‘Good’ Governance and Reports of Ongoing Environmental Conflicts

Conflict is a feature of all pluralistic societies (Ury, 2024). At times conflict can be severe and, unfortunately, violent (Walter, 2022). Consequently, conflict theorists have been interested in how various economic, social, and environmental factors influence the prevalence of that phenomenon (Stares, 2017). This study explores patterns between well-known governance indicators and newly created data on unresolved environmental conflicts reported within 144 countries from 2004 to 2014. Following exploratory analysis of conflicts documented in the Environmental Justice Atlas, models were tested that regressed national case counts against the Worldwide Governance Indicators and several control variables. Modeling revealed that several of the governance variables had significant relationships with conflict counts, including political voice and accountability, rule of law, and control of corruption. These findings suggest that the frequency of ongoing environmental conflicts in the country years studied were significantly related to the perceived quality of ‘good’ governance in those country years.