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Middle East Review of International Affairs
Promise and Failure: Environmental NGOs and Palestinian-Israeli Cooperation
by Michael J. Zwirn
*
Abstract
In the early days of the Oslo peace process, numerous activists in the peace and environmental camps in Israel and the Palestinian Authority called for the creation of joint non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to confront the region's environmental ills. Such groups are often the largest, best-funded environmental organizations in the Palestinian Authority. Yet they have faced serious challenges of legitimacy, even prior to the current intifada, and have been largely unable to survive conflictual periods with their mandates and organizations intact. This study examines a number of such joint environmental NGOs, assesses their responses to the decline in the peace process, and discusses the failure implicit in the strategy of approaching environmental cooperation primarily as a vehicle for promoting coexistence and peace.
Full PDF Document, 11 pages, 68kB
Endnotes
Note *: Michael Zwirn is an environmental policy analyst with longstanding interest in conservation and sustainable development in the Middle East. He holds a master's degree in International Environment and Resource Policy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and was a student at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel during its first year of operation in 1996-1997. In summer 2000, he worked in the environmental program of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. He resides in Portland, Oregon. Back