For researchers looking into global security dynamics, it is becoming increasingly difficult to overlook climate change as a threat multiplier in conflict situations. While climate change may not directly cause conflict, it may be inextricably woven into pre-existing conflicts of power, ethnicity, and economic interest. Understading the role of climate-related impacts on security is therefore crucial for global peace.
In order to help address escalating violence, UN Environment has launched the UN Initiative for Environmental Defenders. This brief analyses the initiative and looks into how member states can support peace by engaging in environmental diplomacy, with a focus on Brazil.
Working with over 30 partners, the World Resources Institute (WRI) has recently launched the Resource Watch. The platform provides a wide array of data sets on various sustainability topics, ranging from food security to urban climate challenges.
This book is a joint United Nations and World Bank study that looks at how development processes can better interact with diplomacy and mediation, security and other tools to prevent conflict from becoming violent.
This working paper by adelphi explores the new research field of city fragility and its links to climate change and migration.
Despite six years of crisis in Syria, agriculture remains a key part of the economy. The sector still accounts for an estimated 26 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and represents a critical safety net for the 6.7 million Syrians – including those internally displaced - who still remain in rural areas. However, agriculture and the livelihoods that depend on it have suffered massive loss. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has now conducted the first comprehensive nationwide assessment on the cost of the war to the agriculture sector.
Catalysing the climate economy will be at the heart of climate diplomacy in the years to come. This infographic visualises the cascading benefits of climate action and the role of climate diplomacy.
This volume is the second publication under the ASEAN-Canada Research Partnership project and builds on the project's first phase on economic inequality amid growth.
Blood Timber is a report by global witness which reveals how logging companies in the Central African Republic have paid millions of euros into the hands of rebels guilty of mass murder, kidnappings, rapes and the forced recruitment of child soldiers. It also finds that the EU is complicit in these actions because of their intensive trade relations. The report therefore calls on the EU and its member states to cut all trade and aid links to CAR’s logging industry, which continues to be a source of instability as the African country struggles to restore peace.
This report explores natural World Heritage sites, which, as large areas of habitat, play an important role in increasing resilience and providing vital protection against climate change impacts. Alarmingly, the report finds that almost half of these sites are currently threatened by operations such as mining, large-scale infrastructure or oil and gas exploration since too often short-term financial gain is favoured over long-term sustainable development.
This publication sheds light on the multitude of international cooperative initiatives (ICIs) which are underway outside the formal UN climate negotiating process.
A new WHO report highlights the urgent need to reduce emissions of black carbon, ozone and methane - as well as carbon dioxide – which all contribute to climate change. Black carbon, ozone and methane – frequently described as short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) - not only produce a strong global warming effect, they contribute significantly to the more than 7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution.