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. 2020 Sep 26;50(3):661–678. doi: 10.1007/s13280-020-01388-8

The literature landscape on peace–sustainability nexus: A scientometric analysis

Ayyoob Sharifi 1, Dahlia Simangan 1,✉, Shinji Kaneko 1
PMCID: PMC7882663  PMID: 32979186

Abstract

Academics, policymakers, and practitioners have long considered peace and sustainability to be fundamentally linked. However, despite the increased attention paid toward the intersection of peace and sustainability, there is still limited knowledge on the nature of their linkages. To advance the current understanding on the peace–sustainability nexus and inform an integrated research agenda, this paper employs a scientometric analysis of literature to identify publication trends, thematic clusters, and knowledge gaps. Analyzing the publications according to the types of peace, the pillars of positive peace, the dimensions of sustainability, and the SDGs further reveals weak engagement among academic disciplines and across the SDGs. The results of this analysis emphasize the need for future research to focus on underexamined subjects, geographic regions, and sectors to bolster the linkages between peace and sustainability.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01388-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Keywords: Peace, Scientometric analysis, SDGs, Sustainability, Systematic review

Introduction

The international community has long considered peace and sustainability to be fundamentally linked. One of the earlier proclamations of this understanding was the 1987 Brundtland Report, which defined security beyond political and military threats to include environmental stress across local, national, regional, and global levels (UNWCED 1987). In 1992, one of the principles in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was the acknowledgment that “peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible” (UN 1992b). The declaration also recognized the destructive impact of warfare on sustainable development and encouraged environmental protection during armed conflict. In the same year, the United Nations (UN) also published its hallmark peace document, An Agenda for Peace, recognizing that addressing the sources of conflict and war would require the promotion of sustainable development for the environment (UN 1992a). Later, the 2001 Earth Charter affirmed a global consensus on the “principles for a sustainable way of life”, including the promotion of “a culture of tolerance, non-violence, and peace” and the acknowledgment that a right relationship with other life and the Earth is a component of peace (Earth Charter Initiative 2001). The UN adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development cemented the conceptual and practical nexus between peace and sustainability. As the agenda states, “there can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development” (UN 2015, p. 2).

The integration of peace and sustainability in the 2030 Agenda reaffirms that peace is not just the absence of war or forms of physical violence and direct conflict (i.e., negative peace); it is also the presence of conditions necessary for the flourishing of human potential by ending structural forms of violence (i.e., positive peace) (Galtung 1964, 1967). Positive peace entails social harmony and cooperation, “consisting of freedom from fear, freedom from want, economic growth and development, absence of exploitation, equality, freedom of action, pluralism, and dynamism” (Galtung 1967, p. 14). Later articulations of positive peace develop the notion of peace into an increasingly pluralist and interdisciplinary concept (Richmond 2008). This holistic definition of peace resonates with current approaches to development. Development is not just economic growth; more importantly, development has to be pursued alongside the reduction of inequalities, climate action, and peaceful coexistence (UN 2015). This approach represents progress from previous misconceptions that sustainable development is only applicable to environmental issues despite the implications of development for human security (Vilela 2006) and environmental security (Conca and Dabelko 2002). In light of these discourses surrounding development, there is now a growing recognition within both peace studies and environmental studies that preserving the environment for future generations contributes to peace (e.g., Kyrou 2007; Laszlo 2008; Richmond 2008).

The introduction of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) further sheds light on the importance of the peace–sustainability nexus. In contrast to their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the SDGs embody a more concrete peace component by “acknowledge[ing] the critical role of accountable governance systems that provide stability and protection for citizens” (Caprani 2016, p. 102). The poor performance of conflict-affected countries in the MDGs suggests that peace is a precursor to achieving development goals (Werner 2015). Specifically, Goal 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions) is considered to be a “cross-cutting factor” that contributes to the implementation of the other SDGs (Allen et al. 2017). While negative peace or the absence of direct forms of conflict and violence enables the implementation of the SDGs, positive peace or the presence of conditions for human flourishing sustains the outcomes of such implementation in the long-run (Werner 2015). The SDGs, therefore, offer a relatively untapped opportunity for advancing our current understanding of the peace–sustainability nexus. Despite reiterations and refinements of the various components of peace and sustainability, however, the intersection of the two remains underexamined.

To contribute to the current understanding of the peace–sustainability nexus, this paper presents the results of a scientometric analysis of the literature on peace and sustainability. This analysis maps publication trends and identifies research themes to scope prevailing knowledge, identify knowledge gaps, and guide future research. It also aims to highlight specific components of peace and sustainability that demonstrate clear linkages (or a lack thereof), potentially directing the attention of researchers and policymakers toward supporting such linkages. The objectives of informing both research and policy, therefore, require a systematic review of existing knowledge (e.g., Haddaway et al. 2016). A systematic review of literature overcomes unrepresentative, unsystematic, and uncritical summaries of evidence caused by researcher bias and double standards that are detrimental to producing knowledge aimed at informing public policies and decision-making (Petticrew and Roberts 2006). Scientometrics is the application of quantitative methods for studying research activities. It is often employed for “measuring research quality and impact, understanding the processes of citations, mapping scientific fields and the use of indicators in research policy and management” (Mingers and Leydesdorff 2015, p. 1). Scientometrics is especially valuable in the absence of up-to-date systematic reviews (Chen and Song 2019). For our purposes, it is also key to systematically reviewing a new but rapidly developing field of scientific research, such as that of the peace–sustainability nexus.

The following section outlines the methodology for this review, followed by a description of the results based on several bibliometric characteristics, a thematic analysis of the bibliographic portfolio, and a closer examination of the dimensions of peace and sustainability. Despite increasing research attention on the interlinkages of peace and sustainability, we found weak interdisciplinary engagement among the publications analyzed in this study. A scientometric analysis of the bibliometric data of these publications also suggests the persistence of conceptual silos when examining peace and sustainability despite the multidimensional nature of these two concepts. However, we identified several topics that present opportunity for promoting interdisciplinary research in which peace and sustainability scholarships can benefit from each other’s methodologies and epistemologies. This study concludes with a summary of the results of the scientometric analysis and recommendations for advancing our conceptual and practical understanding of the peace–sustainability nexus. We also present several recommendations for aligning peace research with sustainability considerations and vice versa and for shedding light on the mutually reinforcing nature of peace aspirations and sustainability goals.

Materials and methods

Scoping the vast literature on peace and sustainability necessitates a systematic review protocol (Moher et al. 2015). The first step in this process was the retrieval and collection of published works related to both peace and sustainability. To do this we input a search string using the keywords “peace” and “sustainability” into the Scopus database to select the materials for analysis. Scopus was selected for its comprehensive collection of journals, conference proceedings, and books across disciplines and its reliability as a citation database. In addition, limiting the search string to two keywords and setting an undefined range for publication year allowed us to cast a wider net on as many relevant publications as possible. The search process, which was conducted on November 21, 2019, yielded an initial total of 540 records in the bibliographic portfolio.

Several exclusion criteria were applied to the bibliographic portfolio to filter out publications that did not directly address the peace–sustainability nexus. For instance, publications that used the term “sustainability” but in the context of managing and monitoring programs and initiatives (e.g., the sustainability of health initiatives) were excluded. Similarly, studies focusing on the “sustainability of peace” without engaging with the other aspects of sustainability were excluded. Given that English is the only common language among the authors, we applied a language criterion to the selection process. Publications in a non-English language (n = 21), including non-English materials without an extended abstract in English that could provide sufficient details for analysis, were also excluded. This language criterion can be considered as one of the limitations of this study, but it also created a sense of uniformity among the records for analysis. The application of these exclusion criteria resulted in 342 records or publications.

The bibliographic data of the 342 publications were then exported to Vosviewer and Tableau to generate visualizations of the scientometric analysis. Specifically, citation and co-citation analyses, bibliographic coupling, and co-occurrence analysis were employed using Vosviewer to identify thematic patterns within the literature landscape. Vosviewer is a freely available software tool developed to generate visual representations of bibliometric data (van Eck and Waltman 2010). Tableau, on the other hand, is a proprietary suite of products used for data exploration, analysis, and visualization. Tableau helped us visualize the linkages between specific types of bibliometric data and between dimensions of peace and sustainability using Sankey diagrams, with templates from Shaffer (2014) and Catherin (2014). Sankey diagrams were first used to investigate the thermal efficiency of steam engines and later to illustrate material flows of complex systems (Schmidt 2008). For the present study, the diagrams enabled us not only to scope intersecting knowledge on peace and sustainability but also to locate the gaps between these intersections. Descriptive statistics were also used to identify trends in terms of publication year, type of publication, field of study, source of publication, contributing country (i.e., country of the authors’ affiliated institutions), and geographic focus of study. The following section describes the results of these analyses, and each subsection includes the explanation of the relevant scientometrics.

Results and discussion

A scientometric analysis of the bibliographical information of the 342 selected records reveals a number of publication trends and patterns pertaining to the peace–sustainability nexus.

Publication trends

There is growing interest in the study of peace and sustainability. Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of publications from 1994 to 2019. Although the increase in publications has not been consistent throughout the years (i.e., some years recorded a decrease in the number of publications compared to their preceding years), there is a clear upward trend, especially since 2011. The highest number of publications was recorded in 2018 with 46 publications. The significantly lower number in 2019 can be explained by the date of the selection process. The publications are then categorized according to academic disciplines and their shares of publications for each year (Fig. S1). Humanities and social sciences (n = 158) produced the most publications, with Politics and International Relations (n = 55) leading the list, followed by interdisciplinary studies (n = 51), environmental sciences and related natural sciences (n = 41), engineering (n = 22), economics and finance (n = 22), and business, management and accounting (n = 21). Except for interdisciplinary studies, the publications for each field of study are more or less equally distributed throughout the years. However, publications with an interdisciplinary perspective gained traction only in 2018. This indicates that an interdisciplinary research agenda is a relatively new approach to examining the peace–sustainability nexus. Another possible explanation is the challenges in adopting global and national strategies for implementing the SDGs that could have incentivized integrative scientific projects (Allen et al. 2018).

Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

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Distribution of the reviewed publications according to the year of publication, 1994–2019

The majority of the publications in the portfolio are research papers (66%), indicating a robust evidence-based analysis of peace and sustainability (Fig. S2). Bridging the gap between research and policy is a constant challenge in academia despite broad acknowledgment that it is crucial for informing policymaking with scientific evidence. Given that the attainment of peace and sustainability would need to consider political realities on global, national, and even local levels, sustained dialogue and collaboration between research and policy is imperative. The Scopus database, however, does not index policy papers that would have elucidated the extent of engagement between policy and research. The exclusion of policy papers from this analysis is one of the limitations of this study. Relatedly, only 29 of the 342 publications employed quantitative methodologies, eight of which applied formal modeling techniques. Modeling approaches have the potential to reveal uni- or bi-directional causality between peace and sustainability and identify specific aspects of peace and sustainability with significant linkages. This is also useful for future projections and for dealing with uncertainties. Quantitative data-driven analysis can complement qualitative analysis, such as case studies, theoretical scoping, and exploratory research, by providing a longer temporal outlook and a macro-view of peace and sustainability issues. Combining these methodologies could result in more robust research analysis and, subsequently, recommendations for more effective policies and action.

