Module 0.1. Key Concepts

In order to develop a robust contextual understanding of an area, facilitators need to have an appreciation for how environmental, social, economic and political factors interact to create realities and experiences for local communities.

Module 0.1 introduces key conceptual frameworks informing social and environmental analysis, including:

This module will help users:

• understand key terms in Climate, Peace and Security, especially as related to conflict-sensitive climate resilience
• build awareness of various analytical frameworks examining social and environmental systems
• consider the importance of integrating locally led action with national and global policy frameworks

This action toolkit is built on the understanding that climate change, environmental degradation, peace and stability are interconnected in a variety of ways at local, regional, national, and global levels. More on these intersections is presented in Module 2.1.

Since the purpose of Locally Led Action on Climate, Peace and Security is to achieve peace-positive, conflict-sensitive climate resilience, community facilitators and project managers should feel confident with foundational concepts around climate change, conflict sensitivity, and sustaining peace. A few key terms are discussed below; see the glossary to review additional related vocabulary.

Climate, Peace and Security (CPS)
The field of research, practice, and policymaking focused on the linkages between climate change, peace and security and efforts to implement suitable risk reduction and response measures. As climate change accelerates, its impacts risk exacerbating existing social, economic, and environmental drivers of insecurity at local levels (where communities struggle to cope with converging pressures) and internationally (when resources and ecosystems are shared across borders). At the same time, insecurity hinders climate change adaptation efforts and risks leaving already vulnerable communities even poorer and less resilient to interlinked climate and security crises. Effective CPS solutions are derived from integrated approaches.
Adapted from UNEP, IPCC
Example: Rainfall variability and drought leading to competition over shared water resources, exacerbating historical tensions between ethnic groups.

Climate change
Long-term shifts in temperature, precipitation, and weather patterns. Since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
Source: UNEP
Example: Increasing global temperatures causing more frequent heatwaves and extreme weather events.

Climate change adaptation
Adjustments in ecological, social, or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects. Climate change adaptation involves changes in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change. In simple terms, countries and communities need to develop adaptation solutions and implement actions to respond to current and future climate change impacts.
Source: UNFCCC
Example: A village conserving and restoring mangrove forests to mitigate flood risk when a nearby delta experiences heavy rainfall.

Climate resilience
The capacity of social, economic, and ecological systems to cope with a climate-related hazardous event, trend, or disturbance, responding or reorganising in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure as well as biodiversity in case of ecosystems while also maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning and transformation. Climate resilience is a positive attribute when it maintains such a capacity for adaptation, learning, and/or transformation.
Source: IPCC
Example: Building drought-resilient water supply systems whose use is managed by community-led natural resource management and peacebuilding committees.

Conflict sensitivity
Conflict sensitivity aims at promoting awareness of the interactions between activities and the peace and conflict context in which they are delivered. It aims, at a minimum, to “do no harm” and minimise the risk that activities could contribute to furthering tensions. It also helps leverage opportunities for activities to contribute to sustaining peace.
Source: UN Sustainable Development Group
Example: Ensuring that humanitarian aid in a conflict zone is distributed equally among all groups to avoid fuelling tensions between recipients.

Conflict drivers
Dynamic processes that contribute to the ignition or exacerbation of destructive conflict as a result of structural and/or proximate factors. Conflict drivers usually manifest themselves in violence or directly contribute to the emergence of violent conflict.
Source: UNSDG

• Root/structural factors are the long-term factors underlying violent conflict. They normally are a mixture of long-standing, deep-rooted grievances.
  Examples: limited or inequitable access to land and resources; illegitimate or ineffective government; low political participation; lack of equal economic and social opportunities.
• Intermediate/proximate factors are visible, recent manifestations of the conflict. One way to differentiate an intermediate cause from a root factor is to use the ‘if not for’ test: i.e. ‘if not for x (the root factor), then y (the intermediate factor) would not have happened’.
  Example: ‘If not for the lack of legislation protecting pastoralists right to access natural resources, then the violent seizure of water resources from local farmers would not have happened.’
• Triggers are short-term, often sudden or unforeseen events that provoke a large-scale response from the population; triggers may provoke a violent manifestation, the outbreak of conflict or escalate a preexisting conflict. Examples: tumultuous elections; environmental catastrophes; military coups; unexpected scarcity of basic commodities; a rapid rise in unemployment

