Climate, Peace and Security Research Paper: Insights on Climate, Peace and Security

Climate change is transforming and redefining the global security and development landscape. United Nations member states are increasingly acknowledging that the impacts of climate change have implications for international peace and security. The growing recognition of this link has been reflected by the UN Security Council adopting over 70 related resolutions and presidential statements since 2017.

Since 2021 the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) have analysed the links between climate, peace and security in countries and regions on the agenda of the UN Security Council.

With support from Norway during its elected membership of the UN Security Council in 2021–22, NUPI and SIPRI jointly published 11 Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheets covering Afghanistan, the Central African Republic (CAR), Colombia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Mali, the Sahel region, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.

These fact sheets build on an analysis of four pathways from climate change to conflict that were identified in the
context of East Africa; and supplement research on South and South East Asia, West Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa. The relationships between climate change and conflict have been studied in numerous other empirical studies and literature reviews with complementary findings.

This paper outlines how climate change can affect peace and security (section I) and how climate change interacts with social, economic and political vulnerabilities in the countries covered by the Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheets (section II). The paper then synthesizes (section III) four key findings from the fact sheet series: (a) livelihood security is important, if not crucial, to the ways in which climate change influences conflict risk; (b) the impacts of climate change
in one location can increase security risks in other locations; (c) the impacts of climate change interact with local vulnerabilities in ways that can create new security risks and exacerbate existing risks, such as conflict; and (d) conflict is not an inevitable consequence of climate change, but can be a response to its effects.

This paper concludes with recommendations for how the UN Security Council shapes policies to address the complex challenges arising from climate change (section IV).