“Climate change certainly does pose a risk to the world in terms of violent conflict, but there’s a lot of nuance to that argument and a lot of attention and care has to be put into making that case,” says Alec Crawford, project officer at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in this video interview with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko.

According to Crawford, the argument that climate change will lead directly to violent conflict is overly simplistic, but climate could be one of conflict’s many drivers in both Africa and the Middle East. A recent IISD report discusses the potential security challenges of climate change and how to prevent them.