Charikar Flood Survivors Mourn Dead as Afghanistan Grows Increasingly Vulnerable to Climate Change

Photo by EJ Wolfson via UNSPLASH

After the August 26 flood, 129 people have already been found dead under the rubble and mud and the town is destroyed. Flooding and natural disasters are not new to Afghanistan or Pakistan, but experts warn they could increase with climate change altering weather patterns. Worse yet, both countries are ranked high as vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and among the countries least prepared to deal with the effects. 

The UNDP’s Chief of Livelihoods and Resilience warns “climate change, conflict, displacement, and urbanization are linked, climate change is a risk multiplier in the complex socio-economic and political context of Afghanistan.”

So far Pakistan’s monsoon rains this year have killed 233 people, and destroyed more than 1,300 homes. Karachi usually would receive five inches of rain from July to September, but this year it has seen more than 19 inches already. 

The Karachi head of Pakistan’s meteorological department says the effects of climate change are already being seen and felt. 

Land and housing pressures from above average birth rates are already being felt, and if political negotiations go well, Afghan refugee returnees from Iran and Pakistan will further increase those pressures. 

Thus far, Pakistan’s national climate change adaptation plans have been sidelined by a lack of money and capacity. (Telegraph)

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At UN Security Council Debate, Climate Emergency ‘a Danger to Peace’

Daryan Shamkhali via UNSPLASH

At Friday’s open debate on climate and security, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas, Miroslav Jenča said the climate emergency is exacerbating existing risk to international peace and security while creating new ones, calling on security actors to play a role in implementing the Paris Agreement. While impacts of climate change varied across regions, he said fragile and conflict-affected countries were most exposed and least able to cope with the effects, noting that seven of the 10 most vulnerable and least equipped, were supported by a UN peacekeeping operation or special political mission within its borders. He said failure to act on the growing impacts of climate change would undermine existing conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding work, while also trapping vulnerable countries in a vicious cycle of climate disaster and conflict. 

Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates, (presumably speaking on behalf of regional groups, likely the Middle East or regional bloc) suggested a new approach, calling on the Security Council to work in partnership with development and humanitarian actors to curtail the likelihood of conflict in climate-vulnerable countries. 

The UAE said the link between climate change and security is now well-recognized in ample evidence around the world of how droughts, extreme weather, desertification and others impacts, including in the Middle East, lead to social unrest, competition over natural resources and displacement, all of which contribute significantly to conflict and violence. 

They went even further to suggest the Security Council operationalize the climate-security nexus within its scope of work with targeted trainings for UN staff in conflict settings where climate change impacts are prevalent. 

Vietnam, a member of the Security Council through 2021 with climate change as a policy priority, reminded members that sea level rise and saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta are threats to Vietnam’s sustainable development. 

Vietnam urged the Security Council to address the root causes of conflicts such as poverty, injustice, militarism and disregard for international law, calling for security analysis to now also include considerations of climate change impacts. (UN News, Emirates News Agency, Nhan Dan)

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Pacific Climate Expert Briefed UN Security Council

David Hoefler via UNSPLASH

This morning, Niue’s Coral Pasisi, a Pacific representative of the Climate Security Expert Network briefed the UN Security Council on climate issues facing the Pacific, after what she said was a decade of lobbying efforts. Her presentation is part of a ministerial-level open debate with a focus to better understand how climate security issues affect different regions. 

Along with Pasisi, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed the Security Council, along with a senior official from the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) and Colonel Mahamadou Magai of Niger who was expected to focus on the impacts of climate change on food security and conflict in the Sahel, according to the publication What’s In Blue, from the think tank Security Council Report, a publication and NGO we once worked with. 

 Pasisi says there are “a great many ways we can connect the impacts of climate change to undermining peace and security, the stability of communities, economies and countries in the region.”

Her goal was to focus the Security Council on climate fragility impacts that warrants a security response of intervention before issues turn into conflict, citing maritime boundaries in the Pacific, impacts around the Blue Economy, global competition for fisheries and related food insecurity in fisheries trade, and displacement of the region’s populations. 

