Perpetual peace and economic growth

Liberal peacebuilding intervenes in moments of crisis – state collapse, armed conflict, and widespread human rights violations. Since the rise of UN deployments in the 1990s, the theory of liberal peace has been at the heart of peacebuilding debates. Echoing Kant’s Perpetual Peace, proponents of liberal peace argue that the polities and economies of liberal states act as institutional restraints and trade disincentives for going to war.Footnote ⁵ These assumptions underpin international peacebuilding efforts where democratic participation, the rule of law, the protection and promotion of human rights, open and globalised markets, and neoliberal development have become integral to the mandates of UN peacekeeping operations.Footnote ⁶ Peace accords incorporated these characteristics,Footnote ⁷ and the generally successful conduct of elections in cases such as Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador, and Mozambique fed the UN’s exuberance for liberal peacebuilding strategies, particularly democratisation and marketisation, in post-conflict or conflict-affected societies.

The integration of liberalisation strategies into peacebuilding processes aligns with the UN’s development agenda. The UN emphasises development as the most secure basis for peace, with the 2030 Agenda describing peace and development as two sides of the same coin.Footnote ⁸ While the notion of development is now broader, covering human security and sustainability, many of the development narratives in peacebuilding (e.g. the development mandates in peacekeeping operations) are still implicitly tied to its economic dimension, in particular, the value of economic growth, which has a long tradition in peace and security discourses. As published in the 2001 Responsibility to Protect report, ‘economic growth not only has law and order implication but is vital for the overall recovery of the country concerned’.Footnote ⁹ In other words, economic growth leads to a higher state capacity to provide public goods and income opportunities that contribute to poverty alleviation and better well-being. For a society coming out of widespread armed conflict, it is imperative to build its capacity to generate income and manage resources to effectively deliver goods and services to its conflict-affected populations. This view is still pervasive in the practice of international peacebuilding. In the 2022 UN ‘Peacebuilding and sustaining peace’ report, economic growth remains the objective of attracting investments in conflict-affected societies.Footnote ¹⁰ It states: ‘by investing in conflict-affected areas and contributing to economic growth, reconstruction and creating decent jobs, private sector actors can directly address the drivers of conflict through enhanced social cohesion’.Footnote ¹¹

The assumption that economic growth is essential to peace is a questionable one because growth is not necessarily a precondition of development or peace. Although economically prosperous societies also tend to be peaceful,Footnote ¹² it does not mean that economic growth undoubtedly leads to peace, particularly in conflict contexts. In an inferential study of 11 peacekeeping operations, it is unclear how host countries benefited from UN-led economic rehabilitation, with four countries even experiencing its negative consequences.Footnote ¹³ Relatedly and citing Collier and Hoeffler’s study,Footnote ¹⁴ Suhrke and Buckmaster pointed out that economic growth is inconsequential to the prevention of civil war.Footnote ¹⁵ For example, in Liberia’s peacebuilding process, the UN recognised that the benefits of its pro-growth strategy of economic governance will not always be available or accessible to the poor and vulnerable populations. According to Souza and Mendes, ‘the UN official discourse presents this strategy of market liberalisation as a sine qua non condition for development, even though acknowledging that it would not tackle the problem of horizontal inequality’ between local elites and marginalised groups in Liberia.Footnote ¹⁶ Another example is in a post-conflict rentier state such as Kosovo, where domestic productivity is paid little attention because of an over-reliance on external transfers for achieving rapid economic growth.Footnote ¹⁷ Notwithstanding the economic aspirations of emerging economies to reduce poverty and improve social welfare through economic growth,Footnote ¹⁸ these examples show how the preferential promotion of economic growth in a state that draws on exogenous factors volatile to international trends has a high risk of economically motivated conflicts.

Ignoring the socio-economic problems of conflict-affected societies when deploying market-oriented policies could perpetuate power asymmetries, preserve wealth imbalances, and exacerbate economic vulnerabilities.Footnote ¹⁹ In some cases, and as recognised in a 2000 World Bank report, economic growth is pursued at the cost of inequity, unemployment, weakened democracy, and loss of cultural identity.Footnote ²⁰ In Sierra Leone, government policies rely on the assumption that global market integration will bring economic growth, which in turn will alleviate food insecurity.Footnote ²¹ However, as Castañeda argues, the outcome of this security-oriented and growth-driven approach to peace and food security brings nothing but short-term benefits favourable only to international actors/donors and local elites. Market liberalisation also opens opportunities for exploitative practices by international and local entrepreneurs, especially in conflict contexts where labour rights are suppressed and the social resistance that fights for them is silenced.Footnote ²² These conditions could create new sources of conflict, thereby challenging the liberal peace assumption, especially in societies transitioning from conflict to peace.

