The increasing impacts of climate change particularly affect vulnerable countries, such as many conflict-affected states. This is visible in the increase of conflict-outbreak over natural resources...Show moreThe increasing impacts of climate change particularly affect vulnerable countries, such as many conflict-affected states. This is visible in the increase of conflict-outbreak over natural resources. Environmental peacebuilding approaches, which aim to integrate natural resource management as a peacebuilding strategy, are increasingly used to tackle these new dynamics. However, the effects of environmental peacebuilding approaches, such as on social cohesion, are generally unknown. This is a critical limitation, considering frequent conflict escalation over ethnic identities. Through a mixed methods approach, analyzing an environmental peacebuilding project in the Nigerian states of Nasarawa, Taraba, and Benue, and conducting expert interviews with practitioners, this research explores the effect of environmental peacebuilding on social cohesion. It looks specifically at social cohesion as trust, shared identity, and equality, as these align with the main dimensions environmental peacebuilding approaches aim to address. This research found a significant effect of environmental peacebuilding on inter-group trust and equality, highlighting the necessity for an integrated approachShow less
