Tag Archives: climate change

The unfolding humanitarian crisis around Lake Chad: UN report falls short of naming environmental dimensions

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Lake Chad Bassin crisis january 2017 Photo: Espen Røst / Bistandsaktuelt – newspaper on aid and development

This article was originally published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

It is encouraging to see that the United Nations Security Council is beginning to acknowledge the transboundary dimensions of fragility and conflict, as demonstrated by its newly launched Report of the Secretary-General on the situation in the Lake Chad Basin region. The report, which was presented in the Security Council on 13 September 2017, emphasizes the need for regional responses and the enhanced cooperation of different UN and humanitarian agencies as important steps to addressing the unfolding humanitarian crisis. However, while regional responses to address the regional security challenge are desirable, the report would have been stronger if it had highlighted the underlying environmental contributions of the region’s fragility.

Multiple stressors converge in the Lake Chad region, which lies at the southern end of the Sahara desert. In the region around the lake–which borders Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria–unemployment, poverty and conflict interact with environmental change and degradation. The mismanagement of water resources, for instance, in the form of increased water withdrawal for irrigation from the lake’s tributaries, as well as prolonged severe droughts, have contributed to a 90 per cent shrinking of Lake Chad in the past 40 years. In addition, the ongoing insurgency by Boko Haram in northern Nigeria further exaggerates the reduction of livelihood security for communities in the region. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), the conflict with Boko Haram has caused over 10 000 deaths between 2009 and 2016. The military interventions of the Multinational Joint Task Force and armed forces of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria achieved a sizeable reduction in Boko Haram’s activities. Nonetheless, according to the newly published report: ‘From April to June 2017, 246 attacks were recorded, resulting in the deaths of 225 civilians.’

The ongoing insurgency and the continued shrinking of Lake Chad, which is the main source of livelihood for millions of inhabitants, are causing a massive humanitarian crisis, intensifying the fragile security situation and increasing cross-border displacement of populations. The Report of the Secretary-General points out: ‘Some 10.7 million people across the Lake Chad Basin region currently need humanitarian assistance, including 8.5 million in Nigeria.’ According to the report, 7.2 million people currently suffer severe food insecurity, of which 4.7 million are located in the north-eastern part of Nigeria.

The food and water insecurities caused by environmental change and mismanagement have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis caused by the Boko Haram insurgency. Although there is a lack of consistent monitoring around Lake Chad, the available data clearly indicates that the region has experienced significant environmental changes. For every year since 2000, the annual temperature anomaly, based on the 1961 to 1990 average temperature, was continuously above 1°C. Research agrees that environmental degradation—and especially the predicted impacts of climate change—will further exacerbate these pressures on the states and societies around Lake Chad. During the 2017 Stockholm Forum, experts from the region outlined the complex dependencies of local livelihoods on natural resources, in particular the Lake Chad ecosystem, and how important ecological factors are to understanding and addressing the regions vulnerability and fragility. As Sweden’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Olof Skoog, pointed out during the Security Council debate on 13 September: ‘The effects of climate change and its links to the stability and security are evident. We cannot hide from this reality if we want to truly address the challenges in the region. The lack of follow-up in this area in the Secretary-General’s report once again underlines the need for improved risk assessments and risk management strategies by the UN, as clearly highlighted by the Security Council in Resolution 2349 (2017): ‘The Council must remain alert to the threats to stability as a result of the adverse effects of climate change.’

By acknowledging the adverse effect of climate change in the Lake Chad Basin region, the UN report should have emphasized the inevitable pathways for addressing the current crisis. Managing natural resources sustainably is one of the key factors to achieving regional stabilization, reducing people’s vulnerability, increasing resilience and thereby thwarting the fertile grounds for insurgent group recruitment. This is only possible when the UN Security Council and other peacebuilding agencies begin to integrate the linkages of environmental, social, and political issues in their peacebuilding efforts in the Lake Chad Basin.

