The nature of peace: How environmental regulation can cause conflicts

This article examines how the environmental protection of national parks can impact negatively both conflict resolution and peacebuilding. This research focuses on the Arly National Park, integrated into the W., Arly and Pendjari (WAP) peacebuilding and development initiative, one of the two main sources of insecurity in Burkina Faso. By excluding local social-ecological systems, Arly Park’s top-down environmental protection program leads to conflict situations rather than peacebuilding opportunities. This paper is based on field research carried out in Burkina Faso between October 2018 and April 2019. Forty interviews conducted with security actors, international observers, government officials, European Union officials and inhabitants of the Arly Natural Park reveal that both exogenous environmental regulation and poorly designed international development projects create a fertile breeding ground for conflicts. This field study investigates how the inadequate design of the initial initiative and personal agendas retard development and peacebuilding opportunities. It also highlights how national authorities seize the opportunity to attract development funding and use environmental regulation as a tool for the distribution of central power and authority in peripheral areas. Furthermore, it demonstrates how greed and looting linked to environmental regulation create a causal chain resulting in environmental degradation and conflicts. Finally, this article stresses the strong interconnection and interdependence of ecological and sociological systems, which embed ecological regimes of knowledge and practices that sustain an ecosystem’s preservation and perpetuation. Discounting this particular and holistic understanding when designing environmental regulations or, worse, emphasizing its exclusion, exacerbates in the end both environmental degradation and conflict.