On 11 August 2026, the CSM & UNSSC Climate, Crisis and Courage podcast released its fifth episode, “West Africa: Climate Change, Governance and Security Across a Connected Region”, featuring a discussion of key findings from a forthcoming UNEP-led Integrated Assessment of Climate-Related Risks for Peace and Security in the Gulf of Guinea Region. Conducted under the EU-UNEP Partnership on Climate Change, Environment, Peace & Security, in collaboration with UNOWAS and UNOCA, the assessment takes a cross-regional perspective of 18 coastal and island nations to understand how climate change affects and links to peace and security in the Gulf of Guinea.
In the episode, podcast host Nazanine Moshiri brings together three experts to explore how climate change interacts with peace, security and governance challenges across West Africa, and why effective responses require looking beyond national borders.
Ibrahim Yahya, Deputy Director of the Sahel Project at the International Crisis Group, opens the discussion by sharing how climate pressures converge with deeply rooted governance and security challenges in the Sahel to increase insecurity, instability and political tensions. He warns that climate, peace and security challenges in the Sahel risk spilling into neighboring coastal states and emphasizes that solutions must integrate a regional perspective.
Next, Mira Gratier, lead author of the forthcoming UNEP assessment of the Gulf of Guinea region, discusses the assessment’s key findings, explaining how climate change and environmental degradation interact with conflict risk in interlocking ways to erode livelihoods and weaken state legitimacy as well as reshape mobility, borders, and the lives of women and young people.
Gratier uses mobility as an example of these complex feedback loops: climate and environmental pressures, such as increased natural resource competition and declining fish stocks, are fundamentally changing mobility patterns that have long been an essential part of livelihoods and economic life across West and Central Africa. In turn, this climate-related mobility exacerbates instability by creating new governance, urban planning and service provision challenges.
Gratier notes that the assessment aims to support greater alignment between regional strategies on climate resilience and conflict prevention in the Gulf of Guinea by identifying entry points at community, national, regional, and multilateral levels where climate and peacebuilding objectives can be aligned as part of development planning. Additionally, the assessment offers programmatic recommendations, which center on three cross-cutting shifts: (i) integrating climate and environmental factors into conflict management and peacebuilding; (ii) embedding conflict-responsiveness and peace-positive objectives into climate programmes; and (iii) building interoperable mechanisms for early warning, disaster preparedness and response.
Lastly, the episode turns to Tanya Merceron, the Climate, Peace, and Security Advisor at the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), who emphasizes the need to work at the local level to develop community-based early warning systems. She also highlights the potential for regional cooperation and South-South learning based on a common understanding that climate, peace and security risks are shared across West Africa.
Listen to the episode to hear the full conversation and look out for the upcoming release of the Integrated Assessment of Climate-Related Risks for Peace and Security in the Gulf of Guinea Region.
- Spotify