Peace engines
Elements and/or processes that exist within a society that mitigate the emergence and proliferation of violent conflict, and strengthen foundations for peace. Peace engines draw upon and reinforce the innate resilience of a society. As with conflict drivers, factors contributing to peace engines might be structural or proximate, and triggers can serve to instigate large-scale positive responses as well as negative. (e.g., populations rallying around a cultural event).
Source: UNSDG
Examples: social equity; ceasefire agreements; a diverse population rallying around a cultural event

Sustaining peace
A goal and process to build a common vision of a society, ensuring that the needs of all segments of the population are taken into account. This encompasses activities aimed at preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict, addressing root causes, assisting parties to conflict to end hostilities, ensuring national reconciliation, and moving towards recovery, reconstruction, and development. Sustaining peace is a shared task and responsibility that needs to be fulfilled by the government and all other national stakeholders and needs sustained international attention and assistance.
Source: UN General Assembly
Example: A community where people value building strong relationships with their neighbours and the environment around them.

Building on developments in global policy and practice regarding the above concepts, the central goal of this toolkit is to support the implementation of locally led projects that will result in conflict-sensitive climate resilience. Such projects are peace-positive: they help sustain peace by engaging diverse communities in collaborative actions that productively address climate-related risks.

Beyond understanding the basics of what climate change is, locally led projects need to be aware of how climate change is likely to affect their specific region and context. Climate change risks refer to the potential threats posed by long-term shifts in global and regional climate patterns. These risks can be categorised into sudden onset and slow onset events, both of which have significant environmental, social and economic impacts.

Differentiating between sudden and slow onset hazards is essential because they require different types of interventions. Sudden disasters demand immediate crisis response and short-term recovery measures, while slow onset changes necessitate proactive planning and long-term adaptation. Recognising these distinctions allows communities, governments, and organisations to allocate resources effectively, balance emergency preparedness with future-focused resilience, and implement policies that address both immediate threats and gradual environmental shifts.

Hazards are defined by the IPCC as “the potential occurrence of a natural or human-induced physical event or trend that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, as well as damage and loss to property, infrastructure, livelihoods, service provision, ecosystems and environmental resources.”

Sudden onset hazards are extreme weather disasters that occur rapidly and cause immediate destruction. Because these events happen quickly and with immediate consequences, responses typically focus on emergency preparedness, disaster response, and short-term recovery efforts, such as evacuation plans, resilient infrastructure, and relief aid. Some examples of sudden onset climate hazards include:

• Hurricanes, cyclones, and tropical storms bring intense winds, heavy rainfall, and flooding, often devastating coastal and low-lying communities.
• Wildfires ignite and spread rapidly due to dry conditions, destroying ecosystems, property, and air quality.
• Heatwaves are prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, which can cause heat-related illnesses and strain energy and water resources.
• Droughts occur when prolonged dry conditions lead to water shortages, affecting agriculture, food security, and biodiversity.

Slow onset hazards develop gradually over time, leading to long-term environmental and societal changes. Unlike sudden onset events, slow onset risks require long-term adaptation strategies, such as sustainable land management, improved water conservation, climate-resilient agriculture, and urban planning that accounts for rising sea levels. Some examples of slow onset climate risks include:

• Desertification is the degradation of land in arid areas, reducing soil fertility and making agriculture difficult.
• Sea level rise is caused by the melting of glaciers and ice caps and thermal expansion of seawater, threatening coastal settlements and ecosystems.
• Salinisation occurs when saltwater intrusion contaminates freshwater sources, reducing water availability for drinking and farming.
• Shifting seasonal rainfall patterns disrupt traditional weather cycles, affecting agriculture and water supply.
• Temperature increases lead to hotter average temperatures worldwide, intensifying extreme weather events and altering ecosystems.

