Regenerative Adaptation: A Path for Future Environmental Peacebuilding?

Violent conflicts are becoming more frequent and more intense in parallel with growing global environmental change, extreme weather events, and corresponding risks to human health and social systems. Both phenomena and their effects are shaped by the relative vulnerability of regions, communities, and individuals. Recent scholarship has identified the high spatial coincidence of multiple environmental risks—climate stressors, resource extraction, and toxic pollution—with human conflict and migration (Cabanillas et al., forthcoming). Such situations can be conceptualized as polycrisis: the causal entanglement of crises in multiple global systems whose cumulative effects at the local level significantly degrade humanity’s prospects. Framing and evaluating complex environment-conflict-peace problems through a polycrisis lens underscores the imperative for more effective environmental peacebuilding responses.

One promising response is regenerative adaptation: livelihood production methods that promote ecosystem functioning while harvesting natural resources, including agroforestry, agroecology, aquaculture, and contaminant remediation. The promise of regenerative production is that, through managed use, the quality of an ecosystem is promoted rather than degraded as goods are produced, the value of the land regenerated rather than extracted. Such systems can include restoring depleted soil, removing toxic substances like mercury through phytoremediation, or deploying permaculture designs that mimic natural systems while amplifying resource output. The research and technical engagements required for these practices have opened opportunities for communication, trust-building, and shared identity—fostering what has been described as environmental peacebuilding.

Promising Cases

Emerging empirical cases illustrate the potential of regenerative adaptation in support of environmental peacebuilding. In the Madre de Dios river valley of Peru, where toxic environmental degradation and climate risks intersect with emerging land disputes involving mining and narcotics production, the Amazonian Scientific Innovation Institute (CINCIA) is using regenerative agroforestry to remove toxins, regenerate soil and forests, and provide enduring livelihoods (Cabanillas et al., forthcoming). CINCIA’s approach focuses on developing locally appropriate, non-materially intensive production systems that decrease fragility by reducing producer investments, allowing communities to be more adaptable rather than locked into singular production methods and cycles. In Madre de Dios that has resulted in the formation of supportive networks of cooperative action and solidarity, such as the Women’s Mining Network Madre de Dios Chapter, where many members have noted the essentialness of shared experience and the ability to coordinate with others when facing growing threats from organized crime groups.

In northern Colombia, former combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are leading a regenerative agriculture cooperative called COOMPAZCOL, forming alliances with the very community members once threatened by their operations. In Luwero District of Uganda, an area heavily affected by violent conflict during the 1980s, the Bethany Land Institute is training young adults in regenerative agroforestry as a way to earn a living while reconnecting with and regenerating land from which their families were displaced. In each of these cases, producers are voluntarily making decisions that reduce their total potential revenue but create a different form of value, guided by ethics beyond economic gain alone.

The Challenges Ahead

Despite its promise, regenerative adaptation for peacebuilding faces important challenges requiring further innovation and research. First, there are risks: if regenerative practice adds value to land, it can create competition and new conflict over that land. At the Bethany Land Institute, this is precisely what occurred when their agroforestry process yielded a new forest that landowners sought to reclaim, leading to a legal dispute. Land tenure systems and regulatory enforcement thus become even more essential. In Peru, illicit miners and organized crime groups have repeatedly threatened organizations supporting responsible mining and regenerative restoration, highlighting the need for improved governance through policy reform and consistent implementation of regulations (Cabanillas et al., forthcoming).

Second, the empirical evidence base remains thin. Evidence of regenerative production as an intentional vehicle for peacebuilding in conflict contexts is not yet developed, and there is not yet decisive empirical evidence to confirm its broad effectiveness. Longitudinal evaluation is needed to establish the probabilities of success and failure across all three essential pillars—ecological, economic, and social. This further empirical investigation is necessary to explore the potential of regenerative adaptation for addressing polycrises globally and in significantly different circumstances than those explored so far.

Finally, regenerative adaptation must be durable enough to sustain itself without permanent external support. A key indicator of success is whether it could continue if technical assistance were removed. In Peru, regenerative farmers report they could and would continue their systems independently, though responsible mining operations are still transitioning to self-sustainability. A threshold of diffusion and establishment must be attained for regenerative adaptation to firmly take root—requiring diversification of assistance, local capacity development, and scaling out rather than up.

The world urgently needs tools for simultaneously building peace and restoring ecosystems in our increasingly conflicted and environmentally imperiled world. Regenerative adaptation could be among the most potent tools in this regard. Our challenge ahead is to marshal the financing, research, and support needed to test and scale these tools. Our planet and our civilization’s future may well depend on it.

Works Cited

Cabanillas, France, Ascorra, Cesar, Bolster, Diogo, & Marcantonio, Richard. (forthcoming). Regenerative adaptation for peacebuilding: A response to emergent polycrisis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Marcantonio, Richard. 2024. “How Regenerative Agriculture Can Foster Peacebuilding in Conflict Areas.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 20. https://thebulletin.org/2024/12/how-regenerative-agriculture-can-foster-peacebuilding-in-conflict-areas/

Marcantonio, Richard. 2024. “Regenerative Production as a Vehicle for Environmental Peacebuilding? An Exploratory Case from Uganda.” Peace News Network, September 5. https://peacenews.com/regenerative-production-as-a-vehicle-for-environmental-peacebuilding-an-exploratory-case-from-uganda/