Our nature and our environment are the only things we will never be able to divide. Our environment is shared, one unique nature, our ecosystems, are one in our geographical space. Water scarcity, wildfire management, pollution, waste management, microplastics in our shores, extreme heat, the impacts of the climate crisis affect the whole island and are shared whether politics allows it or not.
Environmental challenges cannot be resolved by one community alone. There is a stubborn interconnectedness that makes environmental protection and management a common ground, that requires common effort and shared decision making from both communities and from both sides of the divide.
This is where environmental peacebuilding takes hold. Environmental peacebuilding brings together two aspects that are usually treated separately, environmental protection and peace, into actionable impactful steps.
It recognises that shared ecological challenges can become a foundation for dialogue and trust-building between communities in conflict, creating a space where divided communities can talk, cooperate, collaborate, co-create and co-manage environmental issues. It deliberately brings environmental management into conflict prevention, conflict resolution and recovery, with the purpose of strengthening the resilience of communities affected by conflict. The key word is deliberate.
Not every environmental activity involving Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots automatically contributes to peace. A joint conference, a field visit or a photograph of tree planting from both communities creates contact but contact alone is not peacebuilding. It is imperative we push it to the next stage.
For environmental cooperation to become environmental peacebuilding, it must be designed from the initial stages to produce shared outcomes and shared benefits for both communities. It must solve a real and felt environmental issue, it must implement a continuous set of actions, and it must create shared responsibilities and benefits that improve everyday life.
The Technical Committee on Environment has laid valuable foundations and supported many environmental cooperation actions. Exchanges between environmental experts, joint field visits and assessments on water treatment, nature protection actions, waste management reports are a few. But the next stage must move beyond this and head towards a clear strategic environmental peacebuilding framework.
Environmental peacebuilding case studies exist all over the world.
EcoPeace Middle East, is a joint Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian organisation is implementing the "Good Water Neighbors" programme since 2001, utilising water conservation and management as an entry point for dialogue, cooperation and problem solving. All three sides depend on the same water source, and water management and conservation are discusses not only on the basis of having cleaner rivers but discussion solutions of the shared water issue with the “historical other”.
The peace forests in Colombia are another example. After years of brutal conflict with natural resources depleted, forest conservation and management became a vehicle for peace in these peace forests. Groups that were previously in conflict, are now acting together as forest stewards, conservation workers and environmental managers. Peace forests were deliberately designed to bring former enemies together, engage them in making collective decisions and developing mutual accountability while providing groups with jobs and income.
This is what we desperately need. Shared projects and actions that are deliberately designed for environmental peacebuilding. An environmental peacebuilding framework can be structured both in small scale and large scale basis.
Small-scale actions include Bicommunal beach clean up audits. These are “advanced” clean ups where the litter is sorted, recorded and through citizen science methodologies, solutions for waste management are being discussed. A small action has already been implemented by environmental and peace NGOs last spring, bringing young people together, who performed a beach clean up audit and discussed protection and management measures of their shared shores. Large scale actions, include co developing and co managing major environmental infrastructure. We have the infrastructure, we are lacking will.
Mia Milia/Haspolat wastewater treatment plant
Agreed since 1978, Mia Milia was supposed to be a shared water management facility benefitting and providing clean water to both communities. Today the plant functions, treats wastewater from both sides, yet around 10 million tonnes of treated water are discarded instead of being piped back to communities. For environmental peacebuilding to take hold, the facility should be a fully shared infrastructure with GC and TC technical experts, engineers, academia and local authorities. The plant should be open to public visits, showcasing both the science and the cooperation. When farmers both irrigate their fields with the same treated water, when ornithologists visit the site which is an Important Bird Area, when there is employment for both communities, then the project is not a simple infrastructure anymore. It is environmental peacebuilding.
Buffer-Zone Solar Park as an Energy Community
The proposed bicommunal solar power park inside the buffer zone, is one of the most forward-looking environmental cooperation initiatives on the island. The park needs to be designed as an Energy Community in order to reach its full environmental peacebuilding potential. An energy cooperative in which households and institutions on both sides are members with governance rights, consume shared renewable energy, discussing the next steps and dealing with common issues, makes the solar park a living institution. Both communities discuss the practical, the future, the shared benefits. This is environmental peacebuilding work. The solar panels are just the occasion for it.
Cyprus is environmentally interconnected, whether we acknowledge it politically or not. Environmental peacebuilding should not a side project of the Cyprus peace process, but it must be incorporated under high priority in confidence building measures. Measures that are technically sound, provide tangible benefits to people and showcasing that a shared future is not just imaginable but is already under way. This is not an environmental recommendation, but a strong investment in the conditions for peace itself.
