Expert Knowledge on Environmental Peacebuilding: the social context of its diffusion in international politics and what it says about it

Abstract

In the last two decades, environmental peacebuilding (EPBL) has become a rapidly growing field of research and practice and today, EPBL is embedded in academia, policy making, and education, as well as in practice. The goal here is to learn more about the social complexity and context of the production of expert knowledge on environmental peacebuilding (EPBL) and its diffusion in international politics in the period from 1990s to 2008. It was also discussed what the analysis of social context says about EPBL, and its diffusion. We conclude that as expert knowledge, EPBL emerged in practice, not in academia, and developed within narrow relations in a very small group of conservationists, scholars, and practitioners. Since the end of the 1990s, EPBL has spread globally, being distributed because it has been collectively enacted through relations and mediated by the intersubjective meanings and artefacts such as guidelines, projects, policies, conferences, reports, and books.

Keywords

• environmental peacebuilding
• expert knowledge
• social context
• diffusion in international politics