Is liberal peacebuilding suitable to address new moments of crisis, particularly those prompted by ecological destruction? Indeed, the relationship between peace and economic growth needs re-examination in light of global environmental change. Even those who question the economic emphasis on development view economic growth as essential to peace and overall development. For example, the World Bank report expands the concept of development but still considers accelerated economic growth as an important dimension of a holistic version of development.Footnote ²³ Even the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development declares economic growth as part of its plan of action for people, the planet, and prosperity. In fact, one of the 17 goals is to ‘promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’.Footnote ²⁴

Growth remains front and centre on the international agenda of peace and development despite urgent calls for global sustainability and climate action.Footnote ²⁵ For instance, while the 2022 UN Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace report acknowledges the impact of climate change on conflict and peacebuilding, there is no mention of the environmental or climate considerations in pursuing economic growth.Footnote ²⁶ Although economic development is now attached to agreeable qualifiers, such as sustainable and equitable, it still rests on the growth principle. Economic growth continues to be a function of the development mandates implemented in conflict-affected societies, which essentially contradicts the environmental/climate agenda for peacebuilding. From economic development to sustainable development, economic growth is still the name of the development game.

Greening or greenwashing peace?

The economic dimension of liberal peacebuilding falls apart in light of ecological destruction. The pursuit of perpetual growth could sanction, if not incentivise, unsustainable consumption and resource exploitation, leading to environmental degradation. I argue elsewhere that peacebuilding efforts, to be responsive to the challenges of our time, must be sensitive to spatial considerations, including their environmental footprint.Footnote ²⁷ The deployment and day-to-day management of peacekeeping operations require massive amounts of resource materials to support their staff and infrastructure.Footnote ²⁸ Furthermore, the accompanying environmental impact of these deployments adds a burden on the already-unprotected ecosystems and weak institutions in their host countries, especially in urban settings.Footnote ²⁹ Some of these environmental impacts are greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, toxic substances from solid waste, air pollution, depletion of water resources, health risks from wastewater, and threatened biodiversity. For instance, genomic sequencing confirmed that the cholera outbreak in Haiti in 2010 was caused by human transmission from UN peacekeepers and improper waste disposal practised at one of the camps of MINUSTAH (the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti).Footnote ³⁰ In Darfur, approximately 52,000 trees were lost annually between 2004 and 2008 when the construction of UNAMID (African Union–United Nations Hybrid operation in Darfur) compounds increased the demand for wood, contributing to deforestation and tensions within local communities.Footnote ³¹ Because of their scale, it is not surprising that peace operations have the highest share of total emissions within the UN in 2019 and 2020 (despite recent reductions due to the Covid-19 pandemic).Footnote ³² These scenarios call for better integration of environmental considerations into these operations.

There are new initiatives under way to minimise the environmental impact of peacekeeping operations. The UN has recognised and started integrating environmental concerns into the standards, guidelines, and mandates of peacekeeping operations.Footnote ³³ For instance, the Greening the Blue initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been reporting on the UN system’s GHG emissions since 2009, evaluating the UN’s environmental footprint and assisting the agencies in transitioning towards greater environmental sustainability. For peacekeeping operations more specifically, UNEP published the Greening the Blue Helmets report in 2012, assessing the environmental management practices and the role of peacekeeping operations in safeguarding natural resources and stabilising resource conflicts. The report states that good governance, particularly effective and transparent resource management by post-conflict governments in countries with high-value natural resources, is important for conflict prevention and sustainable and equitable economic growth. Several missions are adopting green initiatives by reducing their energy consumption, plastic usage, and waste generation, among other projects. In 2013, the UN Security Council directed MINUSMA (UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali) to manage its environmental impacts while fulfilling its mandate – the first time a peacekeeping operation’s mandate had a task on environmental management.Footnote ³⁴ An analysis of cross-sectional data from African states shows that these environmental mandates, as well as cooperative activities among other UN agencies, and shared principles and commitments, make peace operations a positive contributor to improved environmental quality, specifically water sources and sanitation.Footnote ³⁵ These initiatives signal the capacity and willingness of international actors to participate in power reconfigurations and political transformations.Footnote ³⁶

