The peacebuilding potential of community-based disaster risk reduction: insights from displacement-affected communities in Iraq and South Sudan

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how community-based disaster risk reduction (CBDRR) generates peace-positive outcomes in displacement-affected communities, focused on how shared natural resources and environmental risks shape these dynamics. Designed as a qualitative multiple case study focused on Iraq and South Sudan, it draws on interviews and documents to examine the conditions under which, and the processes or mechanisms through which, CBDRR fosters peacebuilding or, conversely, entrenches existing grievances and conflict dynamics. This thesis shows that CBDRR does not generate cooperation by resolving structural drivers of vulnerability, but by creating provisional arrangements through which communities negotiate shared risks, articulate grievances, and establish minimally legitimate rules. These outcomes are modest, uneven, and contingent, yet they demonstrate that CBDRR’s influence operates through relational and procedural shifts rather than technical improvements alone, shaped by how interventions engage with existing political economies, formal and informal governance structures, and social and structural asymmetries. The analysis highlights that environmental peacebuilding cannot be understood without attention to relational power. The findings do not suggest that CBDRR can transform structural inequalities or resolve the “wicked problem” of environmental insecurity and displacement. Rather, they show that under certain conditions, CBDRR can lay the foundations for more durable forms of cooperation that make peacebuilding feasible. This thesis underscores the need for environmental interventions that recognise political and institutional constraints while engaging directly with the differentiated vulnerabilities of displacement-affected communities.