In Factis Pax: Journal of Peace Education and Social Justice

IIPE Special Issue

Bridging Traditional Wisdom and Modernity: Exploring an Eco-Relational Paradigm for Peace

Special Issue Editors:

Janet C. Gerson & Jeffery Warnke

In light of the ecological crisis and the social, political, and cultural obstacles to addressing this crisis, the International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) Nepal 2024 was convened to consider an ecological and relational paradigm for peace. As many nations and peoples, Nepal is struggling to develop while maintaining its ancient spiritual traditions, village communities, and warmth among its people, even in the face of economic and political pressure from the great powers on its borders and beyond. Discussion of the Nepali conundrum by IIPE participants from around the world brought this problematic to the fore.  This special issue seeks to continue this inquiry by exploring the following basic questions: 

Given the current ecological crisis, including the climate crisis, in what ways can the conception of “peace” be re-conceived? What contribution can peace education and peace and justice studies contribute to forming an ecological relational framework for peace?  

We are delighted with the articles published in this issue. We are seeking the birth of the new in this time of ecological and climate crises.  Our authors offer a hybridity of creative, constructive perspectives toward the potential of positive ecological peace.  Their range of emerging perspectives is remarkable, each one offering a ray of insight.  These articles go beyond mere bridging aspects of peace studies and peace action. They cross-cut sources, methods, and practices. Overall, these peace educators and peace and justice scholars demonstrate the capacity to stretch beyond strict boundaries of disciplines, methods, and regional representation. This hybridity defies typical categorizing. We invite you to delve into these fine articles toward the emerging new eco-relational, transformative, and regenerative potential of our field.

Phill Gittins presents a wide-lens perspective of the “entangled crises” in"World-Centred Peace Education: Toward a Framework for Socio-Eco Peace in Times of Systemic Crisis”. Using dialogue and diagrams, he lays out an overview which recenters humans within peace thinking and learning so that “Instead of centering only humans, peace education must affirm a relational co-centrality of people and planet”.

David Tim Archer, Edward Sellman, Josefina Unger, and Rosanna Wilson use dialogue to bridge their self-development with their insights into “Self, Eco-relationality and Peace Pedagogy: Lessons and Challenges from Wisdom Traditions ~ A Dialogue”.  Using their experiences, they propose transformative methodologies toward reorienting “our ways of being away from current Neoliberal framings towards more ecologically-centric and relational sensibilities.”

Melissa Marini Švigelj, delves into the significance in “Solidarity in an Eco-Relational Paradigm for Peace and Justice”. She defines solidarity as pedagogical, extending the concept to the more-than-human world. Eco-relational solidarity, she states, is an exploration that “emphasizes the interconnectivities associated with existing on earth from the level of intimate to the unnoticeable or unimagined”. She suggests that this might involve learning not to do too much.

Leonardo González Torres and Inés Vázquez Rico, Spanish psychologists and peace educators, reflect on their organization, Círculo de estudios para la paz and IIPE 2024. They relate how they incorporate ancient Buddhist philosophy into their psycho-educational horizon that incorporates contemplative practices toward an eco-relational paradigm for peace.

Amanda Munroe offers a conceptual search for “Place-based Peace Pedagogies”.  She invites us to reconceptualize space-time as a fertile landscape toward reimagining our co-survival “among species who operate in relation with one another by symbiosis [rather] than through the contrived relating forced by hierarchical contest”.

Sikander Mehdi uses historical and religious examples, proverbs, and peace initiatives to highlight the under-described eco-relational impact of war on nature in “War, Trees and the Struggle for Peace”. He points out that trees are also victims of war, especially scorched earth war actions.  Yet, he describes the gifts of trees, including their accompaniment of humans in life. “The trees have always been with the humans in their quest for freedom and passion to resist control of any kind by anyone”.

Rigoni Graber and Dino Mancarella use the example of forest schools in combination with critical theory and nonviolence to promote educational practices that nurture a “new sensitivity—an ecological awareness that recognizes the dignity of all living beings, transcends speciesism, and rejects the hyper-individualistic logic promoted by neoliberalism”.

Raquel Navarro Caparrós connects traditional Japanese practices that continue to the present in “Revitalizing Regional Landscapes, Redefining Peace: Satoyama and Satoumi as Models for Eco-Relational Justice in Japan”. These examples of sustainability in both food security and community demonstrate an “ongoing negotiation with time itself.” They embody the “shifting relationship between human societies and nature… [so that] landscapes are not only preserved but actively reinterpreted with each generation”.

In contrast, Ciara Johnson describes the high technology applications of MIT computer programming En-ROADS’s that is used by U.S. Congress and the UN Secretary-General’s Office to  predict weather patterns. In “Using Climate Simulators to Facilitate Peacebuilding: A Study of Practice”, she describes how she uses this AI technology to teach peace with her high school students in China.  Engaging with the simulations gives them both hands-on agency and practice in building peace narratives around prevention and preparation for possible climate crises.

 

Randall Amster asserts in his commentary article, “Interdependence, Interconnectedness, and Intersectionality: The Ecology of Positive Peace” that “[p]ositive peace provides a robust framework that integrates theories and actions…, a pragmatic working vision that weaves together human societies and natural systems while reintegrating justice as a moral force in cultivating peace and sustainability at all levels”.

Janet C. Gerson, Stephanie Knox-Steiner, and Daniela Pastoor ‘s contribution, “Widening and Wilding Toward a Regenerative Peace Education” dives deeply into their shared intersubjective experiences in a “Hospicing Modernity” workshop at IIPE Nepal 2025 toward deepening the reflective and relational potential of socio-ecological peace learning.

 

Werner Wintersteiner presents an overview in his article, “The Ecological Challenge of Peace Education: A Plea for a New Comprehensive Peace Education”. He identifies the long-standing problem of separation between peace education and ecological studies.  Tracing the problem and drawing on Betty Reardon’s 1988 groundbreaking insights, he calls us to “once again work on a comprehensive overview of the rationale, goals and methods of peace education that incorporates the post-colonial, ecological, and feminist impulses that have emerged in recent decades”.

 

Please note:  In addition to the articles in the Special Issue, this issue of In Factis Pax also includes the atricle by Erika Simpson and  Juneseo Hwang, "Forging Peace in 2025-2030: The Role of Canada and South Korea as Middle Powers in Leading Global Conflict Resolution"and book reviews by Chitranjan Greer-Travis, Book Review Anderson, E. (2023). Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back, and Jalen Carpenter, Book Review Snauwaert, Dale T. 2023. Teaching Peace as a Matter of Justice: Toward a Pedagogy of Moral Reasoning.