About Resolution 2349:

At the end of March 2017, the United Nations Security Council unanimously issued Resolution 2349against terrorism and human rights violations in the Lake Chad Basin. It recognized the role of climate change in exacerbating human insecurity—particularly around food insecurity and livelihood vulnerabilities—which are linked to the Basin’s complex conflicts: ‘the adverse effects of climate change and ecological changes among other factors on the stability of the Region’. The resolution was initiated by the Security Council member states’ travel to the Lake Chad region earlier in 2017. The resolution tasked the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, to provide an assessment of the situation. A direct mention of climate and environmental change is absent in the newly published report.

Florian Krampe, PhD, is a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in the Climate Change and Risk Project. He specializes in peace and conflict research, international relations, and political ecology. Follow him on Twitter @FlorianKrampe.

Why should the UN Security Council deal with climate security risks?

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Should the UN Security Council deal with climate security risks?

The UN Security Council Chamber in New York City. Photo: Flickr/Jay Reed

22 August 2017

Dr Amiera Sawas and Dr Florian Krampe

Over 600,000 people have been displaced in recent floods in Sri Lanka. Drought is bringing starvation and famine to 11 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. These are just a few pieces of the mounting evidence that climate change causes insecurity and exacerbates the suffering primarily in already conflict-affected and fragile states. That implies it is part of the story of recruitment of young people by insurgent groups and part of the background to migration. ‘Today, in short, the world faces increasingly complex security challenges, but lacks the institutions needed to deal with them,’ says Dan Smith, Director of SIPRI in a newly released film on the issue.

The Paris Agreement, Agenda 2030, as well as the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States provide substantial policy options to address climate-related security risks. However, at this critical juncture, it is time for the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) role as a high-profile global actor on peace and security to show clear leadership and to give climate security an institutional home in the UNSC.

The world has been hesitant to recognize the security risks posed by climate change because they are so complex, explains Dr Malin Mobjörk, Senior Researcher at SIPRI. Building on extensive research, Mobjörk outlines three forms of security risks related to climate change in the film: negative effects on livelihood conditions; damage to critical infrastructure; and an increase in migration flows. Understanding these security risks requires inter-disciplinary knowledge.

Putting climate change on the UNSC agenda

Climate change is fundamentally changing the way people live. It is therewith changing the way communities relate to each other. It changes the terms of the security assessment in many countries. And the implications of these changes have in part already been reaching the UNSC.

Lake Chad Stockholm Forum 2017
Climate-fragility risks in the Lake Chad region on the agenda at the 2017 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development. Photo: SIPRI

Firstly, at the end of March 2017, the UNSC issued a unanimous resolution (2349) against terrorism and human rights violations in the Lake Chad Basin. It recognised the role of climate change in exacerbating human insecurity – particularly around food insecurity and livelihood vulnerabilities – which are linked to the Basin’s complex conflicts. It was clear during the discussions with key stakeholders at the 2017 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development, that increasing threats to livelihoods through weak governance, marginalization and increasingly volatile weather patterns and water resources, provide both an increased suffering for the Lake Chad basin’s population, and a fertile ground for terrorist groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria, to recruit people for their cause.

Secondly, the examples of Lake Chad, an unprecedented famine in the Horn of Africa and the complexity of the Syrian conflict, illustrate the scale of the security challenges related to climate change. These consequences are first and foremost noticeable in fragile contexts. However, the security risks posed by climate change are unique in that there are also clear preventative pathways for adaptation through development. With that said, the Mandate of the UNSC goes beyond resolving conflict, it also involves ‘maintaining peace and security’ with a broader notion of security. There are several examples of human security-focussed UNSC resolutions, including: 1325 which focuses on women’s vulnerabilities and needs in conflict and post-conflict spaces; 2331 on human trafficking; and, 1308 /1983 on the impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Thirdly, given the serious interactions of climate change with underdevelopment, fragility and security, it is no surprise that increasingly the voices calling for climate change to be placed on the UNSC’s agenda are those countries most affected by climate change impacts. The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have long advocated a stronger role of the UNSC in highlighting climate concerns. Today, especially with UNSC Resolution 2349, more recognition of climate security concerns are heard. For instance, the Ethiopian Representative Tekeda Elemu, emphasised the insufficient international recognition of the intersecting roles of ‘climate change-induced challenges, as well as falling commodity prices’ in conflict.

