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Crisis Group President and CEO Robert Malley addressed the UN Security Council’s Arria virtual session on climate and security risks on April 22, 2020. Without global action, he said, climate change could be a slow version of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
I am honored to join this Arria session of the Security Council on climate and security risks. Organizers planned to schedule it to coincide with Earth Day’s 50th anniversary; They also had the fortune or misfortune to schedule it to coincide with the COVID-19 outbreak, a fitting reminder if one was required of how global challenges require a global response and why impending threats require urgent one. In particular, I want to thank all of my co-hosts today for calling attention to the growing peace and security implications of climate change.
I join you on behalf of the International Crisis Group’s team of conflict analysts worldwide. Crisis Group is an independent organization with a mission to save lives by preventing, mitigating, and resolving deadly conflicts. We do this through field research, impartial analysis, and pragmatic advocacy to shape understanding and alter the behavior of conflict actors and those who influence them.
So what brings us to this conversation about the weather? In short, the conviction that climate change is already taking shape and will continue to shape the future of the conflict, and that we ignore that relationship at our own risk. In that regard, and as today’s meeting illustrates, the climate conversation is at a tipping point. That is not only due to the latest and alarming events on the ground. It is also a reflection of who you are now and who should be at the table. For years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has documented trends that can instigate or exacerbate violence. Given the speed at which global warming is outpacing projections, increasing sea level rise, increasing resource scarcity, and the frequency of extreme weather events, it would be a breach of duty if peace and security actors do not join the diplomats. , scientists, activists and others by taking this challenge seriously.
We are relatively new to this conversation, so we approach these issues humbly and have a lot to learn from you. But I would like to offer some ideas for further discussion.
First, we must be careful not to underestimate or exaggerate the nature of the relationship between climate and deadly conflict. Let me be clear, regardless of the links to the deadly conflict, climate change is an existential challenge that puts vulnerable populations at greater risk and requires much more robust action than we have seen so far.
But when it comes to the link to conflict, understanding the precise relationship is important because only from that understanding can we derive strong political prescriptions. By not understanding the causal link, I mean recognizing that climate change is undoubtedly a multiplier of conflict threats. We are now all familiar with the data suggesting a ten to twenty percent increase in the risk of armed conflict associated with every half-degree rise in local temperatures, and that might be a conservative estimate. Of course, researchers will debate the precise role of climate risks in any crisis, but there is a broad consensus that climate change can, for example, increase food insecurity, water scarcity and competition for resources. disrupting livelihoods and stimulating migration or what have been called environmental refugees. And these are all key factors that, as the Crisis Group has documented for more than two decades, in turn can play a key role in shaping conflicts. deadly, for example, by provoking inter-state or intra-state clashes over resources, discrediting central states or reinforcing the attractiveness of non-state armed groups and facilitating their recruitment campaigns.
At the same time, the relationship between climate and conflict is not linear; It is complex and nuanced. In some situations, small variations in climate can contribute to significant increases in violent conflict; in others, large variations in climate will not. This is because what matters in this case, as in so many others, is how the authorities handle the problems induced or exacerbated by climate change: how equitably and effectively they allocate and distribute resources; how inclusive and responsible they are; whether there are good intercommunity mediation mechanisms or not. And so.
Furthermore, climate change does not necessarily trigger resource shortages. In some cases, yes, in others, no: increasing temperatures and volatile rainfall mean that many areas have fewer resources, but it also means that some may have more. Greater resources can be positive in terms of peace and stability, although as the Crisis Group has also documented, it can contribute to increased competition and violence if that competition is poorly regulated by the state.
Finally, the relationship can be reversed, as that deadly conflict and political instability can contribute to climate change, for example, through illegal logging in the Amazon.
In other words, the impact of climate change on conflict is context-specific, which is why we believe that combining the type of granular and field-based political analysis that our organization undertakes with the climate experience could produce the results of conflict prevention. more effective.
The types of conflicts I refer to come in two broad categories. First there are the tensions within states that arise from the scarcity of climate-related resources; This requires internal political responses that the UN can support. Second, there are the tensions between the states due to the scarcity of resources, especially in the case of water, which require a diplomatic response that the UN can facilitate. Based on recent Crisis Group reports, I will address one example of each category in turn.