We also identified the prominent journals according to citations to trace thematic trajectories. Table 1 lists the most cited journals overall and compares them with the most cited journals for the past five years. It is noteworthy that the Journal of Peace Research, which tops the list overall, has dropped from the list of the most cited journals in the past five years. Third World Quarterly, however, remains consistent, probably due to its broader scope and methodological diversity. Sustainability Science also remains on the list, with all of its 28 citations recorded during the past five years. The other consistent journals are Marine Policy, Sustainability, Ecological Indicators, International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, and Journal of Cleaner Production. These journals mainly focus on issues related to the natural environment, resources, and processes. This citation trend shows the emergence of environment-related journals in publishing research on peace and sustainability.

Table 1.

Journal titles most cited by the reviewed publications, 1990–2019

Top journals overall (1990–2019) Citations Top journals for the past 5 years (2014–2019) Citations
Journal of Peace Research 201 Third World Quarterly 69
Marine Policy 116 Sustainability Science 28
Third World Quarterly 76 International Journal of Sport Policy 27
Journal of Hydrology 69 Environmental Research Letters 26
Current Issues in Tourism 50 Journal of Social and Political Psychology 22
Land Use Policy 46 Ecological Indicators 21
Journal of Geography in Higher Education 43 Sustainability 23
Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 36 Journal of Historical Geography 18
International Peacekeeping 29 Journal of Cleaner Production 15
Sustainability Science 28 Sport Management Review 15
Croatian Medical Journal 26 Environmental Science Policy 14
Sustainability 33 Global Environmental Politics 12
Ecological Indicators 21 Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 10
International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 21 International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 10
Journal of Peace Education 18 Medicine, Conflict and Survival 10
Young People, Education, and Sustainable Development 17 Multinational Business Review 10
Journal of Cleaner Production 15 Water Security 9
Water International 14 Environment, Development and Sustainability 8
Synthesis Lectures on Engineers, Technology, and Society 12 Marine Policy 8
Hydrological Sciences Journal 11 Population, Space and Place 8
International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education 11 Sport, Education and Society 8
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We then categorized the publications according to their geographic relevance to identify over/under studied regions. Publications with more than one geographic focus were counted accordingly. Forty-two percent (n = 144) of the publications examined the peace–sustainability nexus without having a specific geographic focus (Fig. 2). For publications that highlighted a specific region or country, Africa received the most attention with 58 publications, followed by Europe (n = 36) and West Asia (n = 27). South and Central Americas had twelve publications each, but it is worth noting that five of the twelve publications on South America analyzed the case of Colombia where government and non-government belligerents have been engaged with one of the longest civil conflicts in history and several post-conflict development policies were initiated. Statistics show that little attention is paid to Central Asia, North Asia, the Arctic, and Antarctica, most likely because of the relatively small number of countries included in these regions. Another plausible reason is that these regions have experienced relatively lower levels of conflicts in recent decades. According to the 2019 Global Peace Index (GPI), the regional category of Russia and Eurasia is one of the most improved regions in terms of levels of peacefulness from 2008 to 2018 (IEP 2019b). GPI measures ongoing domestic and international conflict, societal safety and security, and militarization (refer to IEP 2019b for the GPI methodology).

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

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Distribution of reviewed publications according to the geographic focus of study

We then linked the geographic location of the authors’ institutional affiliation (i.e., geographic origin) with the geographic focus of their publications (i.e., geographic focus) to map scholastic diversity (Fig. S3). This mapping reveals that most scholars tend to study peace–sustainability issues relevant to their location, with a notable exception of Africa-related publications. For example, the majority of the publications from Europe and North America were authored by scholars based in Europe and North America, respectively. Similarly, scholars and institutions based in African countries are likely to focus on issues pertinent to African countries or the African region in general. It is interesting to note, however, that approximately half of the publications on Africa have been produced by authors from other regions, especially North America and Europe. For publications without a geographic focus, the majority were from North America, Europe, and Oceania, with most countries considered to be from the Anglosphere. The exclusion of non-indexed and non-English publications from the selection of the bibliographic portfolio and the general dominance of Western scholars and institutions in indexed publishing are possible explanations for these results. Research support for scholars based outside the Anglosphere is vital not only for diversifying the geographic characteristics of research publications but also for pluralizing knowledge on peace and sustainability. Note that, for this specific categorization, publications with more than one geographic origin or focus were counted separately.

Citation and co-citation analyses

Examining the intersection of the peace and sustainability nexus requires an interdisciplinary approach. Given that the concepts of peace and sustainability are traditionally under the ambit of separate disciplines (i.e., peace studies and sustainability studies, respectively), it is essential to investigate whether the increasing recognition of their linkages is translated into scholarship output.

