Module 2.1. Key Concepts

Successful locally led action will holistically engage the complex, multidirectional interactions between climate, peace and security.

Module 2.1 introduces :

This module will help users:

• explain complex interactions in the Climate-Peace-Security Nexus
• trace the emergence of the global Climate, Peace and Security agenda
• gain familiarity with case studies that will be used throughout the action toolkit

this section is adapted from Localising Climate, Peace and Security: Documenting, Assessing, and Addressing Climate Security Challenges at the Local Level – A Practical Step-by-Step Guide for Local Peacebuilding Actors

Climate change acts indirectly as a “multiplier” of existing conflict risks; peace and security challenges can hinder climate action. Locally led action on climate, peace and security is about addressing climate-related security risks and working to prevent those risks from emerging or escalating.

When working on climate, peace and security issues, it is important to appreciate the complicated relationships between them. They can perhaps best be thought of as a web: a collection of many strands that overlap and are interconnected at various loci. Pulling on any piece of the web will have knock-on effects on other parts of it, and those reverberations can be difficult to predict or trace. Highlighted below are a few important things to remember about these connections.

Climate change and security are linked in complex ways. Climate change can multiply security risks; and fragility, violence and conflict can contribute to climate change and environmental degradation. This is especially true in contexts where governance is weak and coping capacities are limited. Addressing the impacts of climate change and security concerns separately can slow or stop sustainable development and peace.

Climate security challenges are also highly context-specific. Interactions between climate change and security vary across countries, regions and localities. How climate and security interact at the local level will depend on the exposure (type and severity) to climate change hazards in the context of local community vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities. Without taking all three factors into account and conducting a thorough, integrated problem analysis, projects will struggle to understand and address the full breadth of risks causing fragility.

Climate change hazards can affect human security in a local community by reducing access to food, water, or energy, limiting access to land and sea, changing human migration patterns, disturbing commerce/trade, and spreading disease. Increased fear, conflict, poverty, and breakdown of social and cultural ties can all occur as a result.

Conflict, fragility, and social tensions can also contribute to climate change. For example, when trees are cut down to fence off land from attacks or sell for food in conflict-affected areas, the local soil may lose its ability to hold water or grow crops, worsening climate impacts and driving further fragility.

These connections are multi-directional. Climate change hazards can increase vulnerability and undermine the adaptive capacity of local structures that create stability. In turn, both can lead to more intense and unpredictable climate-related security risks (for example, the desertification of farmland might contribute to an increase in violence between groups competing for land use and resource access).

These connections do not play out in the same way at every scale. The complexity of climate, peace and security linkages means that climate change hazards are not easily predicted and can be highly specific to a community or locality at a distinct time. That makes identifying specific local impacts of climate change, confirming links to local vulnerabilities, and understanding the robustness of local adaptive capacities crucial to successful locally led action.

These connections have unequal impacts on various actors. It is also critical to remember that issues of climate, peace and security affect different groups in different ways. Even within a single community, groups that are highly vulnerable to climate change, have a low adaptive capacity or have few ways of maintaining stability may experience more negative impacts than others. Such groups can include women, Indigenous peoples, the differently abled, migrants, children, the elderly, other minorities and other underrepresented or underresourced groups. Analysing their situation can provide valuable insights and data to develop strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate and security hazards and risks.

These connections often result in feedback loops. Imagine a community living near a forest that is reliant on that forest for food. When a climate change-induced drought reduces the forest’s productivity, the community becomes food insecure. The resulting instability creates interpersonal conflict between households in the village. Because of these intergroup tensions, the community is less readily able to collaborate on a water-saving project suggested by a local NGO. Without climate action, the drought worsens – and so does food insecurity and local conflict, creating a vicious cycle. However, this isn’t inevitable. Climate, peace and security connections are often negative, but they can also be positive. Though a climate change-induced drought might be a contributing factor to rising tensions between two communities when both feel water-stressed, that same drought could also be the impetus for two conflicting tribes to come together and collaborate on shared resource management. Whether a climate-peace-security connection has positive or negative impacts – and for whom – can be dramatically affected by social and political responses.

These realities about the complexities of the climate, peace and security nexus mean that it is critically important to adopt a nuanced, participatory approach to climate adaptation, environmental management, and peacebuilding initiatives. A participatory approach gathers diverse perspectives to better understand the multiple impacts an intervention might have, enabling locally led action to make the most of potential positive outcomes and minimise any unintended negative effects.

this section is adapted from Nature-based Solutions for Peace: Emerging Practice and Options for Policymakers; the UN Peacebuilding Fund’s Tip Sheet on Climate, Peace and Security and Environmental Peacebuilding; and the UN Climate Security Mechanism: Agenda and timeline

The climate, peace and security agenda emerged in recent years as the international community became increasingly aware of and attentive to the interconnections between climate change, security risks and sustaining peace. This includes both climate-informed peace and security work and peace-positive climate action.

The United Nations Secretary-General has recognized that the climate crisis is now contributing to conflict in a host of ways. While climate change is rarely the direct cause of conflict, its interactions with existing socioeconomic and political factors can exacerbate conflict risks. In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted again the increasingly severe, interconnected and often irreversible impacts of climate change on ecosystems, biodiversity, and human systems. Changes of this magnitude inevitably affect human, national and international peace and security. The climate, peace and security interplay also has implications for climate action: Whilst among the hardest hit by climate change, most countries and communities affected by fragility and conflict are also among those that have contributed the least to the climate crisis.

