The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has carried out post-conflict environmental assessments (PCEAs) to evaluate the environmental damage of conflicts since the late 1990s. This article considers UNEP’s PCEAs as a case of securitisation. Existing literature suggests securitisation can lead to de-politicisation, associated with non-participatory, obliging policy practices, or politicisation, which can lead to inclusive, democratic outcomes. For environmental security policy to be effective, it therefore is crucial to know whether the securitisation of the environment has led to de-politicisation or politicisation.
To explore this in the case of UNEP, the article examines whether the securitisation with regard to PCEAs has been de-politicising or politicising and, as a result, whether it has contributed more effective methods, practices, or policies to assess wartime environmental destruction. Focusing on the period after 2010, when PCEA was an established part of UNEP’s work but started to lose its role at the core of UNEP’s environmental security dimension to other issues like climate risks, this paper argues that UNEP’s approach to PCEA was mainly marked by depoliticisation, which may have hindered the efficacy of the assessments in practice. Due to UNEP’s waning interest in PCEA, its methodological development has lagged, suggesting the need for a new approach also incorporating politicised aspects.