To map interdisciplinary engagement, we analyzed the co-citation links of the most cited journals using Vosviewer. A co-citation link is a link between two items that are both cited by the same publication (van Eck and Waltman 2020). Figure 3 illustrates the relatedness of the journals to each other as represented by their locations and the weight of the lines that connect them using the Vosviewer co-citation metric. A co-citation analysis of the publications cited at least 12 times resulted in the following five major disciplinary clusters ranked according to the number of eligible journal titles. The red cluster (n = 23) is on politics and international relations, the green cluster (n = 12) is on environmental studies, the blue cluster (n = 6) is about tourism, the yellow cluster concerns with publications on sports, and the purple cluster (n = 3) is on engineering, but too distant to be included in the figure and, therefore, is weakly interrelated with the other clusters. These are the disciplines engaging with the study of the peace–sustainability nexus.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

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Co-citation links of journal titles. Note The red cluster is on politics and international relations; the green cluster is on environmental studies; the blue cluster is on tourism; the yellow cluster is on sports; and the purple cluster is on engineering (too distant to be included in this figure). The size of the circles and fonts represents the number of times the item was cited in proportion to the other items; and the variation of the lines represents the number of co-citations

Figure 3 reveals the clustering of journal titles according to disciplines as depicted by their distance. For instance, publications from politics and international relations (e.g., Journal of Peace Research and International Security) tend to cite each other rather than citing works from other disciplines. Although there is collaboration between disciplines, this clustering can be interpreted as weak interdisciplinary engagement in terms of citations. Meanwhile, titles in the green/environmental studies cluster (e.g., Sustainability and Journal of Cleaner Production) serve as citation bridges between social science journals and natural science journals. It can then be inferred that studies on the environment and sustainability have the potential to open channels for interdisciplinary engagement. The interdisciplinary nature of the peace–sustainability nexus both enables and benefits from such engagement.

To verify our inference of weak interdisciplinary engagement, we also analyzed the co-citation links of the publications according to authors, but with the number of times cited reduced to ten to increase the probability of linkages. Although the co-citation analysis of authors resulted in more diversified clusters, we still found weak linkages between them (Fig. 4). The following are the seven clusters ranked according to the number of eligible authors. The red cluster (n = 10) is, in general, on conflict, climate, and environmental security. The green cluster (n = 10) is mainly related to political science and international relations. The blue cluster (n = 10) is mostly about the natural sciences and the environment. The yellow cluster (n = 9) has more items falling under the category of sustainability and sustainable development. The purple cluster (n = 4) concerns water management. The light blue cluster (n = 4) broadly relates to philosophy and social theory. Finally, the orange cluster (n = 2) can be considered under the humanities, but too distant to be included in the figure and, therefore, is weakly interrelated with the other clusters. Note that the items for this co-citation analysis are the references used by the selected publications and, therefore, not exclusive to the bibliographic portfolio.

Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

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Co-citation links of authors. Note The red cluster is on conflict, climate, and environmental security; the green cluster is on politics and international relations; the blue cluster is on natural sciences and the environment; the yellow cluster is on sustainability and sustainable development; the purple cluster is on water management; the light blue cluster is on philosophy and social theory; and the orange cluster is on the humanities (too distant to be included in this figure). The size of the circles and fonts represents the number of times the item was cited in proportion to the other items; and the variation of the lines represents the number of co-citations

Similarly to the co-citation analysis of journals, the co-citation of authors also reveals the clustering of authors according to disciplines as depicted by their distance. Johan Galtung, known as the founder of peace and conflict studies and of the Journal of Peace Research, is the only author who is cited in and linked to all clusters. Galtung is an interdisciplinary scholar with interdisciplinary methodologies for studying peace. He has also advocated for transdisciplinarity in peace studies and conflict resolution (Galtung 2010). Peace, indeed, is interdisciplinary in nature, requiring a transdisciplinary approach. It can be argued that the diversification of peace studies, in terms of epistemology and methodology, paved the way for linking it to other concepts, such as the environment and sustainability, that were traditionally under the ambit of natural sciences and environmental studies.

Co-citation analysis also measures the subject matter similarity between publications. The higher the number of co-citations for two documents, the more likely these documents are to be related in terms of content. Setting the minimum number of co-citations to three resulted in only four documents (i.e., McCall and O’Dowd 2008; Karari et al. 2012; Skarlato et al. 2013; Creary and Byrne 2014). This number suggests that the reviewed publications for this study are weakly related semantically. To confirm whether this weak relationship also applies to author collaboration, we traced the citation links of the publications. “A citation link is a link between two items where one item cites the other” (van Eck and Waltman 2020, p. 26). In order to include as many publications as possible, we set the minimum number of citations of a publication to zero. The result shows that only nine documents have cited each other, confirming the lack of interlinkage between the research streams of peace and sustainability (Fig. S4). The linked documents are mainly related to cross-border conflict/cooperation, but their studies are not directly related to the peace–sustainability nexus.

Bibliographic coupling

To explore other potential linkages, we employed a bibliographic coupling analysis for publications that were cited at least ten times. Bibliographic coupling is a measure of similarity between publications that works by linking two publications that both cite the same document, indicating that both documents deal with a related topic (van Eck and Waltman 2020). The stronger the link between two publications, the more references they share. The reviewed publications for this study, however, indicate weak bibliographic relationship (Fig. S5).

In order to produce patterns from the bibliographic coupling of authors, we reduced the minimum number of citations to five. This further examination did not significantly improve the weak bibliographic relationship between the reviewed publications (Fig. 5). However, it resulted in the following eight distinct clusters according to subjects of study. The red cluster (n = 11) relates to sustainable development, globalization, and economic growth and development and their implications for peace and security (e.g., Jackson and Curry 2004; Richmond 2008; Steen 2006). The sustainability aspect of this cluster mainly covers the environmental dimension, such as environmental pressure and conflict, resource management, and peacebuilding, among other topics. The dark blue cluster (n = 9) deals with issues related to transboundary resource management and sustainable peacebuilding. The green cluster (n = 9) covers institutions of local and global governance and capacity-building for peace (e.g., Brooks and Trottier 2010; Fisher and Rucki 2017). The yellow cluster (n = 9), which also has an institutional dimension, focuses on peacebuilding and peacemaking activities in local and international contexts and their implications for sustainability (e.g., McCall 2011; Okpanachi 2011; Hayward and Magennis 2014). Furthermore, it includes studies on issues such as civil society and social capital and their contributions to sustainability (Rudd 2000; Wanis-St. John and Kew 2008). The purple cluster (n = 8) consists of studies related to the implications of sustainable development for global peace and security (e.g., Blinc et al. 2007; Hegre et al. 2016), covering socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The light blue cluster (n = 7) represents publications that explore the interactions between tourism and peace and sustainability (e.g., Buckley 2012; Levy and Hawkins 2009). The orange cluster (n = 3) is about the indicators for sustainability assessment and for monitoring SDGs implementation (Allen et al. 2017; Hák et al. 2018; Shaker 2018). Finally, the brown cluster (n = 2) emphasizes education as a capacity-building tool for promoting peace and sustainable development (Selby 2006; Yang et al. 2010). These clusters can assist future research in navigating the established, emerging, and underexamined topics or themes linking peace and sustainability.

Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

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Bibliographic coupling for publications cited at least five times. Note The red cluster is on sustainable development, globalization, and economic growth and development and their implications for security; the dark blue cluster is on transboundary resource management and sustainable peacebuilding; the green cluster is on governance institutions and capacity-building for peace; the yellow cluster is on the implications of peacebuilding/peacemaking for sustainability; the purple cluster is on the implications of sustainable development for global peace and security; the light blue cluster is on the interactions between tourism and peace and sustainability; and the orange cluster is on the indicators for sustainability assessment and monitoring the SDGs implementation; and the brown cluster is on education as a capacity-building tool for peace and sustainable development. The distance of the items indicates their relatedness, and the size of the circles and fonts represent the number of times the items have been cited in proportion to the other items

Co-occurrence analysis

To further classify the main themes or topics in the existing literature on peace and sustainability, we mapped the relatedness of the keywords using a term co-occurrence analysis. Term co-occurrence is a bibliographic analysis for identifying keywords that co-occur more frequently. For this analysis, the association strength was used to normalize the links between the keywords (Van Eck and Waltman 2009). The network map of 91 keywords with at least four co-occurrences (i.e., the number of documents where the keywords appear together) is presented in Fig. 6. Generic keywords (i.e., article, journal, and research) were excluded. The distance of the keywords indicates their relatedness, the size of the circles represents the number of times the keywords have been used, and the variation of the lines represents the number of co-occurrences or link strengths (van Eck and Waltman 2020). The red cluster is mostly about security issues and different aspects of development; the green cluster is mostly about conflict and cooperation; and the blue cluster is mostly about social development. In the red cluster (n = 34), peace is most related to “terrorism”, and sustainability is most related to economic “development”. In the green cluster (n = 33), both peace and sustainability are most related to “conflict”. In the blue cluster (n = 24), peace is most related to “humans”, and sustainability is most related to “development”. However, as expected, terms pertinent to the social environment (e.g., war and terrorism) are more related to peace (Fig. S6), while terms concerning the natural environment (e.g., water and health) are more related to sustainability (Fig. S7).

Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

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Co-occurrence network of all keywords used by the reviewed publications. Note The red cluster is mostly about security issues and different aspects of development; the green cluster is mostly about conflict and cooperation; and the blue cluster is mostly about social development

Table 2 also lists the five most prominent and the five least prominent keywords (except for peace and sustainability as they were used in the search string) and their numbers of co-occurrences and links. The most frequently used term is “education”, but the most linked term is “environmental management”. Meanwhile, “gender”, “citizenship”, “social change”, and “democracy” are some of the least prominent terms. Future research may wish to focus on the role of these concepts in linking peace and sustainability.

Table 2.

Most and least prominent keywords used by the reviewed publications

Red cluster Occur Link Green cluster Occur Link Blue cluster Occur Link
Most prominent
 Environmental management 15 102 Education 23 71 Humans 11 63
 Economic development 17 84 Conflict resolution 21 64 Development 16 53
 Economic and social effects 10 64 Governance 10 45 Conflict 11 52
 Environment 12 54 Economic growth 9 43 Public health 7 51
 Decision-making 10 49 Eurasia 9 34 International cooperation 9 47
Least prominent
 Adaptation 4 17 Geopolitics 4 10 Protected area 4 14
 Social development 5 17 Neoliberalism 6 10 Conservation 4 13
 Capacity-building 6 16 Democracy 4 9 Environmental degradation 5 13
 Nigeria 4 16 Social change 4 9 International law 4 10
 Community development 5 11 Citizenship 4 6 Gender 4 4
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“Occur” signifies the number of co-occurrences, and “Link” is the number of links of an item with other items

The network map of co-occurring terms reveals that publications on peace and sustainability share similar keywords or subjects of analysis, implying that academic disciplines concerned with issues on peace and sustainability have overlapping research agendas. However, the distance between terms related to sustainable development and the environment and terms related to social harmony and cooperation suggest the persistence of conceptual silos in peace and sustainability research. Nevertheless, the co-occurrence networks bring to the fore some terms with the potential to conceptually bridge peace and sustainability. There are several terms (e.g., humans, developing countries, Africa, China, and decision-making) that seem to straddle the clusters. Further research into these terms may unravel the mechanisms for transcending conceptual boundaries.

The co-occurrence analysis also upholds the broad conceptualization of peace and sustainability—that peace is not just the absence of war, and sustainability is not just about the environment. Although sustainability is most related to the environment, economic growth, and economic development, it is also associated with education, public policy, and ethics, among other terms. Similarly, although peace is most related to conflict resolution and security, it is also associated with governance, human rights, and civil society, among other terms. Therefore, it is imperative to maintain a broader understanding of peace and sustainability when examining their interlinkages.