The likelihood and severity of climate risks can be estimated by evaluating climate signals (observed or projected climatic patterns or trends linked to climate change such as rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, more frequent droughts, or intensifying storms). Climate signals provide clues about the types of hazards that may affect people, ecosystems, or infrastructure in the future. For example, decreasing seasonal precipitation could suggest that a given context may be likely to experience drought and/or desertification in the future.

Exposure and vulnerability are two key variables to bear in mind when addressing climate risks (regardless of whether they are sudden or slow onset).

• Exposure is defined by the IPCC as “the presence of people; livelihoods; species or ecosystems; environmental functions, services and resources; infrastructure; or economic, social or cultural assets in places and settings that could be adversely affected.”
• Vulnerability is defined by the IPCC as “the propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected. Vulnerability encompasses a variety of concepts and elements including sensitivity or susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt.”
  
  Vulnerability is the combination of susceptibility to harm (sensitivity) and the capacity to cope and adapt (adaptive capacity), which are defined as follows:
  
  
  • Sensitivity is defined by the IPCC as “the degree to which a system or species is affected, either adversely or beneficially, by climate variability or change. The effect may be direct (e.g., a change in crop yield in response to a change in the mean, range, or variability of temperature) or indirect (e.g., damages caused by an increase in the frequency of flooding).”
  • Adaptive capacity is defined by the IPCC as “the ability of systems, institutions, humans and other organisms to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities or to respond to consequences.”

While the impacts of climate change are sometimes particularly dramatic – such as an extreme weather event wreaking havoc over a large area in a short amount of time – climate change is also affecting environmental and social systems through less immediately obvious but nonetheless challenging ways. One of these is its alteration of natural resource availability and quality (for example, higher temperatures may increase evaporation rates, leading to reduced water supply). Access to and quantity of resources is also impacted by social, economic, and political factors (for example, financial incentives and limited regulation for the timber industry may result in widespread deforestation).

The availability and quality of natural resources play a critical role in shaping the sustainability, economy, and well-being of communities. Natural resources can be categorised into land, renewables, and extractives, each with distinct characteristics, uses, and management challenges. Understanding these differences is crucial for balancing economic development, environmental conservation, and social well-being.

Distinguishing between these three categories is essential for effective resource management. Recognising these distinctions enables policymakers, businesses, and communities to develop strategies that promote resilience, sustainability, and equitable access to natural resources.

• Land, as a foundational and often non-renewable asset, requires careful governance to balance economic use with environmental and cultural preservation. Land is more than just an economic asset: it is intrinsically tied to culture, heritage, identity, and community. Land provides space for agriculture, human settlement, and infrastructure, but it is also deeply connected to Indigenous rights, traditional practices, and biodiversity. Land degradation, caused by deforestation, urban expansion, and unsustainable farming practices, can threaten food security, displace communities, and contribute to climate change. Effective land management policies, such as zoning regulations, land tenure protections, and reforestation efforts, are essential for maintaining both the economic and cultural value of land.
• Renewable resources demand sustainable harvesting and replenishment strategies to prevent depletion. Renewable resources are naturally replenishing materials that, when managed sustainably, can provide long-term benefits. These include agricultural crops, livestock, non-timber forest products, and water — all essential for food production, livelihoods, and ecological balance. However, overuse, pollution, and climate variability can degrade their quality and availability. For instance, excessive irrigation can deplete water sources, while monoculture farming can lead to soil degradation. Sustainable resource management strategies, such as crop diversification, responsible water use, and conservation agriculture, help maintain the health and productivity of renewable resources.
• Extractive resources, being non-renewable, necessitate careful oversight to ensure their benefits outweigh the long-term environmental and social costs. Extractive resources include industrial and artisanal mining, commercial forestry, and oil and gas, which provide raw materials for industries and energy production. These resources are finite and often have significant environmental and social impacts, including deforestation, pollution, and community displacement. Large-scale extraction can cause habitat destruction and water contamination, while artisanal mining, though providing livelihoods, often lacks environmental and safety regulations. Sustainable extraction policies, technological innovations, and equitable governance frameworks are crucial to minimising harm while ensuring economic benefits are shared fairly.