As argued above, the security implications of climate change demand clear global leadership and explicit institutional change. In a recent speech at New York University, the UN Secretary General (UNSG), António Guterres, emphasised, ‘there is a compelling security case for climate action’ and that he would rally the United Nations system behind it.

An opportunity for Sweden

Sweden has a golden opportunity to support this effort of the UNSG as a member of the UNSC during 2017 and 2018. In fact, Sweden has shown real leadership around reducing the security risks posed by climate change through its efforts around the Lake Chad resolution. Even though this is questioned by some, there are nonetheless very good reasons why Sweden should engage.

Opportunities for Sweden to engage:

  • Mainstreaming climate change response at the UN. Part of this is improving the risk assessment and risk management of climate-related security risks. Without better risk assessment, adequate responses cannot be achieved. Collectively, the world has much knowledge on these risks, but they are currently not informing the UNSC.
  • Promoting continued capacity development in dealing with uncertainty and risk across the United Nations and other lateral institutions, national governments, civil society and the private sector.
  • Showcasing Sweden’s leadership as a state that is forward thinking in conflict prevention.
Sweden's Minister for Foreign Affairs
Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Margot Wallström, speaking at the opening plenary of the 2017 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development. Photo: SIPRI

Sweden’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Margot Wallström, has made clear that Sweden will focus on conflict prevention at the UNSC. This is consistent with Articles 24 and 39 of the aforementioned UNSC Mandate which clearly states the UNSC should ‘maintain peace and security’ and ‘determine the existence of a threat to the peace.’ One of the conflict prevention efforts Sweden should lead is in promoting an institutional home for climate security in the UNSG’s office, to collect state-of-the-art knowledge on climate-related security risks and inform the UNSC.

Sweden’s role in the UN has always been different, because it has focused on development rather than military security. Sweden has stood with smaller nations that see the UN and its organization as their best protection in the present world. The impacts of climate change threaten especially those smaller and fragile nations – Sweden should again stand firmly at their side.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Dr Amiera Sawas
Dr Amiera Sawas is a Researcher in the Climate Change and Risk Project.
Dr Florian Krampe
Dr Florian Krampe is a Researcher in the Climate Change and Risk Project.

Risk, But Also Opportunity in Climate Fragility and Terror Link

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This article was first published by newsecuritybeat.org.

In a recent article for New Security Beat, Colin Walch made the case that the abandonment of some communities in Mali to deal with climate change on their own has created “fertile ground” for jihadist recruitment. In a similar argument, Katharina Nett and Lukas Rüttinger in a report for adelphi asserted last month that “large-scale environmental and climatic change contributes to creating an environment in which [non-state armed groups] can thrive and opens spaces that facilitate the pursuit of their strategies.”

These are important findings and relevant studies that point to the multifaceted security risks that result from climate change. They moreover confirm that climate change does not act as a cause of violence, but as a meaningful threat multiplier. But, as I recently argued during a Wilson Center discussion, we also need to move beyond a singular focus on risk.

We need to put opportunity and peace back at the center of environmental peace and conflict research and practice. In fragile states, we need to strengthen our efforts to identify the potential that climate action has to overcome fragility and improve people’s lives, not just focus on threats. This requires both a better understanding of what works on the ground and clear global leadership.

What Works?

So what builds peace? This was a core question during the Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development this spring during discussions about the Sustainable Development Goals, also known as “Agenda 2030,” and how they relate to peace and conflict. The answer from panelists was unanimous: include local communities in the development processes.