Unpacking the peace–sustainability nexus

The conceptual breadth and depth of peace and sustainability necessitate a closer examination of the linkages between their specific dimensions. To do this we examined how the specific dimensions of peace and sustainability are addressed in the literature. We first categorized the publications according to the types of peace (i.e., negative peace, positive peace, and both) and the dimensions of sustainability (i.e., SDGs and the primary dimensions of sustainability) to trace their interactions. For the positive peace indicators, we employed the eight Pillars of Peace measured by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) since 2009 (refer to IEP 2019a for IEP’s methodology on positive peace). IEP echoes Galtung’s holistic approach to peace and defines positive peace as “the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies” (IEP 2019a, p. 84). IEP’s eight positive peace pillars are (1) well-functioning government, (2) a sound business environment, (3) equitable distribution of resources, (4) acceptance of the rights of others, (5) good relations with neighbors, (6) free flow of information, (7) high levels of human capital, and (8) low levels of corruption.

For the dimensions of sustainability, we used the four primary dimensions of sustainable development—social, economic, environmental, and institutional—adopted by the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in 1995 (UN DESA 2001). The social dimension has themes related to social equity, health, education, housing, security, and population. The environmental dimension consists of the natural environment and resources. The economic dimension is concerned with economic structure and consumption and production patterns. The institutional dimension refers to the institutional framework of and institutional capacity for sustainable development. We acknowledge the existing iterations and refinements of these dimensions in both academic and policy circles, but for this paper these four dimensions are sufficiently inclusive for categorizing the publications (refer to UN DESA 2001 for the methodology of measuring these dimensions). Further, we are cognizant of the critiques regarding the inconsistency of the development-focused objectives of the SDGs with that of sustainability. This inconsistency is especially translated into the positive correlation between high ecological footprint and high performance in the SDGs (Wackernagel et al. 2017). Although the pursuit of sustainability is broader in scope and outlook than that of sustainable development or the SDGs, they share similar underlying mechanisms for achieving sustainability. The inclusion of the environmental category into the dimensions of sustainability also ensures a balance between environmental sustainability and human development.

We mapped the interactions between the types of peace and the dimensions of sustainability (Fig. S8). Majority of publications relate to positive peace; 52.5% on positive peace only, 42% on both positive and negative types of peace, and 5.5% on negative peace only. These numbers confirm a holistic view of peace in the literature. Irrespective of the type of peace, publications on the economic dimension of sustainability received the most attention (34.7%), closely followed by environmental (27.3%), social (23.6%), and institutional (14.4%) dimensions. The interactions were further disaggregated since most of the publications are relevant to more than one dimension of sustainability (Fig. S9). For instance, most of the publications with an economic focus are also relevant to the other dimensions of sustainability. Overall, majority of the publications (36.3%) have discussions relevant to at least three dimensions of sustainability, followed by publications relevant to all four dimensions (14.6%). Discussions on peace in relation to sustainability, indeed, are multidimensional, which suggests that the dimensions of sustainability cannot be examined in isolation from each other.

The publications were also analyzed based on the linkages between their geographic focus and the type of peace they examined (Fig. S10). This analysis helps us scope what types of peace are generally addressed for each region. The right bar indicates that there are more publications concerning positive peace (n = 178), as highlighted earlier, which can be explained by the broader conceptualization of positive peace compared to negative peace. One hundred and thirty-nine publications deal with both types, and only 25 publications focus on negative peace. The same distribution generally applies when the publications are disaggregated according to their geographic focus. For example, there are more discussions on positive peace and few on negative peace in publications without a geographic focus. The same distribution holds for most of the regions.

We then explored in more detail the geographic focus of the publications according to positive peace pillars (see Sharifi et al. 2020 for a review of publications on negative peace and climate change). The eight pillars have a total of 24 indicators that can be categorized into three domains: “(1) Attitudes if they measure social views, tensions or perceptions; (2) Institutions if they are directly measuring institutional operations; and (3) Structures if they are embedded in the framework of society, such as poverty, equality, or are the result of aggregate activity, such as GDP” (IEP 2019a, p. 28).

IEP’s 2019 report concludes that positive peace has slightly “improved globally by 2.6 per cent in the past decade”, mainly driven by improvements in pillars 2 (sound business environment), 6 (free flow of information), and 7 (high levels of human capital) coupled with “improvement in the Structures domain of Positive Peace, while the Institutions domain was steady and the Attitudes domain deteriorated” (IEP 2019a, p. 14). These improvements are inconsistent with the result of our review in which pillars 2 and 6 received low volumes of publications (Fig. 7). Furthermore, despite the large volume of publications on the other pillars of peace (particularly, acceptance of the rights of others, equitable distribution of resources, and well-functioning government), they did not show signs of improvement in the IEP 2019 report. Verifying the correlation between the IEP indicators and research output is outside the scope of this review, but research usually pays attention to the worst and most persistent of issues, thereby partly explaining the disparity between research activity and improvements in the positive peace pillars. The way forward is to translate this vast scientific evidence toward informed policymaking.

Fig. 7.

Fig. 7

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Interactions between the pillars of positive peace and the geographic focus of the publications. Note The left column lists the pillars of positive peace; the right column lists the geographic focus of the publications; and the size of the pathways is proportional to the frequency of being linked together based on the number of publications

In terms of the distribution of the publications on positive peace according to field of study, the social sciences (particularly politics and international relations and related interdisciplinary subfields), which dominate the literature landscape, contribute the most to the positive peace pillars on equitable distribution of resources and well-functioning government and the least to the pillars on free flow of information and a sound business environment (Fig. S11). Despite the multifaceted nature of positive peace, only 51 publications (14.9%) have an interdisciplinary lens, suggesting the need to deepen research collaboration among disciplines.

