Climate adaptive strategies seek to minimize harms of climate change. Scholarly research has yet
to examine the impact of these strategies in post-conflict communities, especially with regard to
whether they might contribute to fostering greater overall well-being, or positive peace. This
thesis seeks to address this gap and adopts the research question, how does climate adaptation
impact positive peace in post-natural resource conflict communities? I hypothesize that climate
adaptation is likely to contribute to positive peace in post-natural resource conflict communities
by reducing environmental stressors through strengthened natural resource management.
Theoretically, climate adaptation provides the capacity for local communities to strengthen
natural resource management, which enables them to cope with the effects of climate change.
This in turn, reduces environmental stressors and allows communities to better meet local needs
and foster positive peace. Using a qualitative method of structured focused comparison, I collect
empirics from two districts in post-natural resource conflict Rwanda (after 2002) to test how
climate adaptation impacts positive peace at the local level. Although findings show little
evidence that climate adaptation drives positive peace, results indicate that such programs may
be poised to contribute to lessened environmental stress through strengthened natural resource
management.