The evidence base for the effect of significant local involvement in climate, development, and peacebuilding projects is substantial. Recent research that pays close attention to the links between socioeconomic, political, as well as ecological processes offers valuable pathways for climate action that could address the threats to people’s livelihoods that terror groups exploit in order to bolster recruitment.

We need to move beyond a singular focus on risk

As Walch persuasively shows for Mali, it is the breaking down of local institutional structures that provides opportunities for jihadist recruitment. Research by myself in Nepal, as well as Prakash Kashwan in India, Tanzania, and Mexico, shows that good climate mitigation policies can also build such institutions up, or at least help in the emergence of new local governance structures.

In Nepal, I tested whether the provision of environmental services helps in the facilitation of the peace process after civil war. Looking specifically at climate-sensitive small hydropower projects designed to bring electricity to rural villages, this research showed not only substantial socio-economic successes – e.g. regarding empowerment for women, better access to education, and increased economic opportunities – but an increase in community cohesion and strengthening of local governance structures. The results indicate that climate policies can play an important role in facilitating the growth of local institutions and addressing peoples’ vulnerability and fragility (even if, as in this case, it was somewhat unintentional and raises other political issues).

Likewise, Kashwan shows in his recent book, Democracy in the Woods, that REDD+ forest policies in India, Tanzania, and Mexico depend on the inclusion of local communities to be successful. He argues that “when local people do not benefit, forest conservation efforts tend to be unsustainable.” He moreover points to the important role of institutional architecture and what he terms “mechanisms of intermediation” – that is, venues that help citizen groups, civil society organizations, and social movements engage in political and policy processes.

Kashwan lays out the argument that national leaders and dominant political parties that must compete for popular support are more likely to fashion local interventions that pursue conservation of forested landscapes without violating the rights of forest-dependent people than leaders and political parties that are not accountable to constituents.

This may seem somewhat intuitive, but it has important implications for local governance structures. Kashwan argues that state and non-state agencies, including international agencies, can foster and reinforce the responsiveness of government by strengthening the skills of community groups and civil society organizations at the local level. As their capacities for organization and advocacy improve, they are able to better represent their concerns, including during negotiation over natural resource rights, as in the case of inter-ethnic grievances in Mali.

Are We Ready for Yes?

This research offers valuable examples that climate action can mitigate not only the effects of climate change, but have wider impacts that deliver positive returns in all manner of ways, like reducing the opportunity for terrorist groups to recruit vulnerable and marginalized people to their cause.

Climate action can deliver broader positive returns

As SIPRI’s Malin Mobjörk and Dan Smith argue, “this requires clear leadership and explicit institutional change strategies” at the highest levels. For example, as Camilla Born from E3G argues, by providing an institutional home for climate security issues at the United Nations.

At all levels, it is imperative that we emphasize the positive potential of sustainable policies beyond risk assessments, especially for fragile states, where there will always be risks, but great opportunity too. The Environment Strategy of the United Nations Department of Field Support, published in April 2017, points in the right direction as it encourages UN peacekeeping operations “to seek a positive long-term legacy through the development of specific environment-related projects that may benefit societies and ecosystems over the long term.”

The new UN field support policy, the Sustainable Development Goals, the recent  Security Council initiative in the Lake Chad region, and new Secretary-General António Guterres’ emphasis on climate change all raise hope that global governance bodies are realizing the significant threat of climate change and increasingly moving on to the next question: What works? The research, policy, and practice communities need to be ready with answers.

Florian Krampe, PhD, is a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in the Climate Change and Risk Project. He specializes in peace and conflict research, international relations, and political ecology. Follow him on Twitter @FlorianKrampe.

Sources: adelphi, Conflict, Security & Development, Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Global Environmental Politics, Prakash Kashwan (2017), Elinor Ostrom (2015), Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, United Nations.

