Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

World + 21 more

Understanding the climate-conflict nexus from a humanitarian perspective: a new quantitative approach

Attachments

Introduction

This occasional policy paper aims to improve the humanitarian sector’s understanding of the nexus between climate change and violent conflict. This is crucial, given that about 80 per cent of the humanitarian crises with an inter-agency humanitarian appeal are conflict related, and climate change is expected to exacerbate this. The chair’s summary of the World Humanitarian Summit made it clear that in order to prevent conflict, a complementary approach which includes addressing climate change, is needed. The High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing also highlighted “the growing inter-linkages between humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and climate change-related interventions” and their relevance for humanitarian action.

This paper suggests a series of indicators and new metrics for assessing the risk of climate change-induced conflict for 157 countries covering more than 99 per cent of the world’s population. The aim is to identify indicators that can help to identify countries that are exposed to what is described here as the climate-conflict nexus, i.e, the intersection between two key factors: weak institutions and pre-existing social fragility, as well as climate change vulnerability. Measuring and quantifying these interlinks, particularly their humanitarian impact, is essential for delivering on the High-Level Panel’s call to reflect their implications in humanitarian finance allocations.

This paper identifies 20 countries in the climate-conflict nexus. They encompass some 780 million people living mostly in South Asia, South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. All of the countries in the climate-conflict nexus are low- or lower-middle-income nations, where the international humanitarian system is already actively providing life-saving assistance to millions of people affected by recurrent humanitarian crises.

In the wake of last year’s COP21 agreement in Paris and the World Humanitarian Summit, it is important to provide further research and analysis on the interlinks between climate change and conflict, and to better understand how newly agreed climate finance can help support the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change-induced conflict.

This paper presents a new composite measure called the Resource and Climate Vulnerability Index (RCVI), which provides a framework for observing and ranking the countries most at risk from resource stress and changes in weather patterns. Due to a lack of data, the analysis does not include microstates. Their exclusion does not imply they are free from climate change vulnerability. By comparing the RCVI to a measure developed by the Institute of Economics and Peace called the Positive Peace Index, which captures the key institutions, attitudes and structures that maintain peace, it is possible to quantify the climate-conflict nexus and contribute to a better understanding of possible future humanitarian needs.

Independently, climate change does not lead to violence. As is made clear in conflict and climate change literature, it is the intersection between vulnerability to climate change and broader institutional and socioeconomic fragility that drives the potential for conflict and violence. Countries that are most vulnerable to climate change are often the least developed or most fragile. This is a significant factor in determining the climate-conflict nexus. Social unrest, intergroup grievances and gender-based violence can increase if a country or Government is unable to provide the resources needed to cope with a changing environment or destruction from extreme weather conditions, or if international climate change adaptation support is insufficient. This, in turn, may contribute to violent conflict.

Fundamentally, many high-income countries that will experience changing weather patterns or shocks to their resource supply due to climate change will have a greater capacity to manage social and economic stresses that may eventuate from climate change. Conflict and social upheaval are much less likely in contexts whereby competition for scarce natural resources is less intense due to lower concentrations of vulnerable populations and fewer people exposed to shocks in livelihood patterns. The quantitative analysis in this paper is based on the existing literature on the link between climate change and conflict.

This conceptualizes climate change predominately as a stressor negatively driving at least two critical factors: forced displacement and resource scarcity leading to increased risk of violence and conflict. Countries with weak institutions, high levels of poverty and agricultural-based economies are particularly vulnerable to these negative stressors or threat multipliers.

Gender inequality further exacerbates risk and vulnerabilities related to climate change and disasters, as well as in conflict. This paper refers to the gender inequality of risk in a changing climate (the fact that women are disproportionally affected by disasters and conflict) as a root cause of fragility at all levels.

This research aims to spur discussion and deeper analysis on the links between conflict and climate change to inform the critical decisions that policymakers, practitioners and Governments will make to mitigate and adapt to the worst impacts of climate change in the coming years to prevent human suffering and save more lives.

Disclaimer

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
To learn more about OCHA's activities, please visit https://www.unocha.org/.