Can UN Peacekeeping Promote Environmental Quality?

Abstract

This research focuses on a positive, and previously largely unknown, implication of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping: better environmental quality. While maintaining international peace and security remains the main goal of peacekeeping operations, we contend that they can also be linked to environmentally friendly outcomes. Mission mandates and UN policies increasingly comprise actions that potentially promote environmental quality. At the same time, positive side effects on the environment materialize due to the cooperation with and activities of other UN bodies. The empirical analyses, also correcting for the likely non-random assignment of peace missions and employing several alternative outcome measures, suggest that UN peace missions are indeed substantively associated with better environmental quality. This research has important implications for our understanding of peacekeeping operations, and it contributes to the literatures on the (unintended) consequences of peacekeeping as well as environmental politics.