From a human perspective, the impacts of climate change on natural resource availability and quality are particularly important as they affect individual and group livelihoods. Livelihood practices encompass the diverse ways in which individuals and communities sustain themselves through economic activities. These practices are shaped by environmental conditions, cultural traditions and access to resources, making them essential to both economic stability and social identity. Each of these practices has its own opportunities and challenges, influencing the well-being and resilience of the communities that depend on them.

Climate change poses significant threats to livelihoods, particularly in rural and vulnerable communities that depend on agriculture, livestock and natural resources. Building livelihood resilience requires careful management, policy support and adaptation to changing circumstances. By understanding the strengths and vulnerabilities of different livelihood practices, communities can develop strategies to maintain economic stability while protecting natural resources for future generations.

• Animal husbandry involves the breeding and care of livestock for food, labor, and economic security. It provides a steady source of income and nutrition, making it an essential livelihood for many rural communities. However, extreme weather events, disease outbreaks, and land degradation can threaten livestock production. Strengthening resilience in this sector can be through improved veterinary services, diversified livestock breeds, and sustainable grazing practices to mitigate environmental pressures.
• Agriculture is a fundamental livelihood for many communities, providing food and economic stability. However, agricultural resilience is highly dependent on climate conditions, soil health, and water availability. Small-scale farmers often have limited coping capacity in the face of droughts, floods, and market fluctuations. Enhancing resilience in agriculture can involve crop diversification, soil conservation techniques, climate-smart farming, and access to financial support such as insurance and credit.
• Transhumance, the seasonal movement of livestock in search of grazing land, is a traditional practice that allows communities to adapt to changing environmental conditions. It enhances resilience by preventing overgrazing and maintaining ecosystem balance. However, modern challenges such as land privatisation, political conflict, and climate change threaten this practice. Strengthening resilience for transhumant communities may require policies that protect migration corridors, ensure access to water and grazing land, and support community-based resource management.
• Mining, both industrial and artisanal, is a livelihood that provides income but often comes with significant environmental and social risks. While mining can offer short-term economic coping capacity, it often depletes natural resources, degrades ecosystems, and leads to long-term vulnerabilities such as pollution and land instability. Resilience in mining communities may depend on diversification of economic activities, responsible mining practices, and policies that ensure equitable distribution of benefits.
• Fishing and hunting are essential subsistence and commercial activities in many regions, providing food security and income. However, overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change threaten fish stocks and wildlife populations. Coping with these challenges can require sustainable fisheries management, community-based conservation efforts, and the enforcement of hunting regulations to balance resource use with long-term ecological health.
• Trade, including both local markets and larger-scale commerce, serves as an economic buffer that enhances coping capacity by providing income opportunities beyond subsistence production. Trade-based resilience depends on access to transportation, market stability, and the ability to adapt to changing supply and demand. Supporting resilience in trade-based livelihoods can involve infrastructure investment, fair market policies, and digital access to wider economic networks.

As we know from lessons that have emerged in international development over the past two decades, the challenge of promoting peace and development is not only technical but deeply political in nature. Institutions matter, and behind institutions stands a constellation of dynamics, interactions, interests and incentives about who gets what, when, how and why.

There is growing recognition that development cannot be only about what needs to be done and identifying the right ‘technical fix’. It must also be about how it is done — which entails understanding and influencing the processes, incentives, and actors that facilitate or obstruct change. Getting to the ‘how’ requires acquiring a solid understanding of underlying politics and power dynamics, as well as tailoring solutions accordingly.

