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Oli Brown, an associate Fellow at Chatham House, will discuss "Building Capacity for Environmental Management in Fragile States: Lessons from Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and South Sudan," in this seminar series talk.
The environment is often a silent victim of violent conflict. The humanitarian consequences of civil war and inter-state conflict rightly take center stage in terms of the international community's response to a crisis. However, bombing, fighting and the coping strategies used by affected populations also destroys critical habitats and damages important infrastructure. Land mines and unexploded ordinance can make large areas of land inaccessible while pollution caused by bombing can cause persistent environmental health hazards.
But perhaps the most enduring impact of conflict on the environment is the almost complete breakdown of institutions to manage the environment. Helping governments and communities in fragile states to rebuild their own mechanisms for environmental management is (or should be) an important priority for the international community. This session will talk about some of the challenges of environmental management in conflict-affected situations and the dilemmas of working to build capacity in often difficult, highly politicised contexts.
This event is co-sponsored by Bass Connections.