Greening peacekeeping operations is, of course, a positive and welcome change. I argue, however, that peacebuilding must go beyond reducing the environmental footprint of peacekeeping operations and reducing the GHG emissions of the UN system. It is one thing to ensure that the housing structure built by peacekeeping operations is not destructive to the local environment, for example, but it is another thing to resolve the paradox that the pursuit of unlimited growth could contribute not only to environmental degradation but also to an unequal distribution of resources, thereby inciting conflict and violence. This means that peacebuilding approaches that continue to promote economic growth consequentially add to both environmental degradation and peace deterioration. As Diehl observed, green peacekeeping is more about minimising the environmental footprint of the operation itself rather than changing the strategies of peacebuilding.Footnote ³⁷ For instance, addressing resource conflicts will prove to be short-lived if economic growth remains a virtue of international peacebuilding. The first step to stabilising conflicts in resource-rich but conflict-ridden countries is to accept that economic growth is not the panacea for peace (or for sustainable development). Peacebuilding cannot be environmentally sustainable if it is anchored on economic growth. When economic growth, which is one of the causes of environmental degradation in many conflict-affected societies, remains a peacebuilding pillar, then greening peacekeeping operations is nothing short of greenwashing peace.

For the above reasons, my critique here centres on growth-driven and market-oriented economic development as a pillar of liberal peace(building) and its impact on peace and development. In Cambodia, for example, the development task of UNTAC (UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia) emphasised self-sustaining economic growth.Footnote ³⁸ UNTAC’s assistance to Cambodia in opening up to foreign trade, aid, and investment, plus the improved overall security and political stability, prompted economic growth. However, these improvements did little to address or may have even exacerbated existing economic inequalities and poor working conditions in the country. A Technical Advisory Committee on Management and Sustainable Exploitation of Natural Resources was created amid concerns about resource exploitation during the conflict and the impact of deforestation on people’s livelihoods.Footnote ³⁹ But measures put forward by the committee were not effectively implemented in the long run, as regional demand and low state budget made logging a lucrative business.Footnote ⁴⁰ Deforestation in Cambodia remains an issue to this day, with forests being methodically and voraciously cleared for rubber plantations. Moreover, the economic benefits of the rubber industry only go to multinational corporations and national elites, marginalising and displacing local communities and Indigenous groups.Footnote ⁴¹ One of the reasons for this is the misplaced emphasis on economic growth as a precursor of peace and development during the peacebuilding process.

A similar situation also occurred in Timor-Leste, but there was a language shift from economic growth to sustainable development in the resolution establishing UNTAET (UN Transitional Administration in East Timor).Footnote ⁴² While the international presence and the UN’s facilitation of foreign trade and investment revived economic activities, GDP per capita growth remained modest and volatile. This neoliberal approach to economic development in a country new to a capitalist system of open markets and privatisation sidelined welfare programmes and failed to support informal economies.Footnote ⁴³ Local agricultural productivity was neglected as demand grew for tourism and services catering to internationals. The reconstruction period also emphasised the significance of natural resources in the Timor Sea, with oil and gas revenues taking the bulk of Timor-Leste’s GDP. This emphasis on oil-based economic growth, however, created opportunities for corruption, engendered clientelist rule, incited land disputes, and disenfranchised communities from the potential benefits of oil-based development plans.Footnote ⁴⁴ The current conditions and mechanisms in Timor-Leste point to a potential resource curse,Footnote ⁴⁵ which further disputes the value of economic growth in peacebuilding. The environmentally destructive deforestation in Cambodia and hydrocarbon production in Timor-Leste led neither to sustained economic development nor to holistic peace – demonstrating how the tension between economic growth and sustainable development is magnified in the context of peacebuilding.

In sum, growth-oriented economic development in peacebuilding undermines peace and the environment for three reasons. First, it creates inequalities (specifically, unequal patterns of accumulation and distribution) and oppression, especially in conflict-affected societies with extractive economies.Footnote ⁴⁶ Secondly, it opens channels for elite capture because of political instability and power asymmetries inherited from the history of conflict. And finally, it contributes to environmental degradation because most institutions in countries transitioning from conflict are weak or ineffective to implement environmental measures. Therefore, economic growth is not suitable in complex environments of peacebuilding.