Political economy frameworks have been used in international development for at least twenty years – from health and education, to energy and infrastructure, to private sector development and public financial management. In brief, political economy highlights how different political, social and economic factors and actors interact to shape development, governance and security outcomes, and why. It does so by exploring:

• Foundational and Structural Factors: Deeply embedded national, regional and international features that shape the character of the state, the nature of state-society relations, the political system and economic choices. Foundational and structural factors tend to be difficult or slow to change and so tend to constrain what is possible. Examples include geography, borders with conflict-affected countries, natural resource endowments, colonial legacies, class structures and patriarchy.
• The ‘Rules of the Game’: Both the formal rules and legal frameworks (e.g., treaties and constitutions), as well as informal norms: social and cultural traditions that guide behaviour in practice (e.g., gift-giving practices, hierarchies between ethnic or religious groups). Combined, these formal and informal rules determine how power is exercised, how resources are distributed and how state-society relations are articulated.
• Actors and Interests: Those who are relevant to the context, their interests (what they care about), their incentives (what drives them), the power or influence the different actors wield, and the relationships between them.
• Interactions and Opportunities: Challenges and possibilities for changemaking resulting from the interplay of structures, institutions, actors and current events and circumstances.

Examining issues through a political economy lens can help tease out implications for what issues or problems to work on, how and why. On the basis of hypotheses about how to foster change, political economy can help identify and inform what entry points might be available, what pressures for change can be built on, and what stakeholders and partners would need to be brought on board, including going beyond the ‘usual suspects’ embodied by formal institutions.

There is growing global attention to climate change adaptation. Article 7 of the Paris Agreement established the global goal on adaptation of enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change, with a view to contributing to sustainable development and ensuring an adequate adaptation response in the context of the temperature goal referred to in Article 2. At COP26 in 2021, the Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh work programme on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) was launched. The GGA framework includes 11 global targets to be achieved by 2030. Seven are targets for adaptation action in specific themes: water; health; biodiversity; food; infrastructure; poverty; and heritage. The other four targets address the adaptation cycle (dimensional targets): climate risk and vulnerability assessments; planning; implementation and monitoring; and evaluation and learning.

These and related international agreements are actively impacting governance at the regional, country and local levels. An awareness of national climate policies such as National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and related frameworks is essential for understanding the policy landscape that shapes and governs climate adaptation actions within and between countries.

• National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) are medium- to long-term strategies that detail a country’s approach to reducing vulnerability to climate change by integrating adaptation into national development planning. For example, a key element of São Tomé and Príncipe’s NAP process involved strengthening the capacity of the country for adaptation planning by improving the quality and access to climate information and knowledge to address the flash floods, storms, sea-level rise, coastal erosion and droughts the country is experiencing.

• Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are commitments submitted by countries under the Paris Agreement, indicating their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate impacts. These are typically updated every five years. As an example, Colombia’s 2020 NDC significantly enhanced its mitigation target for emissions, with a strong focus on private sector engagement.

These documents outline a nation’s climate priorities, adaptation targets, sectoral vulnerabilities and institutional responsibilities. Reviewing them ensures that new adaptation projects align with national goals, comply with regulatory requirements and contribute to broader climate resilience strategies. It also helps find funding opportunities, tap into recognised priority areas for intervention and identify areas where coordination with government institutions can enhance project impact and sustainability. Aligning locally led climate adaptation actions with key climate-related policy frameworks (including global efforts such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs) is referred to as vertical integration.

A model for local planning for climate adaptation that highlights several of the themes discussed previously in this module is the Assessing Climate Change Adaptation Framework (ACCAF). ACCAF was designed by the LoCAL facility (managed by the United Nations Capital Development Fund, UNCDF), as a local planning and M&E tool focused on the adaptation aspects of local investments and solutions. The aim is to provide a simple, easy to use tool that supports local governments and communities to integrate climate change adaptation into their planning and budgeting systems, with attention to climate risks.

ACCAF is composed of nine steps, starting from localised climate risk assessments, then identifying local adaptation investments to address local climate risks (risk-informed planning), followed by prioritisation, selection, and the development of outcome and output indicators that will help measure progress. Evaluations are undertaken every 3-5 years to assess effectiveness of the adaptation solutions.

