This book explores the proposition that cooperation on environmental issues can be instrumental in resolving local conflicts caused by environmental degradation and scarcity of resources. Such conflicts are not a new phenomenon. However, in the early twenty-first century, continuing degradation of the environment, coupled with ever-increasing pressures on resources due to an expanding population, has substantially increased the incidence of violent conflicts on environmental issues. Moreover, most of the present threats to peace are major intrastate conflicts (e.g., civil war and genocide) or ones that are occurring along ecologically fragile border regions, implying that researchers should concentrate on the regional or local level of analysis. At the same time, as the cause of such conflicts has risen on the political and discourse agenda, a corresponding large body of research has emerged, increasing our understanding of the ways in which environmental destruction can lead to conflict.

The aim of this scholarly work is to clarify some aspects of the current discourse on environmental conflicts and to propose a method of resolving them that is a departure from traditional approaches. The editors and their contributors employ an elegant term for it: environmental peacemaking. Ken Conca, one of the volume's editors, argues in the introductory chapter that it is more appropriate to ask whether environmental cooperation can bring about peace than whether degradation of the environment can trigger violent conflict. He views such cooperation as the mechanism by which to reduce tensions, foster demilitarization, and promote peace (p. 9). This can be achieved, Conca asserts, by two means: firstly, by exploiting environmental problems as opportunities for creating trust, transparency, reciprocity, and habits of cooperation among governments, and secondly, by building civil society linkages at the transnational level, transforming state institutions, and fostering environmental responsibility and peaceful resolution of disputes.

The various contributors focus on the regional dimension of environmental peacemaking. Their case studies on the international politics of regional environmental cooperation are very informative, but they almost all concentrate upon the issue of water resources, limiting the breadth of the volume. The case studies cover the following issues: environmental cooperation in the Baltic Sea (Stacy D. VanDeveer); the sharing of water supplies from rivers in South Asia (Ashok Swain); promoting water sharing in the Aral Sea basin in central Asia (Erika Weinthal); land, energy, and water cooperation in southern Africa (Larry A. Swatuk); environmental cooperation around the Caspian Sea (Douglas W. Blum); and water sharing in the U.S.-Mexico border region (Pamela M. Doughman).

As the editors conclude in the final chapter, the case studies alone cannot entirely validate their environmental peacemaking propositions. It appears that crises relating to the environment in different parts of the world have failed to create effective regional governance on its protection (with the exception, I should add, of the European Union, which is largely outside the purpose of this volume). At best, such crises provide some evidence that environmental cooperation can lead to peacemaking. For instance, Weinthal suggests that water sharing in the Aral Sea basin and its extended riparian lands helped to defuse tensions among the nascent central Asian states in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the case studies are important in their own right. They indicate that bringing environmentalists, policymakers, practitioners, and political scientists together in a real-world situation could create a fruitful interaction between the areas of environment and peacemaking. More importantly, Conca and Geoffrey Dabelko argue, in the concluding chapter, that environmental cooperation at the regional level creates positive synergies for peace that could have contrasting consequences. They consider the pattern of interstate dynamics revealed by the case studies, and observe that environmental cooperation draws the attention of state actors at the highest level (i.e., high politics as opposed to low politics). This rather contradicts the commonly held belief—at least among some Europeanists—that in the early days of European unification, environmental cooperation was viewed as low politics that would eventually “spill over” into more politically sensitive areas, such as the economy and foreign and defense policy. They also observe that environmental cooperation could be a double-edged sword. On the negative side, meaningful cooperation in sharing watercourses, protecting regional seas, and abating transboundary pollution may be harder to achieve if it is seen to pose a threat to well-entrenched interests. On the positive side, by contrast, they argue that such cooperative initiatives, once established, could bring more benefits than would cooperation among local stakeholders. Finally, they argue that examination of the strength and robustness of transsocietal linkages reveals that civil society is still weak, at least in the case studies examined.

The editors rightly warn us that the case studies do not make it absolutely clear whether the resolution of environmental conflicts is due to cooperation at the substate level. Nevertheless, this is a provocative and invaluable book that makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the link between environment cooperation and peace. There is little doubt that more explicit environmental peacemaking efforts could emerge in the near future, and this volume will encourage their development.