The nature of women, peace and security: where is the environment in WPS and where is WPS in environmental peacebulding?

In 2015, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2242, which recognised for the first time that climate change interconnects with the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) framework.1 The Resolution also draws attention to the Sustainable Development Goals, in which gender equality is specifically included as a stand-alone goal, and is understood to be cross-cutting across the 17 goals, including Goal 13 to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Despite this resolution, climate change, the environment and nature remain at the periphery of WPS practice and scholarship.2 As Annica Kronsell has noted, “climate change is not yet prominent on the WPS agenda nor a salient feature in the scholarly literature on WPS.”3 This paper challenges the absence of the environment and climate justice from the WPS framework and the parallel marginalisation of gender perspectives within the literature and practice of environmental peacebuilding. Women’s experiences and contributions to an ecologically sound environment must therefore be central to the agenda for the twenty-first century