Climate Action and Security – Two Sides of the Same Coin

Jan 14, 2022
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In November, the world came out of COP26 with a mixed bag of results. The 1.5 degrees target was kept alive, and 154 countries submitted revised Nationally Determined Contributions.

But let’s be frank: we are not where we need to be to stem the impacts of climate change, as the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report showed last August.

It is by now well-known that climate change is not just an environmental phenomenon, but has implications for national, and international peace and security. Over the past 60 years, it’s no surprise that 40 percent of inter-state conflict has been linked to natural resources or environmental degradation. Where natural resources are at stake, conflict recurrence is twice as likely within five years.

And while climate change doesn’t cause conflict in and of itself, there is increased evidence of the need to address climate change and environmental degradation as risk-multipliers, and therefore, as a matter of peace and security.

In Somalia, for example, drought, internal displacement, chronic food insecurity and insufficient response efforts, meant that Al Shabaab emerged as the most sinister, yet effective, service provider, which helped the group strengthen its legitimacy and increase recruitment to its ranks. And in Nigeria, degradation of pasture exacerbated the chronic conflict between farmers and nomadic herders in 2018, which resulted in intercommunal violence considered six times more deadly than Boko Haram’s insurgency, according to the International Crisis Group.