Prospects of a post-growth peacebuilding in a capitalist world

Few will disagree that the rise of capitalism went hand in hand with European colonialism and industrialism. Since then, capitalist growth has had a long history of exploiting moments of crisis and transitions – from the fall of empires to the globalisation of trade and technology – turning them into opportunities for accumulation, further enabling inequality in wealth, status, and power.Footnote ⁴⁷ In Dowd’s words, ‘as if that were not bad enough, capitalism’s pressures for unremitting economic growth hold as permanent hostage the flora and fauna, the air, the soil, and the water of the planet – never to be freed, fated to succumb to capital’s voraciousness and the “free market’s” heedlessness’.Footnote ⁴⁸ What then is the likelihood of a post-growth peacebuilding agenda falling into the same dangers, such as exploiting our collective eco-anxiety for eco-fascist ‘solutions’ to environmental crises? Acts of violence, justified by concerns over the environmental impact of overpopulation, migration of peoples (particularly from conflict-affected societies), and over-industrialisation (especially of emerging economies) also perpetuate social, economic, and political inequities. Participatory approaches to designing solutions and bottom-up (rather than state-led) cross-border collaboration are some of the proposals within post-growth theories that could address these issues.Footnote ⁴⁹ However, given that growth-driven development has long informed the international peacebuilding agenda, is there a place for a post-growth peacebuilding in our current systems and practices?

Let us first consider sustainable development. I underscore here that peacebuilding that is cognisant of socio-ecological considerations must incorporate sustainability initiatives and, more importantly, recognise the narrow operationalisation of sustainability. In 2020, UN Secretary-General António Guterres renewed the UN’s commitment to sustainable development as reflected in the Declaration on the Commemoration of its 75th anniversary. A review of relevant UN resolutions and Secretary-General reports shows increasing integration of development-related activities into peace missions.Footnote ⁵⁰ When we examine each of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), SDG7 on decent work and economic growth is the most referenced in the reviewed documents, more than the SDG16 on peace, justice, and strong institutions.Footnote ⁵¹ We can infer here that economic growth remains at the heart of the international agenda on peace and development.

The operationalisation of sustainability, or more specifically sustainable development, has emphasised the economic aspects of development, despite finite resources that cannot realistically sustain economic growth. To borrow Saito’s arresting description, the SDGs have become the ‘opium of the masses’.Footnote ⁵² This opium is peddled by greenwashing industries and companies that are either oblivious or neglectful of their culpability for environmental degradation. Industrialised countries preach sustainable development, and industrialising ones are conditioned by it. In fact, there is little evidence that the SDGs have substantially improved environmental policies, as most countries prioritise socio-economic SDGs and put environmental targets on the back burner.Footnote ⁵³ Countries will continue cherry-picking economic over environmental goals until they revise their policies away from growth-driven economic development.

Let us now turn our attention to the concept of human development. Human development, or ‘the process of enlarging people’s choices’,Footnote ⁵⁴ converges with the holistic notion of positive peace.Footnote ⁵⁵ It challenges the state-centric and economic focus of development. In 2020, for the first time since its inaugural publication in 1990, the Human Development Report outlined the challenges to human development in the Anthropocene. It was admitted in the report that ‘too often, development choices pit people against trees because the environment has been systematically undervalued while economic growth has had top billing’.Footnote ⁵⁶ By recognising the pluralistic approaches to development, the report also challenges the prescriptive approach of dominant development paths, reminding us that ‘economic growth is more means than end’.Footnote ⁵⁷ This discourse shows the importance of an Anthropocene framing. Instead of simply pursuing economic growth, tackling development in the Anthropocene also questions the impact of such a pursuit.

