Dear Colleagues,

The journal Sustainability, an international, cross-disciplinary, scholarly, and open access journal of environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability of human beings invites your submission for a Special Issue on “Dealing with Environmental Conflicts”.

Conflict seems to be an inevitable part of our society, which can be addressed from a social, political, economic, psychological or environmental perspective. The resolution of conflict is an important step toward achieving sustainability in our society.

Although they have many similarities with social and political conflicts, environmental conflicts have specific features, related with triggering events, progress, consequences, involvement of the stakeholders, management or resolution processes. Political settings (e.g., Sustainability Development Goals and other international environmental agreements), new societal ambitions (e.g., nature-based solutions, urban protected areas), environmental threats (environmental pollution, invasive species, climate change, environmental risks) and others (e.g., public participation in decision making process) increase the potential to have contradiction between different groups at global, regional, and local level.

This Special Issue calls for contributions that address how we can better understand environmental conflict management and resolution. Contributors have to consider the global, regional, and local scale related with environmental conflicts, and they are welcome to examine the drivers and/or propose concrete solutions for their resolution.

Of particular interest are papers that (i) point out the conflictual dimension of different new societal projects (e.g., natural protected areas, green infrastructure); (ii) present local and regional experience related with environmental conflicts, (iii) propose different innovative methods to understand environmental conflicts; (iv) demonstrate solutions that are scalable, transferable, and/or can be tailored to specific local or issue-dependent needs in their implementation, and (v) provide a better understanding of social and economic dimension of environmental conflicts.

Papers are expected to represent sustainability research across a wide range of disciplines, as well as inter- and transdisciplinary studies. While innovative ideas and strategies are welcome, authors are encouraged to consider their feasibility in light of the current broader background.

The Special Issue will be connected with the 10th anniversary of Society for Urban Ecology -SURE conference The Challenging Urban Nature and Nature's Role in Urban Challenges, which will take place in 5–8 September 2019 at the University of Bucharest (Romania) (https://ccmesi.ro/?page_id=1216). The conference proposes the following topics related with the Special Issue: Challenges for nature-based solutions applications in our cities; planning for eco, smart, resilient, and sustainable cities; and the great green divide—conflicts involving green and protected areas.

References:

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Prof. Dr. Ioan-Cristian Iojă
Prof. Dr. Jurgen Breuste
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mihai Razvan Nita
Guest Editors

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• Environmental conflicts
• Conflict resolution
• Nature based-solutions
• Sustainability