This book examines the recent development and use of computer modeling and simulation as an important tool for understanding environmental and resource-based conflicts and for finding pathways for conflict resolution and cooperation. It introduces a new, innovative technique for using agent-based modeling (ABM) as a tool for better understanding environmental conflicts and discusses the application of agent-based modeling for the analysis of multi-agent interaction and conflict and demonstrates the natural interdisciplinary convergence. The authors explore numerous examples of environmental and resource conflicts around the world, as well as cooperative approaches for conflict resolution.

Eight contributions written by professors of political science, government, and politics as well as researchers and program directors for environmental change, energy, and security projects provide insight into the process of environmental peacemaking, based on their experiences in a variety of international regions. An initial chapter makes a case for the process; successive chapters address the Baltic, South Asia, the Aral Sea basin, southern Africa, the Caspian Sea, and the US-Mexican border. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of a large body of research examining the linkage between environmental scarcity, violent conflict, and cooperation. However, this environmental security polemic is still trying to deliver a well-defined approach to achieving peace. Studies are being undertaken to find the precise pathways by which cooperative actions are expected not only to pre-empt or moderate resource conflicts but also to help diffuse cooperative behaviour to other disputed issues. The recognition that environmental resources can contribute to violent conflict accentuates their potential significance as pathways for cooperation and the consolidation of peace in post-conflict societies. Conceived as a single and reliable reference source which will be a vital resource for students, researchers, and policy makers alike, the Routledge Handbook of Environmental Conflict and Peacebuilding presents a wide range of chapters written by key thinkers in the field, organised into four key parts: Part I: Review of the concept and theories; Part II: Review of thematic approaches (resources, scarcity, intervention, adaptation, and peacebuilding); Part III: Case studies (Middle East, Iraq, Jordan, Liberia, Nepal, Colombia, Philippines); Part IV: Analytical challenges and future-oriented perspectives. Enabling the reader to find a concise expert review on topics that are most likely to arise in the course of conducting research or policy making, this volume presents a truly global overview of the key issues and debates in environmental conflict and peacebuilding.

Presents diverse views on the relationship between environmental politics and international security.

Many environmental problems cross national boundaries and can be addressed only through international cooperation. In this book Robert Darst examines transnational efforts to promote environmental protection in the USSR and in five of its successor states—Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—from the late 1960s to the present. The core of the book is a comparative study of three key issues: nuclear power safety, transboundary air pollution, and Baltic Sea pollution. Although expectations were high that the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union would lead to increased East-West environmental cooperation, the opposite has been true. Russia and the other successor states have generally agreed to address such problems only when paid to do so. Darst finds that post-Cold War environmental cooperation has been most successful when there is an overlap between the environmental and economic interests of the successor states and those of their Western neighbors, and when the foundation for cooperation was laid during the Cold War period. The book is based on extensive original field research, including interviews with diplomats, government officials, scientists, and environmental activists in the successor states and Western Europe. Its findings underscore the importance of the domestic and international political context in which international environmental policy making occurs. It also deepens our understanding of the opportunities and dangers of positive inducements as a tool of international environmental policy.

An argument that resource scarcity and environmental degradation can provide an impetus for cooperation among countries.

It's often claimed that future wars will be fought over water. But while international water conflict is rare, it's common between subnational jurisdictions like states and provinces. Drawing on cases in the United States, China, India, and France, this book explains why these subnational water conflicts occur - and how they can be prevented.

Resolving a conflict is based on the art of helping people, with disparate points of view, find enough common ground to ease their fears, sheath their weapons, and listen to one another for their common good, which ultimately translates into social-environmental sustainability for all generations. Written in a clear, concise style, Resolving Environmental Conflicts: Principles and Concepts, Third Edition is a valuable, solution-oriented contribution that explains environmental conflict management. This book provides an overview of environmental conflicts, collaborative skills, and universal principles to assist in re-thinking and acting toward the common good, integrates a variety of new real-world conflicts as a foundation for building trust, skills, consensus, and capacity, and explains pathways to collectively construct a relationship-centric future, fostering healthier interactions with one another and the planet. The new edition illustrates how to successfully mediate actual environmental disputes and how to teach conflict resolution at any level for a wide variety of social-environmental situations. It adds a new chapter on water conflicts and resolutions, providing avenues to healthy, sustainable, and effective outcomes and provides new examples of conflicts caused by climate change with discussion questions for clear understanding. Land-use planners, urban planners, field biologists, and leaders and participants in collaborative environmental projects and initiatives will find this book to be an invaluable resource. University students in related courses will also benefit, as will anyone interested in achieving greater social-environmental sustainability and a more responsible use of our common natural resources for themselves and their children.

The Middle East and North Africa region is well-known for its abundant natural resources and important geostrategic position. This position is often overshadowed by continued sectarian violence and trans-boundary conflicts that threaten the stability of the entire region with serious global implications. This preoccupation with conflict has come at the expense of addressing the region’s other challenges. Although the region’s fragile environmental state has increasingly preoccupied policymakers in individual countries, there is currently insufficient attention paid to coordinating collaborative action to recognise and address problems relating to its environmental sustainability and climatic change. In the absence of a positive agenda for tackling these issues, recurrent environmental setbacks and rapid depletion of the region’s natural resources continue to pose a major threat to the long-term economic, political, and social stability of the region. Despite the urgency of these challenges, there is little research dedicated to studying MENA’s environmental sustainability. Environmental Challenges in the MENA Region: The Long Road from Conflict to Cooperation draws from the proceedings of a seminal international conference on the subject at SOAS in October 2016, which was held as a celebration of the SOAS Centenary. This led to a collective contribution by experts and policy-makers concerned with the state of the MENA region’s environmental predicament with the aim of addressing these problems in a constructive and forward-looking approach. The chapters in this book are predicated upon two critical premises. First, expertise and awareness from a wide range of disciplines is required to understand and address environmental challenges. And, second, to have a real chance of success, MENA countries need to confront these problems as their common threats and to see them as an opportunity for regional cooperation and policy coordination. This book provides the results of an interdisciplinary effort to address the various dimensions of the region’s environmental challenges from across the region and disciplines.

Despite America's pluralistic, fragmented, and generally adversarial political culture, participants in pollution control politics have begun to collaborate to reduce the high costs of developing, implementing, and enforcing regulations. Edward P. Weber uses examples from this traditionally combative policy arena to propose a new model for regulation, "pluralism by the rules," a structured collaborative format that can achieve more effective results at lower costs than typically come from antagonistic approaches. Weber cites the complexity and high implementation costs of environmental policy as strong but insufficient incentives for collaboration. He shows that cooperation becomes possible when opposing sides agree to follow specific rules that include formal binding agreements about enforcement, commitment to the process by political and bureaucratic leaders, and the ensured access and accountability of all parties involved. Such rules establish trust, create assurances that agreements will be enforced, and reduce the perceived risks of collaboration. Through case studies dealing with acid rain, reformulated gasoline, and oil refinery pollution control, Weber demonstrates the potential of collaboration for realizing a cleaner environment, lower compliance costs, and more effective enforcement. Challenging the prevailing view that endless conflict in policymaking is inevitable, Pluralism by the Rules establishes a theoretical framework for restructuring the regulatory process.