Climate change poses complex risks to sustainable peace and security. A growing body of research on the links between climate change, fragility and conflict shows that climate change will make peacebuilding more urgent and complex. Climate-sensitive peacebuilding has the potential to significantly contribute to addressing climate-fragility risks, especially in combination with conflict-sensitive climate change adaptation.

The Peacebuilding Fund (PBF) and the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) have both started to address the links between climate change, fragility and conflict and these experiences can be used to further strengthen their engagement on the top. The aim of the paper is twofold: 1) to show how climate change is impacting efforts to build and sustain peace, and 2) to provide concrete recommendations on how climate change could be better integrated into the PBC’sand PBF’s works.

Natural resource conflicts:Climate change can alter access to and the availability of natural resources such as land and water, which in turn can contribute to increased competition over these resources. In particular, if natural resource and conflict management institutions are dysfunctional, and if certain groups are excluded from these institutions, this competition can escalate into violence. Livelihood insecurity: Climate change threatens the livelihoods of many populations around the world that are dependent on climate-sensitive sectors suchas fishing, herding and agriculture. As women play a key role in agriculture, they are therefore particularly affected by land degradation, drought and food insecurity. Livelihood insecurity can, in turn, drive a number of risk dynamics. It can act as a push factor for migration, contributing to people moving from the countryside to cities, where they often settle in more peripheral and poorer areas such as slums, leaving them vulnerable to a whole range of risks from crime to extreme weather events.

Disasters: Extreme weather events such as tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons can increase conflict risks and contribute to political instability, particularly in fragile contexts. A government’s preparation for and reaction to a disaster is critical. In the worst-case scenario, government actions can create grievances and increase the risks of conflict, especially if certain segments of the population have the perception that they are being excluded from aid delivery, i.e. treated unfairly.

Volatile food prices: Climate change, together with other factors such as population growth, energy prices and the growth of biofuel production, is increasingly affecting food supply. Changes in food supply can lead to food price hikes and volatility, which in turn can act as a catalyst for political instability. In addition, linking peacebuilding and climate change adaptation can create significant synergies and co-benefits across the spectrum of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
About: The climate diplomacy initiative is a collaborative effort of the German Federal Foreign Office in partnership with adelphi. The initiative and this publication are supported by a grant from the German Federal Foreign Office.