When conducting participatory, locally led projects, it is not possible to pre-identify the actual interventions during baseline assessment and initial scoping – those will be collaboratively determined. However, LoCAL provides a ‘menu’ of eligible investments as an indicative list of prospective local adaptation interventions – which are not meant to be prescriptive, but rather to guide local adaptation actions. The list highlights areas of action that are appropriate for local intervention and are aligned with national- and global-level policy frameworks, including NAP. Interventions will vary according to climate change impacts, ecosystems, and possible local responses. LoCAL’s Performance-Based Climate Resilience Grants may provide helpful examples of existing projects and approaches.

From a political economy perspective, it is important to consider the intersection between global agendas, national climate policy and broader contexts. Climate-related policy is often shaped by underlying political interests, power dynamics and economic dependencies (e.g., reliance on extractive industries, agricultural exports or international donor financing). A country may prioritise certain adaptation actions not solely based on climate vulnerability, but also due to political visibility, institutional capacity or vested economic interests. Understanding the political economy of a given context helps project designers identify leverage points for influence, anticipate challenges and build more politically feasible interventions. Ignoring the political economy risks designing technically sound but unfeasible projects that lack stakeholder buy-in or face implementation barriers.

Having a general understanding of the underlying context is important for project facilitators. Understanding key stresspoints for various actors, how local systems are changing, and which issues are impacting the greatest cross-section of a community will help inform the tone and direction of participatory approaches.

Baseline assessments examine the initial or starting conditions of an area prior to an intervention. By doing so, they create a ‘snapshot’ of what a system looks like, allowing for ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparisons that can help evaluate an intervention’s impact.

• Generalised baseline assessments provide a broad understanding of major issues in a particular area to support contextual awareness.
• Specific baseline assessments can be completed once a project has known goals, in order to analyse focal issues in greater detail. Specific baseline assessments often use selected indicators to measure particular areas of interest; for more on indicators, monitoring and evaluation, see Unit 6.

In the context of Locally Led Action on Climate, Peace and Security, a generalised baseline assessment should be conducted at the very beginning of a project in order to identify challenges and opportunities related to the issues discussed above: climate-related risks, natural resource availability and quality, livelihood resilience, social tensions and government institutions and policy frameworks.

Depending on the context, data collection processes for a baseline assessment may involve any number of practices: community surveys, direct measurements, geospatial analysis, expert interviews, media tracking, etc. Several relevant tools are presented in Module 0.2. Other approaches to baseline assessment include:

• a rapid environmental assessment (see pages 17 of the Synthesis Report from Community Environmental Action Planning: A Handbook for Practitioners);
• a climate security map (see pages 32-34 of the Toolbox for Addressing Climate-related Security Risks: Conflict Sensitivity for Climate Change Adaptation and Sustainable Livelihoods); or
• a literature review of existing studies or projects on conflict and environmental change in the area.

A baseline assessment helps make the monitoring and evaluation process as robust as possible. Even generalised baseline assessments contribute to what is known about a system’s starting situation so that more comparative analysis can be done to assess impact. Monitoring and evaluation is all too easily pushed to the end of a project, by which time (1) resources, including time, money and energy, are likely to be minimal; (2) it is too late to measure preexisting realities; and (3) the project cannot benefit from M&E-related learning to inform appropriate changes to its implementation. See more about monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) in Unit 6.

Additionally, by alerting facilitators to existing and potential ‘hotspots’ – whether environmental, social, political, economic, or a combination – baseline assessments can support conflict sensitivity and maximise the potential for peace-positive action. The more is known about a context and the systems within an area, the easier it will be to avoid unintentional harm, produce beneficial side effects, and purposefully engage shared stressors to create meaningful outcomes.

However, while a detailed baseline assessment can support a meaningful project, it is critical to remember that a baseline assessment created during initial scoping – a process which, by its nature, involves quite superficial levels of participation – is not fully comprehensive or intended to be the definitive analysis. A baseline assessment is meant to provide an evidence-based approach to initial decision-making. Such an assessment will not paint the full picture of an area, its opportunities, or its challenges, and should be complemented by more in-depth participatory problem analysis and solution identification processes (see Units 2 and 3).