The publications on positive peace were also disaggregated according to their most relevant sector (Fig. S12). The policy sector received the most publications (n = 98), followed by the education sector (n = 91). Other sectors relevant to the publications on positive peace include agriculture, economy, energy, governance, religion, security, urban planning, water, and sports. Meanwhile, the policy and education sectors are also the most relevant sectors for publications without a geographic focus (Fig. S13). The same sectors also apply to other regional foci that received a significant number of publications, except for West Asia, which had no publications on policy but had the most publications on water. West Asia consists of Middle Eastern countries facing water scarcity due to the combined impact of groundwater depletion, population pressure, poor management of water resources, and high rainfall variability (e.g., Brooks and Trottier 2010; Öztana and Axelrod 2011). Like North Africa, the region of West Asia is considered to be highly prone to water-related socio-political tensions and conflicts. This result supports our earlier recommendation regarding the need to translate research findings into evidence-based policies.

Discussions around sustainability would not be complete without the SDGs. Fig. 8 portrays the distribution of articles according to the types of peace and relevant SDGs. Goal 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions) is well ahead of the other SDGs with respect to the number of publications (n = 266). Goal 8 (decent work and economic growth) has 64 publications, followed by Goal 4 (quality education) and Goal 13 (climate action) with 55 publications each, and Goal 10 (reduced inequalities) with 43 publications. These goals are related to equitable distribution of resources and high levels of human capital—the two positive peace pillars that received the highest number of publications, as shown in Fig. 9. Both Figs. 8 and 9 confirm the multidimensionality of positive peace and Goal 16.

Fig. 8.

Fig. 8

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Interactions between the types of peace and the SDGs. Note The left column lists the types of peace; the right column lists the SDGs; and the size of the pathways is proportional to the frequency of being linked together based on the number of publications

Fig. 9.

Fig. 9

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Interactions between the pillars of positive peace and the SDGs. Note The left column lists the pillars of positive peace; the right column lists the SDGs; and the size of the pathways is proportional to the frequency of being linked together based on the number of publications

To further investigate the interactions among the SDGs within the selected publications, Fig. 10 demonstrates that Goal 16 is linked to all the other SDGs but mainly to goals 4, 8, 10, and 13—the same SDGS that received the most publications after Goal 16. While noting that some of the SDGs did not have a significant enough number of publications to establish meaningful connections with the other SDGs, Fig. 10 shows which of the SDGs have weak linkages. Nevertheless, the SDGs with a significant number of publications offer insights concerning these interactions. For example, Goal 4 (quality education), Goal 5 (gender equality), and Goal 8 (decent work and economic growth) do not have mutual publications despite being intuitively connected. Specifically, access to quality education paves the way for opportunities for decent work, while efforts toward gender equality can help ensure that opportunities for quality education and decent work are available to all. Our analysis also reveals that Goal 13 (climate action) has no link to Goal 1 (no poverty) despite evidence that climate change has a disproportionate impact on poorer populations (IPCC 2014). Finally, there were no publications simultaneously addressing Goal 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure) and Goal 11 (sustainable cities and communities), although sustainable infrastructure and innovative approaches to livelihood are crucial to achieving sustainable cities and communities (e.g., Rosenzweig et al. 2018). While Goal 16 is widely considered as the cross-cutting goal among the SDGs, this analysis highlights the research gaps between the SDGs despite their conceptual and practical linkages. Given the mutually reinforcing nature of the SDGs, it is crucial to establish their linkages, starting with interdisciplinary research.

Fig. 10.

Fig. 10

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Interactions between the SDGs. Note The left and right columns list the SDGs; and the size of the pathways is proportional to the frequency of being linked together based on the number of publications

Conclusion and recommendations

There is increasing recognition that peace and sustainability are fundamentally linked. The introduction of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 underscores the importance of the peace–sustainability nexus. However, amidst these developments, there is limited knowledge of the nature of their linkages. Based on a scientometric analysis of relevant publications lifted from the Scopus database, we have identified the following trends and gaps in the literature to scope existing knowledge and contribute to setting a research agenda on peace and sustainability.

First, the publication trend shows a growing interest in the study of peace and sustainability. The number of publications annually has been on an upward trend, from two publications in 1994 to 46 publications in 2018. Second, a number of academic disciplines are engaged in research publication, but an interdisciplinary research agenda is a relatively new approach to examining the peace–sustainability nexus. In terms of journal citations, the engaged disciplines are diverse—from political science to sports to tourism. Recent years have also seen the emergence of journals related to the environment and sustainability. Third, most of the publications did not have a specific geographic focus and could be presented as having a global outlook. However, these publications are mostly authored by scholars based in Europe and North America, raising caution over applying colonialist perspectives or Western-centric recommendations that are inapplicable to postcolonial experiences and non-Western contexts. Along these lines, there is still a need to diversify the geographic representation of scholars in order to pluralize knowledge on peace and sustainability.

We also identified several characteristics of scholastic engagement in studying peace and sustainability. Citation and co-citation analyses of journals and authors reveal weak engagement across disciplines. However, journals on the environment and sustainability demonstrate a potential for opening channels for interdisciplinary engagement. This is an opportunity to develop interdisciplinarity considering the interlinkages between peace and sustainability. In addition, peace scholars and subjects on sustainability and sustainable development exhibit prospects for linking thematic clusters. The interdisciplinary nature of peace as a subject of study makes it relevant to a wide array of disciplines, transcending conceptual and disciplinary boundaries.