Across the Sahel and even as far south as Kenya, Crisis Group has analyzed how climate-related factors have exacerbated inter-community conflict between pastoralists and farmers. Peace will require states to re-establish their ability to peacefully regulate conflicts in those rural areas, especially in relation to disputes over habitable land and other resources that are becoming scarcer due to rising temperatures and variable rainfall.
To take a specific instance, northern Nigeria has experienced large declines in the length of the rainy season and an increase in desert or semi-desert conditions in recent decades. These changes have dried up many natural water sources, diminishing pastures and farmland. In the northern states most directly affected, they have exacerbated long-running contests between herders and farmers who share the same resources. They are also forcing large numbers of pastoralists in search of productive land to migrate south, resulting in increased conflict between them and the growing populations of sedentary crop farmers in central Nigeria. This violence increased Nigeria’s security challenges and stretched the military from a much-needed focus in Boko Haram.
When states fail to address these inter-communal tensions, a variety of armed groups, including criminals and jihadists, can fill that gap and violently exploit government mistrust among marginalized rural communities. But while military measures against such groups are necessary, an effective response can not only be based on security: there must be a political component, such as promoting inclusive dialogues to reduce inter-communal tensions and engage armed groups; an economic dimension, which includes ways to formalize the gray economy and reform the livestock sector; and a climatic dimension, which includes prioritizing humanitarian assistance to those most affected by environmental changes.
Turning to interstate dynamics, Crisis Group has also examined transboundary water conflicts around the Nile River basin, and specifically the Great Renaissance Dam of Ethiopia. Since 2010, Ethiopia has been building the dam on the Blue Nile River as its highest development priority. Since the Blue Nile is the main tributary of the Nile River, Egypt fears that the dam will threaten its water supply.
Difficult negotiation has become even more difficult as rising temperatures and falling precipitation trends are likely to lead to increased water shortages in the Nile basin. In recent years, technical experts from both Countries and Sudan, which have also been affected, had reached a consensus on how quickly Ethiopia could fill the dam reservoir to minimize downstream impacts. Since then, those talks have encountered new obstacles, but the most striking thing about this example is not only how a problem of scarcity of resources around water rights has been intensified by the conditions of climate change, but also how Resulting diplomatic negotiations could strengthen regional institutions that can address both climate change and conflict problems in the future. Therefore, while these negotiations are far from complete, there is at least some reason to hope that the climate-induced urgency will lead to action.
Of course, we have much more to learn about the links between instability, conflict and climate. For now, and beyond the need to devote increasing attention to climate-related security risk policy, I would propose two steps to make our collective policy response more effective: First, we need to shorten the timeline used to assess climate risks; second, we must prioritize geographies where climate risks intersect with fragile policies.
Until recently, the trend was to discuss climate change within 10-15 years of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But as everyone knows, the peace and security community operates on a much shorter timeline. Our goal should be to document closer to real time which areas are experiencing the most rapid effects of climate change, when more environmental changes might occur, and how they might be seen.
Secondly, as I mentioned, just as climate risks vary according to different geographies, so do conflict risks according to different policies. Political decisions are very important when it comes to how resources are allocated and who can access them, whether the distribution is seen as equitable, fair or unfair, and those issues are very important when it comes to conflict risks. Therefore, we must ask ourselves where in the set of most likely climate crises are existing institutions and the weakest state capacity, and recommend appropriate policy measures to strengthen those institutions and the effectiveness of state responses.
In closing, I wanted to comment briefly on COVID-19, both overall and regarding the climate specifically. The pandemic clearly presents a defining challenge for the public health and global economy. Its political consequences, both in the short and long term, will only gradually become clearer. At Crisis Group, we are paying close attention to places where the global health challenge intersects with political conditions that could lead to new crises or exacerbate existing ones.
More specifically, it is worth reflecting on how COVID-19 can affect climate change policy. It is true that there has been a reduction in carbon emissions recently, but it could be short-lived. Two economic factors are likely to complicate efforts: the price of oil has fallen precipitously, which can slow down investments in renewable energy, and there is a risk of a global economic downturn, limiting the already limited time and resources available for policy makers on many other issues, including climate change. As a result, future political challenges will be important in addressing both climate change and its relationship to conflict.
But there is a primary political message that we should take from COVID-19, and that is that without prompt global and collective action, climate change could be the slow-moving version of the coronavirus outbreak, reshaping economic, political, and security conditions in around the world.
We have no choice but to move on, and for that effort, I thank you all and look forward to hearing from you.
