At the recent G20 meeting in June 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres gave an ominous warning: “Unless we limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, spiraling disasters will devastate every economy.” Guterres implored governments to “speed-up the just transition from fossil fuels to renewables,” and declared that “the end of the fossil fuel age is inevitable.”

It is widely recognized that oil states are rarely democratic, and often conflict-prone. As these governments wind down their dependence on this toxic resource as part of broader global efforts to decarbonize, one might imagine that the end of oil will spell a better future for the citizens of oil-producing countries. Sadly, a look at the cases of fragile fossil fuel producing states (FFFPs) suggests that this may not be the case.

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program 

Humanitarians Highlight the Climate-Conflict Nexus  (The New Humanitarian) 

Climate change’s disproportionate impacts on vulnerable populations exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities and conflict, particularly during natural disasters. This vexed connection has led humanitarians and peacebuilders increasingly to address climate and conflict challenges together in order to provide integrated relief, recovery, and aid.

In October 2024, women from countries across the globe converged on New York for the United Nations Security Council’s annual open debate on Women, Peace and Security (WPS).

In Nigeria, however, thousands of women and girls were sighing in despair. Many of them were thinking about where they might find their next meal. A humanitarian crisis in Nigeria’s northeast region remains critical, and people living there are in dire need of food, clothing and shelter.

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program 

Mekong River Development Faces Public Outcry (Mongabay) 

The Mekong River flows through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam—and a new development on this waterway near the downstream Thailand-Laos border has triggered protests in Thailand. The Pak Beng hydropower development is a joint project of China Datang Overseas Investment and Thailand-based Gulf Energy Development which is estimated to generate 912 megawatts of power to be sold to Thailand’s state energy company. 

A window into what we’re reading at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program 

Famine Prevention Systems Prove Insufficient (Reuters)

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (or IPC) is a global partnership that monitors hunger levels. It is widely recognized for its five-phase classification system of food insecurity that ranges from “minimal” (Phase 1) to “famine” (Phase 5). While the IPC’s aim is to inform humanitarian organizations at an early stage of a crisis to allow them streamline the flow of aid, the worsening global hunger levels experienced this year have pointed to shortcomings in existing prevention systems. 

Our present ecocrisis drives human insecurity. Single weather events killed hundreds in 2024, even in wealthy countries such as the United States or Spain. And beyond that staggering toll in human lives lurk staggering amounts of money required to repair and rebuild. In the United States alone, inflation-adjusted disaster-attributable costs have reached on average $153 billion each year. These factors and others make global environmental change a severe risk to human security.

“I think we need to approach climate security completely differently,” said Sharon Burke, Founder and President of Ecospherics and Wilson Center Global Fellow, at the recent 2024 Montreal Climate Security Summit. “It’s not just that climate change is an opportunity cost in combat power, or that it’s effecting our bases and operating environment, or that it is an accelerant to instability. It is itself the threat.”