Peace and security conferences all over the world now have climate change on the agenda and, vice versa, conflict sensitivity is increasingly a topic in the climate action discourse. This was visible at COP27, where the Egyptian Presidency launched the “Climate Responses for Sustaining Peace” initiative, and at COP28, where the UAE Presidency launched the Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace Declaration endorsed by more than ninety Member States and over forty organizations.

In April 2007, the UN Security Council first discussed the interlinkages between energy, climate, and security under the Presidency of the United Kingdom (S/PV.5663); later that year, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”. Two years later, the UN Secretary-General’s report on “Climate Change and its Possible Security Implications” (A/64/350) identified climate change as a “threat multiplier”.

In 2019, the Climate Security Mechanism (CSM) was established as a joint initiative between the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The Secretary-General’s 2023 policy brief on A New Agenda for Peace included recommendations to address the interlinkages between climate, peace and security, and cemented the CPS agenda throughout the UN system.

Today, the field of climate, peace and security consists of scholarship and practice that considers all human-caused environmental change, its impacts on the risks of violent conflict and responses that address both conflict prevention and ecological preservation simultaneously.

The case studies below illustrate some of the diverse interactions between climate, peace and security. They are based on empirical research and projects implemented by UNEP. See the Resource Library for additional real-world context and analysis.

Gendered Impacts of Climate Change and Conflict

Extreme weather and armed violence can affect men and women differently, impacting issues such as migration, livelihoods and physical security. Read more about the real-world context this case study is based on here.

In a river basin community, livelihood insecurity related to climate conditions has become a key driver of seasonal and permanent out-migration, particularly among young men. Extreme flooding destroys crops, compelling men to migrate to cities with jobs that are less vulnerable to natural hazards, such as construction. An apparently lucrative – though dangerous – alternative is to answer the recruitment call of armed groups operating in an armed conflict nearby.

The community members who remain behind – most often women – are tasked with increased household burdens and frequently have to take on new roles to compensate for lost income of family members who migrate. The presence of armed conflict in the area also means women are at increasingly greater risk of sexual violence.

DROUGHT, ILLEGAL FISHING AND PIRACY

Coastal communities experiencing drought-related famine may turn to piracy, leading to conflict with fishermen and affecting local fish stocks. Read more about the real-world context this case study is based on here and here.

After a severe climate change-induced drought, a regional dependence on agriculture and pastoralism meant that millions of people lost their livelihoods and experienced famine. Many have turned to piracy as a means of survival. Increased piracy leads to exacerbated violence between pirates and illegal fishing vessels, whose unsustainable fishing practices have been a long-term cause of marine ecosystem degradation along the coast.

Though it has various negative impacts, piracy also plays a role in limiting overfishing, as the presence of criminal networks on the water deters other marine activity. When government naval patrols and judicial policies target piracy without addressing its root causes (e.g., poverty, food insecurity, climate-induced resource scarcity, etc.), heightened levels of illegal fishing become an unintended consequence. Ongoing climate-related disruptions could further destabilise the area, potentially exacerbating piracy and maritime conflict – which would likely have both negative and positive impacts for marine conservation. 

Land Use, resource availability AND CONFLICT

Competing resource needs between pastoralists and farmers, combined with poor governance, may exacerbate intercommunity tensions and environmental degradation. Read more about the real-world context this case study is based on here.

In an arid region, climate change is affecting natural resource availability in ways that lead to livelihood insecurity for pastoralists and farmers alike.

Nomadic pastoralists are shifting their migratory routes in search of water and food for their herds, sometimes encroaching on the lands of nearby farmers; farmers, meanwhile, may try to cultivate crops on migratory routes or animal grazing land.

Community resource management mechanisms that once negotiated land use have become dysfunctional or no longer exist, and many rules and regulations are not properly implemented. As a result, competing land and resource use is increasingly creating tensions between pastoralists and farmers.

Resource competition and poor management further exacerbates environmental degradation, and the resulting tensions have increasingly sparked violent conflict.

flooding, land degradation and taxation

Climate change impacts may alter natural borders; when these borders are used to define access rights or taxation systems, conflict may emerge when communities feel unfairly treated. Read more about the real-world context this case study is based on here.

For a community living near a national park, a river has historically delineated the official boundary between their land and government territory. However, climate change is contributing to the frequency and intensity of floods, which have resulted in changes to the river’s course. As a result, the ‘natural’ boundary of the national park has shifted over time, cutting into the community’s farmland. More than 100 hectares of farmland have been lost; however, maps have not been updated to reflect the changes, and the government continues to tax farmers according to outdated records. This has given rise to disputes over land taxation between local authorities and farmers whose land has been degraded or lost due to flooding.

urban water scarcity and ethnic violence

Dense populations affected by strained water availability may compete for resources. Weak governance can exacerbate the issues, allowing intergroup tensions to escalate. Read more about the real-world context this case study is based on here.

The impacts of climate change on a densely populated river basin are straining water availability in a major city. As a result, only half of the city’s water needs are being met: daily availability is 550 million gallons, but the city’s water demand is 1.1 billion gallons per day. 

Weak governance resulting from the long-term impacts of colonialism and ethnic conflict means that official institutions and criminal groups are competing with each other for control of limited water resources. The city’s water and sewerage board, which is formally responsible for water and sanitation, has been highly politicised by parties representing particular ethnic groups. Informal players – including partisan political staff, criminal gangs, and small-scale entrepreneurs – have stepped in to make economic and political gains. Illicit access to pipelines is leveraged by various actors to maintain territorial control, secure popular support, and make money. Unjust water distribution has become the norm, and favours those in power politically, economically, and criminally. This has, in turn, deepened inter-ethnic grievances, with the potential to escalate tensions both within institutions and on the city’s streets.