The Fifth Al-Moumin Award on Environmental Peacebuilding, presented by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and the United Nations Environment Programme, was recently awarded to Geoffrey Dabelko and Ken Conca for their contributions to the field of environmental peacebuilding, with special recognition of their book, Environmental Peacemaking.

Geoffrey Dabelko is a Senior Advisor to and former Director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center, as well as a Professor and Director of Environmental Studies Program at Ohio University. Co-editor Ken Conca is a Professor of International Relations at American University and a recent fellow at the Wilson Center.

Produced at and published by the Wilson Center in 2002, Environmental Peacemaking (Woodrow Wilson Center Press) has had a profound impact on the way scholars and practitioners approach and understand the intersection of environmental protection, national security, and human rights. The book—which argues that shared environmental cooperation can actually be a stimulus for peaceful regional cooperation and trust, rather than conflict—remains as relevant as ever in a world that is grappling with natural resource pressure and climate change.

Erik Solheim, the Executive Director of UN Environment, described the effect of Dabelko and Conca’s research on their field: “No two individuals have shaped our institutional thinking on environmental peacebuilding more than Geoff Dabelko and Ken Conca. We owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude for their innovative thinking and the paradigm shift they have catalyzed through their work.”