More than Connecting the Gender Dots: Exploring a Deep Relations Approach in Environmental Peacebuilding

This article proposes a paradigm shift in environmental peacebuilding beyond the peaceful distribution of resources, cooperative approaches and integrative frameworks and offers a feminist-relational approach that puts relations between men and women, communities and ecosystems at the centre of peacebuilding. Three disconnects mark environmental peacebuilding currently. Firstly, cooperation remains largely between state or elite actors. Secondly, environmental peacebuilding neglects gender and the differential impacts of climate-induced conflict, where women more frequently experience food insecurity, gender-based violence and increased care work. Lastly, when gender is included, it is conflated with women who are simply added to human rights-based frameworks without addressing power imbalances. In contrast, a deep relational approach foregrounds the historical-political situatedness, quality, effects and pluriversality of relations rather than actors. To challenge the actor-centric nature of environmental peacebuilding, I draw on African and indigenous feminist perspectives and a case study of the Karamoja Cluster (in Uganda and Kenya specifically) to illustrate why contexts where gender roles, cattle-rustling, climate crises and conflict intersect should be read through a deep relational lens.