakers.
(ii) Tools and Methodologies: There are a growing number of tools, technologies, strategies, and approaches for environmental peacebuilding. Submitted proposals are encouraged to highlight specific tools and methodologies and lessons from their use, for example, related to digital technologies, pedagogical approaches, monitoring and evaluation, decolonization, and intersectionality – as well as experiences and learning in how to select and tailor the tools and methodologies to the particular environmental peacebuilding context.