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There is a growing recognition that climate change and the environment may have a significant influence on conflict and human security, but also that conflicts significantly affect the environment. Climate change certainly affects human livelihoods and security. Impacts may vary according to context and environment, and it is certainly true that climate change can contribute to conflict but is unlikely to be the sole cause. In situations where climate change is a determinant of conflict, it may exacerbate conflict and/or can precipitate conflict in already fragile situations. There may be cases where climate change is (or was) not so relevant as a cause of conflict, although it is also clear that conflicts today are impacted by, or impact, environmental degradation.
Research on the environment and security tends to be dominated by two main approaches: firstly, a focus on environmental cooperation; and, secondly, a focus on resource risk. The cooperation perspective has an optimistic view of spill-over effects from environmental cooperation. For example, cooperation around shared environmental concerns has implications for cooperation between groups around other issues, including peacebuilding. The resource risk perspective recognizes that resource inequity may lead to intrastate conflict and therefore stresses the role of conflict mitigation through environmental cooperation, treating the mismanagement of natural resources as the key threat for conflict relapse.
There are three fundamental approaches to environmental peacebuilding based on security, livelihoods, and politics, which are overlapping. At the same time, we recognize that there are four potential pathways to increased conflict risk as a direct result of climate change:
- Livelihoods: pressures on resources for survival;
- Migration: how far people are forced to move due to environmental degradation;
- Armed group behaviour: including exploitation of local resources; and
- Exploitation by political elites: particularly from extractive industries.
Integrating these issues into a form of environmental peacebuilding builds community resilience directly linked to sustainable development.
This implies that climate security risks can be mitigated by strengthening the capability of institutions in fragile and conflict-affected settings to adapt to climate change and effectively manage natural resources. This institutional mitigation requires significant bureaucratic and managerial capability both to manage at national and local level, but also to realistically participate in the transnational agreements required to mitigate climate change. The Principles of Effective Governance of the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA) therefore have a direct influence on climate change within fragile and conflict-affected environments.
At its twenty-first session, the Committee considered the question of building strong institutions to combat climate change and its impacts and for the sustainable management, protection and restoration of natural resources. The Committee suggested potential ways forward for governments based on creating incentives, reforming taxes and subsidies, the establishment of metrics and a change in human behaviour. At the twenty-second session, the Committee will take this further by drawing attention to connections between the state of the environment and peacebuilding with specific reference to institutional challenges within fragile and conflict-affected countries.
Within insecure settings there are additional challenges since these are inherently difficult areas to govern and, government may also lack significant capacity to cope. Despite this, public administration and institutions play an important role in developing integrated approaches regarding long-term development objectives amid the multiple challenges that countries emerging from conflict face, not least in balancing short-term needs for security with the longer-term requirements of sustainable development. Indeed government, public administration and governance of public institutions is more complex in conflict-affected countries than in peaceful ones: precisely as the lack of capacity remains acute.
Potential policy approaches to environmental peacebuilding the Committee may wish to focus on would include:
- Better analysis: understanding underlying causes and mechanisms allows countries experiencing climate change and increased conflict risk to improve analysis and reporting along with programming to mitigate risk. Better information may also better differentiate between short term aims and long-term goals.
- Co-ordinated policy thinking: an approach based on environmental peacebuilding encourages coordinated policy thinking. Environmental security encompasses the entire socio-ecological system and encompasses challenges that cut across traditional governance boundaries like local/national.
- Taking a climate-sensitive lens: environmental peacebuilding requires recognition of the fact that climate change and natural resource issues are at the core of conflict and need to be recognized as a means of addressing underlying injustice.
- Recognizing gender and youth: recognizing these groups within environmental peacebuilding efforts can help to further identify potential injustice, while also taking into account the most vulnerable users of natural resources.
- Working internationally: enhanced engagement with the UN peacebuilding architecture in supporting projects that promote climate resilience and adaptation in conflict-affected States. This approach could offer enhanced opportunities for engagement with regional and sub-regional organizations and international actors to better cope with the trans-national effects of climate change.
By Paul Jackson, Member of the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA) and Programme Director, British Academy and Professor, School of Government and Society, University of Birmingham