Photo Credit: A farm in Mali, August 2013, courtesy of Curt Carnemark/World Bank.

New article in The Lancet Global Health

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Avoiding catastrophes: seeking synergies among the public health, environmental protection, and human security sectors

Global health catastrophes have complex origins, often rooted in social disruption, poverty, conflict, and environmental collapse. Avoiding them will require a new integrative analysis of the links between disease, armed conflict, and environmental degradation within a socioecological vulnerability and human security context.

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(16)30173-5/abstract

Empowering peace: service provision and state legitimacy in Nepal’s peace-building process

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My new article Empowering peace: service provision and state legitimacy in Nepal’s peace-building process got just published in the journal Conflict, Security and Development:

There is growing demand for an understanding of peace beyond the absence of violence. As such research focuses increasingly on the issue of state legitimacy as a tool to assess and understand peace processes. In this paper the relationship between service provision and state legitimacy is studied to assess whether the provision of services like electricity to rural communities of war-torn countries through state actors contributes to the consolidation of the post-war political system. The qualitative analysis of two localities in post-war Nepal highlights that service provision in the form of electricity through micro-hydropower yields tremendously positive socio-economic effects for rural communities. However, socio-economic development in combination with interactions among villagers has strengthened local autonomy through emphasising alternative local governance structures. This highlights that the relationship between service provision and state legitimacy is more complex than previous research anticipates. The absence of a positive effect on state legitimacy raises the question of whether in its current case-specific form service provision is conducive to the broader peace-building efforts in post-war Nepal, because it stresses the divide between state and society.

Krampe, F. (2016). Empowering peace: service provision and state legitimacy in Nepal’s peace-building process. Conflict, Security & Development, 16(1), 53–73.

Impressions from fieldwork in Nepal

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In September 2013 I conducted fieldwork for my dissertation in Baglung district in Nepal. These photos give a few impressions about the travel it took to reach the two communities in the western part of the district and about life and nature along the way. I have published two brief posts about the implications of this study for Carnegie Ethics Online and New Security Beats.

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These photos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

On the Anthropocene, Nature, and the end of Conservation?!

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The Earth at night, a composited night-time image of the world during the anthropocene.

The Earth at night, a composited night-time image of the world during the anthropocene.
Image by Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC.

Uppsala, Sweden | 18 August 2014 | by Florian Krampe

When I first learned about the concept of the anthropocene from my friend and colleague Gerald Roche, the topic intrigued me as much as it confused me. In this post I want to share some reflections that this concept triggered. I do not claim that these are correct. These are my thoughts and I am happy to be advised otherwise and am interested in your comments and challenges to this initial reading and reflection on the concept of the anthropocene and its implications.

You never go back
Frankly, initially I contested the concept. How can humans cause a shift in a geological epoch? Doesn’t it require something much bigger – more volatile – to change geology?

The Encyclopedia of Earth defines the Anthropocene as “Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans.” Having studied climate change in relation to peace and conflict for some years now, I could not object to this statement. The anthropocene had caught me! And once you accept that earth as such – not in parts, but in entirety – is affected by humans, you do not look at the landscape around you the same way ever again. I remember something similar after reading Foucault – you simply do not look at the world as you did before.

“Nature” becomes manipulated by humans – by design and accident. Effectively, you start searching for it: Forests? All I see is forestation. Even untouched territories are defined by their lack of human influence. Rivers? You start to realise how many of them are, in fact, river and flood management not to speak of “renaturation”.

Nowhere did this become clearer to me than on a recent trip to France (having grown up in the industrial heart land of Germany “nature” was anyway often far away). All of a sudden the hills of Provence and the Cote d’Azur were nothing other than the result of centuries of human impact. Circles of farming and deforestation going hand in hand to fuel the growth of the big city. Nature?

