Climate security risks are becoming increasingly noticeable. Extreme heat and drought aggravate water and food insecurity in the world’s already most fragile countries. Extreme weather events lead to more calls for military assistance at home and abroad, unbearable living conditions force people to migrate, and melting ice in the Arctic heightens existing tensions between world powers. Climate interventions can contribute to peace and stability, but can also exacerbate inequalities or lead to concerns over a new form of (climate) imperialism.

The wildfires raging in Canada are yet another reminder that climate change is already having an impact on all our lives. As the smoke clears around the United Nations building in New York, we are likely to see a renewed push for the UN Security Council to tackle the security risks posed by climate change, including in the upcoming New Agenda for Peace policy brief from UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

Climate change is often described as a ‘threat multiplier’ that intensifies human insecurity and can thus lead to conflicts as well as migration. The interconnections between climate change, conflict and migration are complex and dynamic, however, with no simple line of causality.

In recent years, Egypt has played a major role in the response to climate insecurity. It has established the Aswan forum as a forum to advance the operationalization of the Humanitarian, Development and Peace  Nexus (HDPN).

In the early morning of 6 June 2023, the Nova Kakhovka Dam near Kherson, Ukraine, breached.

Brazil, the most biodiverse country in the world, with roughly 60% of the Amazon rainforest within its territory, is especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and other environmental risks. Brazil has vast natural resources and is one of the major exporters of agricultural products, minerals, and oil. However, extreme temperatures, drought, water scarcity and flooding, coupled with human-led environmental degradation and environmental crimes, undermine human security, and threaten the country’s socioeconomic development.

Defense ministries regularly frame climate security in their national security strategies. Recently, “civil” ministries also begun mentioning climate security. However, they do not mean the same thing. This article develops four indicators to assess the commitment of climate security framings to an understanding of climate security as either human/environmental or national security issue. It applies the indicators to fifty submissions of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) by civil ministries and seventy defense publications.

The following is an excerpt of the original article authored by Marcus King and Emily Hardy. 

This briefer highlights the core elements of water weaponization and assess its practice in the Russia-Ukraine war to date. 

Water Weaponization and the Russia-Ukraine War

On 15-17 December 2022, the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) and the Planetary Security Initiative (PSI) convened a Regional Workshop on Climate Security in the Bay of Bengal, in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The track 1.5 workshop bookended IPCS’ 2022 activities in a multi-year project with the Clingendael Institute on the security implications of climate change in Southern Asia.

Recent gas discoveries in the eastern Mediterranean have transformed the region’s energy market and economic relationships, raising hopes for geopolitical change as well. The U.S. pioneered what it called “gas diplomacy”, aspiring to use the region’s new energy wealth to bring its countries in conflict to the negotiating table. Israel and Egypt, the new finds’ main beneficiaries, co-founded a regional gas forum.