Across the world, widening inequality undermines economies as well as the foundation that holds societies together, making peace increasingly fragile. History shows that when opportunities are limited to a small elite and the dignity of work is denied to the majority, societies become prone to division and unrest. Therefore, it’s crucial to perceive peace not just as the absence of conflict but as the presence of fairness, justice, and equal access to resources and opportunities. This is what positive peace means, a state where social trust, dignity of labour, fairness in institutions, and community resilience support stability.
Economic disparity is a major destabilising force, but it’s only part of the equation. Oxfam reports that the richest 1% have seized nearly two-thirds of all new wealth created globally since 2020, while the World Inequality Report shows the richest 10% command more than half of global income. Such concentration of wealth erodes trust and fuels unrest.
Yet inequality rarely acts alone; it interacts with fragile health systems, weak education structures, and environmental shocks, creating cascading crises that erode resilience and fracture communities from within. Thus, to focus solely on economics, risks narrowing the lens. Peace must be pursued through multiple, interconnected pathways.
Peace goes beyond negotiations in conferences; it is lived daily in classrooms, clinics, and communities. When education fails, health systems break down, or the environment becomes uninhabitable; instability emerges even before the outbreak of violence. These domains are the everyday frontlines where resilience is either built or broken.
Education enables people to identify early-on the factors that trigger conflict, whether it is an ethnic divide, resource issues, or political marginalisation. As factors that trigger conflict vary from one geography to another, education at the local and grassroot level becomes a preventive measure. For instance, in Colombia, peace education has assisted in restoring trust among families affected by conflict, demonstrating how reconciliation can be taught and lived every day.
Several educational institutions now offer academic courses on peace and conflict resolution. For instance, the Rotary Peace Fellowships that have trained over 1,900 peacebuilders from communities around the world since 2002, many now working in government and civil society to strengthen long-term peace systems. This commitment has recently expanded in Asia with a Rotary Peace Center at Symbiosis International University in Pune, India. The new centre will welcome its first cohort of Rotary Peace Fellows in February 2027.
Health is equally central. The Covid‑19 pandemic proved this brutally, when ventilators ran short and vaccines were hoarded, leaving communities vulnerable to untreated illness. Inequality was laid bare, and anger spilled into protests across different parts of the world. What began as a health emergency quickly became a crisis of trust with citizens questioning whether their governments valued their lives equally or only the privileged few. Without accessible health care, peace remains precarious because dignity and trust erode when survival itself is uncertain.
Environmental shocks add another layer of vulnerability. Climate disasters displace millions, disrupt education, and erode livelihoods. The Canadian wildfires of 2023 burned more than 18 million hectares and displaced tens of thousands of families. But the impact went far beyond Canada’s borders: smoke turned New York’s skies orange, grounded flights in Europe, and forced millions indoors. What began as a climate disaster became a global health emergency, straining hospitals across regions. For younger generations, the trauma translated into eco‑anxiety, a gnawing fear that tomorrow itself is unsafe. Such environmental shocks are then not isolated tragedies; they become conflict multipliers.
These three strands – education, health and environment are inseparable. A school that teaches coexistence, a clinic that heals, and a community that rebuilds after a disaster are not isolated achievements; they are the architecture of sustainable peace.
Peace is not the outcome of isolated solutions. Rather, it must be created through systems that ensure dignity, trust, and resilience. It thrives when education, health care, and environmental safeguards are simultaneously achieved and supported by each other. Such societies where inclusive growth forms the foundation, don’t merely withstand shocks, they emerge stronger.
The 2025 Global Peace Index shows that global peacefulness has deteriorated for the 13th time in the past 17 years, while the UNHCR’s record figure of 120 million displaced people in 2024 underscores how fragile health systems, disrupted education, and climate shocks are converging to fragment societies. Inclusive growth is therefore not a peripheral goal, but the anchor that ensures opportunity is shared rather than hoarded, allowing displaced families to rebuild and host communities to thrive.
The message is clear: Positive peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of a set of interlocking systems that make conflict unthinkable. If we fail to build this architecture, displacement, distrust, and division will continue to polarise communities. But if we succeed, peace will no longer be a matter of survival, but a matter of transforming crises into strength, and difference into dialogue.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Bharat Pandya, president (2028–29), Rotary International and Vidya Yeravdekar, principal director, Symbiosis, and chancellor, Symbiosis International (Deemed University).
