The PSC is the key global event on climate change and security, bringing together high-level policymakers, experts and practitioners to explore concrete actions on development, foreign and security policy to address interlinked climate-security risks in a holistic way. This edition of the PSC will focus on reviewing progress on climate-security action - you are welcome to contribute with your cases by completing our short survey.
Inspired by the COP 21 model, the Paris Peace Forum will be a forum for discussion and debate with special emphasis on civil society initiatives, and for sharing experiences and innovative solutions involving all the stakeholders in governance.
The Geneva Peace Week Building Peace in a Turbulent World This year takes place from 5-9 November 2018. It emphasizes the urgency of finding peaceful solutions for the growing risks of violent conflict, building on the lessons from history and the needs for future peacebuilding practice.
"Land degradation is a root cause of migration and a trigger of conflicts", said Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in a recent interview with the ECC platform. Whether for growing crops, grazing animals or constructing houses – land is a prerequisite for human life. But global pressures on land are increasing and threaten millions of livelihoods - and thus peace and stability.
Can climate change be the source of conflicts or is it merely one among several catalyzers that worsen the pre-existing condition on the ground in some cases? And how can we avoid climate change mitigation and adaptation policies not to become a new source of tensions between groups in society?
Environmental peacebuilding strives to reduce conflict risks associated with natural resources and to enable societies to profit fully from their natural resource wealth. In order to be successful, it must follow a context-sensitive approach. Nina Engwicht shows that, in Sierra Leone, the environmental risk factors for conflict have only been addressed at the surface.
Iraqi Kurdistan is blessed with abundant water resources, but these resources are under increasing stress. Changing demographics, dam building in neighboring countries, and drought have driven Kurdish hydropolitics to a critical juncture where two distinct water futures are possible—and both have implications for regional stability and for U.S. interests.
Water-related terrorism is not a new phenomenon, but one that is currently on the rise. To better understand the strategic use of water and water infrastructure by terrorist organizations, researchers from the Florida International University looked into over 170,000 worldwide terror incidents between 1970-2016 on the search for water-related terrorism - here is what they found out.
After nearly fifteen years of study, what do we know about the relationship between climate change and conflict? To answer this question, Joshua Busby; Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, focuses on five different causal pathways: agricultural production and food prices, economic growth, migration, disasters, and international and domestic institutions.
Starting in 2014, the number of migrants from Central America’s Northern Triangle surged. Experts blame the region’s widespread criminal violence for spurring migration. But the Northern Triangle countries also share similar ecology, staple crops, and vulnerability to climate events. While environmental and natural resource factors are just part of the complex picture, understanding how they intersect with other migration drivers is key to creating and implementing effective policy responses.
The impact of hundreds and thousands of Rohingya refugees have been devastating to the forest cover and water availability in Cox’s Bazar, fuelling resentments with the local population.
On 22 March 2018, the UN Security Council held a discussion on the causes of conflict and human suffering in the Lake Chad Basin. Chitra Nagarajan, adelphi’s partner in the G7 Lake Chad Climate-Fragility Risk Assessment project was one of the expert briefers. She along other invited experts highlighted the importance of forward-looking climate security risk assessments on the ground for responses to the crisis to be better equipped for promoting peace and sustainable development.
A recent article in Nature Climate Change has spurred a new chapter in the lively scholarly debate over the potential relationship between climate change and violent conflict. Malin Mobjörk (SIPRI) and Sebastian van Baalen (Uppsala University) argue that although there are several forms of sampling bias in this field, researchers must pay deeper attention to the “nuts and bolts” that shape both climate-related conflicts and our understanding of them.
UNGA President Miroslav Lajcak will convene a high-level meeting to assess efforts undertaken and opportunities to strengthen the UN's work on peacebuilding and sustaining peace.
Cape Town is dealing with one of the biggest climate change-linked water crises to face a modern city. This should serve as our wake-up call: we must transition to a new, shared way of organising around increasingly stretched resources, writes Leonie Joubert.