UN Launches Pioneering Climate Security Project in the Pacific

Pablo Garcia Saldaña via UNSPLASH

The UN, in partnership with Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, launched a USD $3.2 million UN Climate Security Project yesterday as part of the UN Secretary-General’s Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), and is the first multi-country project of its kind in the region. 

The PBF is the UN financial instrument of first resort to sustain peace in countries and regions at risk of conflict or affected by conflict, including that caused by climate change. 

The project will provide 24-months of support to assess and begin to address critical climate security challenges faced by these three countries, including displacement and forced migration, resulting from livelihood loss, food security, coastal erosion, increased social tensions linked to shrinking land and tenure, and industries such as fisheries, as well as the ever increasing costs of responding to worsening natural disasters. 

In a quest to avert social conflict, the project will focus on tailored climate security assessments, including youth and gender-sensitive discussions and partnerships with key stakeholders. The project will be implemented by UNDP and IOM.

Khaled Khiari, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Asia and the Pacific from the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations noted that “climate change in the Pacific has the potential to cause a myriad of cascading fragility and instability risks.” 

The three country leaders echoed the harrowing climate change challenges each of their countries are facing, all of which are only two meters above sea-level at their highest points. 

“This is about our survival, safety and security”

President of the Marshall Islands, H.E. David Kabua

Khiari noted the groundbreaking nature of the project, with which we certainly agree, and demonstrates the significant movement of the conversation of climate change to climate security within the UN security architecture, most notably within the UN Security Council, whose most recent debate on climate security was in July this year, and included a briefing by Pacific representative of the Climate Security Expert Network, covered in this Spotlight. (UNDP, FBC News)

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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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ICG Briefs UN Security Council on Climate Change & Conflict

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Climate Change Is Shaping the Future of Conflict

In a UN Security Council Aria Meeting on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) President Robert Malley addressed the body, stating that absent global action, climate change could be a slow-moving version of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The climate change conversation, he said, is at an inflection point after decades of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change documenting trends that can initiate or exacerbate violence. He cautioned that peace and security actors should neither overstate nor understate the role of climate change in conflict but certainly, climate change, on its own, puts vulnerable populations at increasing risk. Although data suggests a 10-20% risk of armed conflict associated with every half-degree rise in local temperatures, understanding the precise relationship between climate and conflict is necessary for sound policy prescriptions. Experts may debate details within the findings but there is wide consensus that climate change has an impact on food security, water scarcity, livelihoods, resource competitiveness and can spur migration of “environmental refugees”, all of which can, in turn, play a role in conflict. Malley noted that climate-related conflicts reside in two categories: 1. internal conflicts due to resource-scarcity as seen in Nigeria, where conflicts have risen between herders and farmers, stretching a military already responding to Boko Haram - something we can certainly echo based on our own research on climate displacement in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin (see report below) - and 2. conflicts between states over scarce resources, notably water, as seen in the transboundary water conflicts around the Nile river basin. He concluded, noting the impacts COVID-19 may have on the politics of climate change  as economic losses constrain resources and recent drops in oil prices distract investments in renewable energy. (ICG)

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