Pasisi says people are already being displaced internally and across borders as a result of climate change, with forced displacements occurring within often highly contested land, presenting an additional challenge, especially since there are no existing legal or policy arrangements to protect resources or maritime jurisdictions. (RNZ)

What’s In Blue reported that Germany, president of the Security Council this month, co-sponsored the meeting with nine other Council members. In addition to Council members, several UN member states addressed the Council, representing groups such as the: Alliance of Small Island States, the Nordic Group, Pacific Small Island Developing States, Group of Friends on Climate and Security and Pacific Island Forum. A representative from the EU and Kenya and Ireland, future Council members in 2021-2022 also addressed the Council. 

What’s In Blue shared the following questions that were to be examined in a concept note shared amongst Council members ahead of the debate:  

• How can the Council obtain authoritative information on the impact of climate-related security risks in conflict environments?

• What tools, partnerships and early warning capabilities would support the timely assessment of and response to climate-related security risks to prevent the escalation of conflicts?

• How can UN in-country resources (including peace operations and special political missions) be enabled to better collect, analyze and report on relevant information in countries and regions in a gender-sensitive manner?

• Which current tools can the Council use to address the security implications of climate change and how could these be enhanced to respond appropriately to climate-related security risks?

• How can the Council enhance its operational readiness to address such risks?

Climate security remains a controversial topic for the UN Security Council to engage, with China, Russia and the US raising a range of issues that climate change is fundamentally a sustainable development issue, opposing expansion of climate-security language and insistence that other UN agencies are better suited to address the topic. 

However, most members seem to support integration of climate-related security risks to examine factors such as drought, food security, water scarcity, desertification as examples that can exacerbate conflict and further support the development of “synergies among the Council and other UN entities in addressing climate-security challenges.”

What’s in Blue reports these countries desire the Council pursue a resolution on climate-security issues, and Germany had drafted a resolution in collaboration with nine other members on June 20, but the negotiations were suspended in early July, as the “political environment in the Council prevented them from pursuing a resolution at the current time.”

Today’s meeting was the Security Council’s fifth thematic debate on climate-security issues. The Council has addressed security impacts related to climate change in 12 resolutions since 2015. (What’s In Blue)

One of these resolutions was focused on climate change impacts in the Lake Chad Basin, which we addressed in our Field Report, “Shrinking Options: The Nexus Between Climate Change, Displacement and Security in the Lake Chad Basin.” Following a trip to the Lake Chad Basin in March 2017, the UN Security Council, in Resolution 2349, recognized the “adverse effects of climate change and ecological changes among other factors on the stability of the region, including through water scarcity, drought, desertification, land degradation, and food insecurity.”

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For more on this, read our report

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Facing the Double Burden of Climate Change and Conflict

Patrick Schneider via UNSPLASH

In its new report, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) finds people living in conflict zones are adversely affected by climate change. Of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change, 12 are currently at war. 

Conflict-affected communities who already face extreme stress now face further hardships by climate shocks, and state institutions, essential social services, social cohesion and even freedom of movement, which can help offset impacts to livelihood, are now profoundly disturbed by conflict.

In turn, conflict often has impacts on the natural environment as well via direct attacks or damage through warfare, which contaminate water, soil, land and air. 

The International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) warns that by 2050, 200 million people could be humanitarian aid dependent every year, which is double the current number. It’s clear the international community fails to meet that need now, strained further by the global pandemic and rising poverty, and no stretch of the imagination is needed to envision what the growing impacts of climate change could yield. 

They rightly highlight the significant climate finance gap between stable and fragile countries, where at present, the bulk of capital is used to support efforts to reduce carbon emissions, which is essential, but simultaneous action is needed to help communities adapt to climate change.

From Mali to Iraq, civilians in conflict zones are doubly impacted by climate extremes. Despite being the most impacted and having the least contribution to global warming, communities hardest hit are the most neglected by global climate action. ICRC urges humanitarian actors and beyond in the international community to make significant systemic and structural changes, increase political will, good governance, investment, technical knowledge and calls for a shift in mindsets to offset climate risks and protect people from a situation far worse to come. (Reuters)

For more on the nexus between climate change, conflict and displacement, read our field report from the Lake Chad Basin.

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