Human development’s paradigmatic shift away from economic growth is supported by the burgeoning studies on pathways towards a post-growth society, a society that maintains human well-being within ecological limits. In contrast to the GDP-based economic model, ‘the post-GDP production system is likely to operate like a “horizontal economy” based on customization (as opposed to mass production and economies of scale), and on producing what we need (as opposed to generating waste) and on local production cycles (as opposed to comparative advantages and globalized transportation)’.Footnote ⁵⁸ A post-growth economy will have implications for political organisations. As suggested by the proponents of degrowth and well-being economy,Footnote ⁵⁹ GDP growth will no longer be a state and economic imperative, and economies will be organised along ‘community-determined development priorities’.Footnote ⁶⁰ These characteristics resonate with the normative goals of critical peacebuilding scholarship, specifically with the critique of state-centrism in liberal peacebuilding and with recommendations for local and other emancipatory approaches to peacebuilding. Specifically, a post-liberal peace is a departure from the Westphalian system, grounded on the everyday, and open to feedback and adaptation.Footnote ⁶¹ Peace scholars have long challenged state stability as a peace imperative and demanded emancipatory forms of local involvement in peacebuilding. These critiques are present in the Anthropocene discourse too,Footnote ⁶² calling out the state-centric and capital-driven roots of the causes and proposed solutions to the challenges in this new geological age.Footnote ⁶³ By interrogating how power operates and dominates international norms and practices and highlighting legacies of colonialism and imperialism, post-liberal peacebuilding draws heavily on critical Internation Relations (IR), which in turn infuses post-growth peacebuilding (and post-growth literature in general) with ethical considerations surrounding equity, justice, and emancipation. While these considerations are already integral to post-growth theories, critical IR discourse on the Anthropocene justifies post-growth’s shift from a growth-driven global economy and opens the debate on ecologically aligned economic systems. Additionally, post-liberal peacebuilding provides pathways for localising post-growth principles. Therefore, a post-liberal peace and a post-growth economy converge in the re-imagining of peacebuilding in the Anthropocene.

Following the growing recognition that the impacts of climate change complicate peacebuilding activities, the UN’s DPPA (Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs), together with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UNEP, established the CSM (Climate Security Mechanism) in 2018. The CSM supports UN operations, including field missions, in conducting climate-security risk assessments and developing risk-management strategies.Footnote ⁶⁴ It aims to integrate efforts on peacebuilding, sustainable development, and the environment based on the understanding that climate has serious security implications, especially in conflict-affected societies. These are improvements in enhancing partnerships, sharing knowledge and practices, and streamlining capacity-building and management surrounding the climate–conflict nexus. However, I argue that a truly climate-sensitive peacebuilding cannot ignore the problematic foundation and consequences of economic growth. For example, one of the questions in the UN CSM’s Toolbox Checklist is about the impact of climate-change mitigation/adaptation policies on political economy, warning that a transition to renewable energy sources may contribute to either instability or slow economic growth.Footnote ⁶⁵ This growth-driven policy prioritisation is telling of how the UN has taken up the problems related to growth neither extensively nor urgently in its attempts to make peacebuilding more climate-sensitive or aligned with environmental concerns.

Peacebuilding must draw on a growth-independent political economy. Green growth is about decoupling economic growth from resource use and carbon emissions through state-led and bottom-up sustainability initiatives that aim to reduce the environmental impact without disrupting the economic status quo.Footnote ⁶⁶ Meanwhile, post-growth includes state- or citizen-led political and economic restructuring of the current growth-centric institutions.Footnote ⁶⁷ Peacebuilding in a human-driven changing climate will be informed by the latter.

The pathways towards post-growth are in parallel with the critical peacebuilding scholarship, which challenges technocratic blueprints, highlights local agency, and welcomes hybrid peace (re)configurations. Drawing on these parallelisms, I characterise post-growth peacebuilding as more than being climate-sensitive; it is about restructuring the political economies of growth (implicit within the international peacebuilding agenda). Hence, a systemic change is needed. Echoing Nicoson, peace must be understood as the negation of structural violence, which is possible through ‘degrowth processes of redistribution, reprioritized care, and global equity’.Footnote ⁶⁸ The framework she presented draws on the fact that power structures have enabled over-consumption and over-industrialisation, but these structures can be disrupted through decentralised and localised economies and by valuing the salience of care economies for well-being and social cohesion. In this regard, post-growth peacebuilding draws on the degrowth principle of a just, participatory, and ecologically sustainable society and well-being economy’s emphasis on human and ecological well-being.Footnote ⁶⁹

While inequality is inherent to and a by-product of capitalist growth, which remains a virtue even in purportedly ecologically aligned and sustainable systems, post-growth peacebuilding disentangles from growth as a prerequisite of peace and development, rejects inequality at the outset of any peace intervention, and draws on localised albeit not necessarily isolated economies. To adopt a post-growth agenda, international peacebuilding must focus on human and ecological well-being rather than mere growth in production and consumption.Footnote ⁷⁰ By creating systems for wealth (and power) redistribution towards groups vulnerable to conflict and ecological harm, the welcome by-product of post-growth peacebuilding is socio-economic equality, the lack of which often feeds different forms of social and ecological violence. UN peacekeeping operations have shown in the past that it can push for profound structural changes in societies transitioning from conflict. Therefore, it can also wield its legitimacy and capacity for a realignment of its peace and security mandates with human and ecological well-being.