The Environment, Development and Sustainable Peace Initiative (EDSP) is an international effort to bridge the gap between Northern and Southern perspectives on environment, development, population, poverty, conflict, and peace linkages. Current efforts to translate the environment, population, and conflict debates into a positive, practical policy framework for environmental co-operation and sustainable peace have not been successful. More importantly, these efforts have failed to engage a broad community of stakeholders, particularly in the global South. Fostering new efforts to bridge both the knowledge and policy gaps between South and North is a critical step in the path to a sustaining environment and sustaining peace.
The Environment, Development and Sustainable Peace Project has been endorsed on August 15, 2002 by the Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project (GECHS), sponsored by the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP). The GECHS Project is an interdisciplinary research project that strives to advance interdisciplinary and integrative research and policy efforts in the area of human security and environmental change. The EDSP Initiative's primary goal is to facilitate a constructive
dialogue among Northern and Southern policy-makers, practitioners,
journalists, and scholars on mitigating environmental contributions
to conflict and developing a constructive environment, development
and sustainable peace agenda. Initiative activities have been
designed to develop options for institutional co-operation around
integrated development, environmental, foreign, and security policies
and programs. Through multiple tracks, Initiative collaborators
communicate "environment and sustainable peace" strategies to practitioners
in civil society, researchers, and national and international policy-makers.
Developing country media and international forums such as the 2002
World Summit on Sustainable Development are particular areas of
focus.
The Environment, Development and Sustainable Peace Initiative
encompasses four major areas of activity:
- Convening a Core Group of distinguished practitioners and scholars to jointly develop an agenda on environment, development and sustainable peace;
- Producing a series of policy briefs and case studies;
- Initiating an exchange program for experts from the South to stay for two months in research centers and think-tanks in the North;
- Facilitating a stakeholder specific media program; and
- Engaging key policymakers and practitioners in a series of policy briefings in world capitals before, during, and after the Fall 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio +10) in Johannesburg, South Africa.