The death of “nature”?
The inevitable question that came to my mind after thinking about the anthropocene and the shift in our understanding of the world became inevitably: where does this leave nature?! When everything today is effected by human activity, than nature – defined as “the physical world and everything in it (such as plants, animals, mountains, oceans, etc.) that is not made by people” – does not exist. It simply vanishes! 

Conservation a meaningless tautology?
The logic of the anthropocene is simple and extremely powerful. And as I say, once you accept the principle you will have difficulties looking at the world in the same way again. But what does that mean for our policies directed towards nature? In short, with the realisation that humans carried the world into the geological epoch of the anthropocene, among other things, conservation dies as well. If nature does not exist, conservation can no longer be about the protection of nature.

In fact, doesn’t it simply become the alteration and manipulation of the anthropogenic face of the earth in the way that environmentally cautious politicians and conservationists believe that it resembles nature? A fictional vision of the face of the earth without human activity? Strongly put, if we think of our world in terms of the anthropocene, don’t nature and conservation become a meaningless tautology?!

Nepal’s Micro-Hydropower Projects Have Surprising Effect on Peace Process

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Riverside village in Nepal’s Baglung District, Nepal.

by Florian Krampe | published 14 May 2014, New Security Beats. Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment, which has been rolling out in stages since last September, confirms a crucial divide in current climate thinking: efforts to adapt and mitigate to climate change are often considered separately from the vulnerability of people.

Climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability were covered by IPCC Working Group II, while Working Group III handled mitigation. Each group developed and released their reports separately. Why is this significant? Because in conflict and post-conflict societies, climate mitigation efforts can have significant impacts on existing tensions, sometimes even making them worse. It is therefore vitally important that policymakers understand these two sets of issues together and researchers build a better understanding of how they interact.

The Climate-Peacebuilding Nexus

Environmental issues in post-conflict societies have been paid more attention recently, as development and climate researchers and practitioners increasingly focus on the poor and vulnerable segments of society. This has been accompanied with a shift in the security community from a focus on state to human security. These changes have led to a higher profile for environmental issues in many post-conflict peacebuilding policies (e.g., Afghanistan).

While this is an important step to thinking about environmental issues and peacebuilding efforts together, research on the nexus of climate change adaptation and mitigation and their consequences for peacebuilding is almost nonexistent (an exception that looks closer at human security being the recent Wilson Center report, Backdraft: The Conflict Potential of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation). How are our efforts to reduce the impact of climate change affecting post-conflict societies? In an attempt to add to this body of knowledge, I recently looked at the development of micro-hydropower systems in Nepal and assessed whether they contribute to building peace.

Read the full article at newsecuritybeats.org.

Some Twitter reactions:

 

Climate Change Mitigation, Peacebuilding, and Resilience

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Bridge in front of the micro-hydro station in Malma, Baglung district, Nepal.

Bridge in front of the micro-hydro station in Malma, Baglung district, Nepal.

 

by Florian Krampe | published 10 April 2014, Carnegie Ethics Online

How are our efforts to reduce the impact of climate change affecting post-conflict societies? Thinking and research about the possible impacts of climate change adaptation and mitigation on post-conflict societies is almost nonexistent. Most attention remains on climate change and variability and their link to war.1 In this article I discuss the link between climate change mitigation and building peace. Drawing on new empirical data of micro hydropower development in post-conflict Nepal I inquire further if climate change mitigation contributes to peacebuilding.

The findings show that micro-hydropower development in Nepal has not contributed to peacebuilding on a state level. This is because these measures do not strengthen the political legitimacy of the post-conflict authorities, a crucial measure for successful peacebuilding. Actually, in the short run this measure of climate change mitigation has led to new informal spaces of peace beyond the reach of the Nepali state. This puts policy decision makers into a dilemma: Should they consider abandoning climate change mitigation policies if they might in fact risk the peacebuilding process? Or is it worth the bigger cause of reducing CO2 emissions globally? As this article shows, the answer might be more nuanced.

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