Climate, Peace and Security in Colombia

In a new fact sheet from the joint NUPI and SIPRI Climate-related Peace and Security Risks Project (CPSR), the team explore the nexus between climate change, peace and security in Colombia.

Published: October 3, 2024 Ingvild Brox Brodtkorb

People

Nadine Andersen

Research Assistant, SIPRI

Farah Hegazi

Researcher, SIPRI

Katongo Seyuba

Research assistant, SIPRI

Caroline Delgado

Programme Director, SIPRI

Thor Olav Iversen

Senior Researcher

Ingvild Brox Brodtkorb

Junior Research Fellow

Colombia’s decades-long conflict culminated in the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which included aims to achieve peace through rural reform, reintegration of former combatants, addressing illicit crop cultivation, and ensuring land restitution and voluntary
return for displaced individuals. However, the combination of non-state armed groups (NSAGs), entrenched violence, social inequality and environmental challenges continues to hinder progress, particularly in rural areas. Since 2022, the current government has pursued a policy of ‘Total Peace’, alongside implementing the peace agreement. This includes peace talks with armed groups and addressing structural violence, racial discrimination, gender inequality, social inequalities and environmental concerns. This fact sheet focuses on how climate-related peace and security risks interact with specific provisions of the peace agreement, and provides an update on the situation since 2022.

Read the fact sheet here or download it as a PDF here.

Rural reforms have progressed slowly, while environmental degradation and climate change impacts continue to undermine livelihood security and heighten vulnerabilities in rural areas.
Conflict and climate-related hazards contribute to internal displacement, disproportionately affecting marginalized Afro- Colombians, Indigenous Peoples, and women and girls. People living in informal settlements are particularly vulnerable to landslides, floods and other natural hazards.
Environmental degradation is closely linked to armed groups’ tactics. In areas under NSAG control, appropriation of land, rivers and other resources accentuates vulnerabilities by limiting natural resource access and availability, which affects livelihood security.
The protracted conflict has displaced millions and led to widespread land dispossession, with elites and armed groups seizing control of land, often aided by state officials. This dispossession is also tied to the expansion of agro-industrial and mining projects, where vested interests from elites and armed groups hinder land restitution efforts.

To fully implement the peace agreement, the Colombian government and its partners must strengthen natural resource governance in areas with limited state presence and high resource exploitation. Natural resource governance can be used to facilitate inclusive governance, intercommunal trust building and cooperation. Leveraging the peace agreement’s provisions on rural reform, crop substitution, and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) can advance integrated climate action and peacebuilding efforts.