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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category environmental peacemaking.
  • To Fight Climate Change and Insecurity in West Africa, Start with Democracy

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    Guest Contributor  //  November 19, 2021  //  By Leif Brottem
    West,African,Sheperd,Watering,His,Animals,At,A,Natural,Pool

    Secretary of State Blinken is right to focus on climate change and democracy during his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa. At the top of his and everyone else’s mind should be the question: will democratic backsliding in countries like Benin make it more difficult to deal with the effects of climate change? Even more worrisome: will it worsen conflict hotspots, such as the West African Sahel, where climate change is playing a role? All eyes should be on coastal West Africa as countries such as Benin deal with violent insecurity and climate pressure creeping down from the Sahel. My ongoing research in Benin suggests that the country’s democratic local institutions, despite all their faults, are the country’s best defense against the breakdown in rural governance that has befallen Mali and neighboring Burkina Faso. 

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  • Integrating Environmental Protection and Conflict Prevention: Risk, Resilience, and Community Solutions

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    On the Beat  //  November 8, 2021  //  By Shruti Samala
    Homs,,Syria,,September,2013,A,Woman,Walks,Near,A,Residential

    “The world’s least resilient countries—when faced with ecological stress—are more likely to face civil unrest, political instability, social fragmentation, and economic collapse,” said Cynthia Brady, ECSP Global Fellow and Senior Advisor, at an event hosted by the Alliance for Peacebuilding. These “vulnerabilities are clearly mutually reinforcing, but some of the solutions are mutually reinforcing too,” said Brady. The critical challenge now is to bridge the gap between traditionally siloed communities of practice in conflict prevention and conservation.

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  • Can COP26 Meet the Climate and Conflict Challenge?

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    Guest Contributor  //  November 2, 2021  //  By Jessica Hartog
    Kono,District,,Sierra,Leone,-,1st,July,2019:,Group,Of

    Global climate action must be sensitive to ‘land grabs’ and lost livelihoods for both a safer and greener world to be built in Glasgow.

    With all eyes on COP26, the world is holding its breath. This year’s negotiations will need to see truly ambitious commitments to ramp up climate action in order to avoid a dangerous future. There has never been a greater sense of the urgency in the climate movement.

    As a peacebuilder, I’m looking closely at what the implications of the much-needed pledges might be for the 1.5 billion people living in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. The discussion on the impact of climate change on security and social stability is gaining momentum but is still effectively on the fringes of the COP26 agenda. That is a concern.

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  • Integrating Conflict Prevention and Climate Change in U.S. Foreign Policy and Development Assistance

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    Guest Contributor  //  September 1, 2021  //  By Cynthia Brady, Liz Hume & Nick Zuroski
    31164365695_05a2e5724e_c

    Climate change is no longer an abstract issue we may face in the future. Devastating forest fires, the hottest June on record in the United States, lethal flooding in Europe and Asia, and extreme droughts in Africa reveal that the climate is already changing with extreme consequences. Even more concerning than these events alone is the reality that the drivers of climate change, violent conflict, and fragile states compound each other. Climate change exacerbates unstable social, economic, and political conditions, while conflict and fragility can hinder effective climate change response and adaptation. The U.S. can address the compound risks created by both of these issues only through integration of conflict prevention and climate change in its foreign policy and development assistance.

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  • Why Addressing the Climate Crisis Can Help Build More Sustainable Peace

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    Guest Contributor  //  August 27, 2021  //  By Florian Krampe, Farah Hegazi & Stacy D. VanDeveer
    Two,Women,Farmers,Weeding,A,Salad,Garden,In,A,West

    This article originally appeared on The Duck of Minerva.

    Thirty years of research underlies the realization that climate change poses substantial national, international and human security risks, but analysts have only recently shifted their focus toward how to simultaneously build peace in post-conflict environments and grapple with the dual challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change. In a recent article in World Development article, we propose what causal pathways can simultaneously facilitate climate change adaptation, increase resilience, improve natural resource governance, and build more sustainable peace. 

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  • The Top 5 Posts of June 2021

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    What You Are Reading  //  July 8, 2021  //  By Holly Sarkissian
    Cover_GlobalTrends_2040

    In our top post for June, Steve Gale shares 5 consequences out of the National Intelligence Council’s recently released Global Trends report that development actors should be particularly attuned to. In addition to the “long tail” of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report recognizes the environmental consequences of climate change, including unprecedented numbers of wildfires, increased intensity of tropical storms, and sea-level rise. As a result, migration will be more pronounced and require more targeted aid approaches as demographics shift.

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  • From Rhetoric to Response: Addressing Climate Security with International Development

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    Guest Contributor  //  June 14, 2021  //  By Daniel Abrahams
    33660436422_08fee2b988_c

    Over the past decade, our understanding of how climate change affects conflict and security has advanced considerably. Yet, how to best address the overlapping challenges of climate change, conflict, and human security remains an open question. In an article published in World Development, I address this topic by examining how climate security discourses inform development policy and, in turn, how the structures of development enable or constrain institutional capacity to address climate security. This research identifies not only the unique barriers the development sector must overcome, but also the ways in which the most common framings of climate change (i.e., as a threat multiplier) limit the scope for policy and programming.

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  • Raising Climate Ambition Should Include Environmental Peacebuilding

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    Guest Contributor  //  May 17, 2021  //  By Elsa Barron & Sherri Goodman
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    In January, the Biden Administration released the Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. It is a sweeping document that integrates climate concerns into policy and governance, including into national security. It recognizes that environmental security, the integration of environmental considerations into national security strategy, policy, and programs, is essential to combat the global climate crisis and should be mainstreamed across U.S. government efforts. The idea is not a new one. One of the authors (Goodman) led early environmental security efforts in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for 8 years of the Clinton Administration in the 1990s, during the first chapter of awareness of environmental considerations in defense and foreign policy.

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