Climate Change and Conflict: The Need for Urgent Action
Among its many devastating impacts, climate change is likely to be a major driver of future conflict, from the very local to even global scales. Parties to the Paris Agreement are failing to deliver enough action around climate change to offset the significant risks climate changes poses to violent conflict and political instability.
Action within the Paris Agreement
1. Focus on the “how” and not just the “what.”
Moving the focus from targets to pathways would allow the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) parties to respond to the risks of conflict more aggressively. For example: considering ways to address potential conflict in the energy transition that acknowledge points of friction and balance strong demands for energy access with expanding green energy.
2. Approach adaptation and mitigation in tandem.
Other tensions within the UNFCCC are created by the disconnect between interests of developing and developed countries. For many of the 195 parties, the vast majority of them developing countries, adapting to the ongoing, increasingly severe impacts of climate change is far more urgent than reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, developed countries have yet to meet the financial goal of $100 billion annually by 2020 promised in Copenhagen in 2009, contributing further to distrust and acrimony. While the Green Climate Fund already allocates 50 percent of its resources to climate adaptation, calls for emerging priorities — like loss and damage — put additional strain on available finance.
3. Better integrate conflict-affected countries.
UNFCCC parties also have an opportunity to recognize and to build on the Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery, and Peace adopted at COP-28 by some 74 countries and multiple international organizations. Highlighting the needs of fragile and conflict-affected countries, as well as those facing severe humanitarian needs, the declaration commits signatories to action on better addressing climate impacts in countries affected by these challenges, as well as ensuring that climate action does not exacerbate conflict.
4. Look for other opportunities.
In addition, UNFCCC parties could identify additional opportunities to reduce conflict, for example, by focusing on loss and damage; by clarifying the goals, metrics and process for achieving the Global Goal on Adaptation; and by enhancing the role of women, indigenous populations, youth and other traditionally excluded populations and other means.
Action Outside the Paris Agreement
Outside of the Paris Agreement, there are many other levers that could be used more aggressively and rapidly to influence climate action. With formal negotiations covering many complex topics and generally limited to two weeks twice a year, combined with internal pressure to maintain a similar pace of progress for the many different pillars of discussions under the UNFCCC, it is not logistically possible to address every issue effectively and to integrate new issues easily. This explains why innovative leadership from outside the UNFCCC is so critical to progress within the negotiations.
Some potential levers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are obvious, particularly in the realms of economic incentives and trade: attaching value to carbon, whether through a tax or a cap-and-trade regime, or constraining trade in carbon through border taxes or other schemes.
Where they do exist — at the subnational level (e.g., British Columbia’s carbon tax), at the national level (e.g., Norway’s tax on oil and gas), or at the regional level (e.g. the EU’s Emissions Trading System or its proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) — they have been useful but not game-changing. Moreover, they are often seen as penalties, which may limit enthusiasm for pursuing them.
Coming to terms with the lack of political will for the level of finance expected by developing countries could also motivate additional creativity in how to support countries and regions facing enormous issues. Formal reconciliation approaches could be one way to help countries step away from intractable negotiation positions to open space for innovative action and partnerships that developed countries can more easily support.
In addition, many of the problems these countries face, such as food and water insecurity driving recruitment to armed extremist groups, are shared problems not limited by borders. There should be ways that regions could work more effectively on such shared problems. And developed countries should support regional change agendas that unlock other collaborations on climate change.
Another potential area of focus is the same as a potential area for improving the Paris Agreement: looking for opportunities both to increase mitigation ambition while meeting concerns about climate impacts, including adaptation, resilience and loss and damage. Innovative approaches to foreign trade could offer opportunities thus far not fully plumbed. Funding for adaptation might somehow piggy-back on mitigation to grow the pie. If opposition to “penalties” taken alone domestically are too great, there may be opportunities to shoulder them jointly through collective action.
The Need for Fresh Thinking
The question is whether existing forums and scheduled events inject both the urgency and creativity needed to surmount the daunting obstacles ahead — obstacles already encountered and which already have slowed progress to a crawl.
Or is it time to bring together a small group of innovative thinkers, outside of existing institutions with established points of view, to tackle this knotty but critical subject? Such a group should likely come from diverse backgrounds and have perspectives that are at once broad and complementary — not so senior that they are too steeped in long-held positions, and not so junior as to underestimate the complexity of the current landscape of climate action. They will need opportunities to come together around specific issues to study the range of approaches that have been tried and research creative policy options that have proposed new avenues, with the goal of identifying and shaping realistic opportunities to push innovation. They will need time to work, but the process should also be undertaken with a sense of urgency.
The need for innovation in the climate space is not just about technological development. It is about everything that pushes forward action: technology, yes, but also new collaborations that unlock finance or allow for the uptake of new technologies and new approaches; new ways for new partners to relate that allow for innovative collaborations to emerge; and expansive approaches to integrating the diversity of people and human innovation into effective action.
As U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell noted at COP-28, the international community needs the “highest ambition, not point-scoring or lowest common denominator politics. Good intentions won’t halve emissions this decade or save lives right now.”
Dan Reifsnyder is a senior advisor for USIP’s Climate, Environment and Conflict program.
SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
| SDGs | Targets | Indicators |
|---|---|---|
| SDG 13: Climate Action | Target 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters | Indicator not mentioned in the article |
| Target 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning | Indicator not mentioned in the article | |
| Target 13.3: Improve education, awareness-raising, and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning | Indicator not mentioned in the article | |
| Target 13.b: Promote mechanisms to raise capacity for planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing states, including focusing on women, youth, local and marginalized communities | Indicator not mentioned in the article | |
| SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions | Target 16.1: Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere | Indicator not mentioned in the article |
| Target 16.7: Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at all levels | Indicator not mentioned in the article | |
| Target 16.10: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements | Indicator not mentioned in the article |
1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?
- SDG 13: Climate Action
- SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?
- Target 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters
- Target 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning
- Target 13.3: Improve education, awareness-raising, and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning
- Target 13.b: Promote mechanisms to raise capacity for planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing states, including focusing on women, youth, local and marginalized communities
- Target 16.1: Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere
- Target 16.7: Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at all levels
- Target 16.10: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements
3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?
No, the article does not mention or imply any specific indicators that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets.
SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
| SDGs | Targets | Indicators |
|---|---|---|
| SDG 13: Climate Action | Target 13.1: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters | Indicator not mentioned in the article |
| Target 13.2: Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning | Indicator not mentioned in the article | |
| Target 13.3: Improve education, awareness-raising, and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning | Indicator not mentioned in the article | |
| Target 13.b: Promote mechanisms to raise capacity for planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing states, including focusing on women, youth, local and marginalized communities | Indicator not mentioned in the article | |
| SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions | Target 16.1: Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere | Indicator not mentioned in the article |
| Target 16.7: Ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at all levels | Indicator not mentioned in the article | |
| Target 16.10: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements | Indicator not mentioned in the article |
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Fuente: usip.org
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