Threat Multiplier or Peace Builder: Exploring Impacts of Environmental Issues on Peace and Conflict

This study examines whether environmental issues lead to armed conflicts or peaceful resolutions among parties. Despite extensive research on environmental security, there is still a lack of scholarly consensus on whether environmental issues trigger armed conflicts or facilitate cooperation. Through a systematic review, this study investigates the nexus between environmental issues and their security outcomes. The study develops a preliminary typology of causal pathways connecting environmental issues to divergent security outcomes while identifying critical research gaps in theory, methodology, and empirical coverage. The research findings reveal that similar environmental issues are more likely to produce divergent security outcomes, depending on five key mediating factors in the environment-conflict nexus, namely (i) governance capacity, (ii) power dynamics, (iii) historical context, (iv) resource characteristics, and (v) external influence. Consequently, environmental issues more readily facilitate cooperation among parties rather than trigger conflicts when robust institutional mechanisms, power symmetry, positive historical relations, alternative resources, and external support exist. These findings have significant implications for policymakers in the areas of conflict prevention, environmental peacebuilding, and institutional design, particularly in environmentally stressed regions, including the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Central Asia.