We applied a bibliographic coupling analysis for the most cited publications to verify the characteristics of scholastic engagement. The results confirm the weak relationship or engagement between the reviewed publications. However, they produced several clusters that can guide future research agenda and policy design, as listed in Table 3. To further support the results of the co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling, we also analyzed the publications based on the co-occurrence of their keywords. A network map of the keywords reflects how research into the peace–sustainability nexus adopts a broad understanding of peace, sustainability, and related concepts. It also indicates the overlapping research agendas of different academic disciplines concerned with issues of peace and sustainability. However, the distance of the terms from each other suggests the persistence of conceptual silos in peace and sustainability research. Similarly to the co-citation analysis, the co-occurrence network reveals the potential of several keywords (e.g., humans, developing countries, Africa, China, and decision-making) for transcending conceptual boundaries. Future research may wish to focus on these keywords, including the least prominent terms (e.g., gender, citizenship, social change, and democracy) and their roles in linking peace and sustainability.

Table 3.

Existing research agenda on peace–sustainability nexus

1 Sustainable development, globalization, and economic growth and development and their implications for peace and sustainability
2 Transboundary resource management and sustainable peacebuilding
3 Institutions of and capacity-building for local and global governance
4 Peacebuilding activities and their implications for sustainability
5 Sustainability and sustainable development and their implications for global peace and security
6 Interactions between tourism, peace, and sustainability
7 Indicators for sustainability assessment and monitoring the SDGs
8 The role of education in building capacity for peace and sustainable development
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We then examined the linkages between peace and sustainability by unpacking their specific dimensions according to the types of peace (including the Pillars of Positive Peace) and dimensions of sustainability (including the SDGs). This analysis resulted in several observations. First, the types of peace and the dimensions of sustainability cannot be examined in isolation from each other, especially with the cross-relevance of the aspects of the peace–sustainability nexus. For instance, publications on the economic dimension of sustainability are also relevant to the environmental, institutional, and social dimensions. Second, there were more publications on positive peace, followed by publications on both negative and positive peace. This distribution suggests the growing importance of considering peace as a holistic concept. Although the policy sector, in broad terms, is the sector most associated with the positive peace pillars, policy-oriented research outputs have to be designed with end-users in mind. For instance, while the water-scarce region of West Asia received a significant number of publications related to the water sector, it did not have any publication on policy.

Finally, we mapped the disciplinary linkages between the positive peace pillars and confirmed the need to advance interdisciplinary engagement. When associated with the multifaceted nature of positive peace only, most of the publications do not have an interdisciplinary lens. Disaggregating sustainability according to the SDGs also reveals weak linkages between the publications despite the interrelatedness of their goals. For example, the interrelated Goal 4 (quality education), Goal 5 (gender equality), and Goal 8 (decent work and economic growth) do not have mutual publications. On the one hand, our analysis confirms the multidimensionality of positive peace and Goal 16. On the other hand, it also highlights the research gaps between the positive peace pillars and SDGs despite their conceptual and practical linkages and mutually reinforcing natures. Future research may wish to examine the mechanisms for bolstering their linkages using interdisciplinary research that speaks to both academic and policy circles. Table 4 lists our key research recommendations based on this systematic scoping of publications on peace and sustainability.

Table 4.

Proposed research agenda for better understanding the peace–sustainability nexus

1 How does peace contribute to sustainability and vice versa?
2 How do the SDGs contribute to peace and sustainability and vice versa?
3 What are the emerging policy discourses related to the peace–sustainability nexus and gaps in those discourses?
4 What are the research opportunities for developing interdisciplinarity when examining the peace–sustainability nexus?
5 How do topics that transcend conceptual boundaries, such as humans, developing countries, Africa, China, and decision-making, bolster the peace–sustainability nexus?
6 Do underexamined topics, such as gender, citizenship, social change, and democracy, present opportunities for linking peace and sustainability?
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It remains unclear how can peace contribute to sustainability and vice versa. Although there have been several studies that have examined the implications of environmental degradation for conflict risks as this review has shown, little is known about the peace-promoting potential of sustainability and the sustainability-promoting potential of peace. Peace scholars can also contribute a critical methodology to sustainability studies by examining the implications of sustainability initiatives for existing socio-economic inequalities at national and global levels. On the other hand and amidst this burgeoning scholarship, researchers of sustainability have the opportunity to integrate temporal and spatial considerations into peace and conflict studies. Sustainability scholars can fill in the environmental gaps in peace and conflict studies, and peace scholars can bring to the fore socio-historical considerations of achieving sustainability. Crucial to the peace–sustainability nexus is the SDGs, especially with the growing adoption of national strategies for implementing them. Societies experiencing conflict and sustainability issues and governments that face challenges in SDGs implementation may benefit from research on how the SDGs can contribute to peace and sustainability and vice versa. Related to this is the need to map policy discourses on peace–sustainability nexus in order to identify gaps in policy implementation. Ultimately, the challenge for peace and sustainability researchers is to ensure that their findings translate into positive social impact.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (PDF 1581 kb) (1.5MB, pdf)

Biographies

Ayyoob Sharifi

is an Associate Professor at the Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) and the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University. His research is mainly at the interface of urbanism and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Dahlia Simangan

is an Assistant Professor of the Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) and the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University. Her research interests include post-conflict peacebuilding and international relations in the Anthropocene.

Shinji Kaneko

is the Director of the Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) and Professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University. He has conducted numerous academic and policy research on natural resources, energy, and the environment in developing countries.

Footnotes

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Ayyoob Sharifi, Email: sharifi@hiroshima-u.ac.jp.

Dahlia Simangan, Email: simangan@hiroshima-u.ac.jp.

Shinji Kaneko, Email: kshinji@hiroshima-u.ac.jp.

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