QUNO’s work centers the peacebuilding dimensions of rights-based approaches to environmental policy, emphasizing the role of these approaches in reducing potential violent conflict over limited natural resource exploitation or stress due to environmental crises. 

QUNO engages with peace and security discussions on climate change, advocating for the urgent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions alongside rights protection. We voice our concern over the as yet unproven effects and impacts of large scale geo/climate engineering approaches, which try to address the symptoms of climate change but fail to transform its root causes.  As founding members of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, we foster connections within the peacebuilding and environmental communities to support opportunities for cooperation around environmental matters instead of destructive conflict.

QUNO’s past involvement on this topic produced publications on Human Rights, Food and Sustainability, as well as Natural Resources, Conflict and Cooperation. Throughout our publications, we apply a conflict prevention and peacebuilding approach to natural resource management.