Seeking sustainable peace in a changing climate

Why do we need targeted, evidence-based investments in peace programming that integrates climate and environmental security? Well, if you pick up your local newspaper or scan the morning headlines in your email inbox, you’ll likely see a troubling combination of violence, environmental degradation and disasters on the rise — globally and often locally. We should be worried. These interconnected challenges are intensifying, and our ability to respond and adapt is not keeping pace. 

The World Bank reports that in the past decade alone, violent civil conflicts have tripled and the number of people living in proximity to conflict has nearly doubled, with forced displacement at a record high. Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes and heatwaves have increased five-fold over the past 50 years. The newly-released Ecological Threat Register for 2024 concludes that countries with higher levels of ecological threat are more likely to have higher levels of conflict and lower levels of societal safety and security. Alarmingly, 70% of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations are also among the most politically fragile. Where fragility and climate impacts intersect, a vicious cycle emerges, with vulnerabilities compounding and resilience eroding. 

Climate impacts and conflict escalation

The impacts of climate change can create a feedback loop where resource scarcity and competition, governance failures, and social tensions can escalate, increasing the likelihood and intensity of conflicts. Take, for instance, the Sahel region in Africa. Increasingly erratic rainfall patterns, droughts and extreme temperatures have reduced agricultural productivity, leading to conflicts between farmers and pastoralists over access to land and water. These disputes often widen into broader ethnic and regional conflicts, undermining peacebuilding efforts. Similarly, in the Northern Triangle of Central America, the countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras exemplify how climate vulnerability exacerbates political fragility. Hurricanes Eta and Iota in 2020 devastated infrastructure and livelihoods and disaster recovery efforts were slow and unequal. Weak governance and corruption fuelled public frustration, while a lack of trust in institutions further hindered international assistance. Together, these examples highlight a critical oversight in many peacebuilding approaches: addressing visible manifestations of conflict, such as ethnic or religious tensions, without tackling underlying drivers like competition over climate-sensitive resources. Integrating climate adaptation with conflict-sensitive governance and sustainable resource management is essential to achieve lasting peace. 

Failing to integrate climate considerations into peacebuilding is not only a missed opportunity but a strategic risk.

Failing to integrate climate considerations into peacebuilding is not only a missed opportunity but a strategic risk. Research shows that climate-related conflict increases humanitarian aid costs, disrupts development initiatives and creates recurring patterns of crisis response. By contrast, addressing climate risks proactively can reduce the likelihood of conflict reemergence, saving significant resources that would otherwise be spent on emergency response and reconstruction. 

A systems-based approach to sustainable peace 

Narrow, threats-based responses will not be effective in achieving sustainable peace. Instead, we must address the systemic drivers of fragility and resilience. Encouragingly, innovative programs like the Weathering Risk Peace Pillar are leading the way. As a pioneer in the climate, peace and security community, the Weathering Risk initiative contributes significantly to the international debate, shaping political agendas, funding, and the practices of peacebuilding organisations. 

The Peace Pillar implements projects in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and the Bay of Bengal. While the projects are small in scale, they are bold in their ambition to learn and adapt. They embrace complexity by integrating climate and environmental considerations into consultations, dialogues and mediation efforts aimed at preventing, mitigating and resolving violent conflict. Through carefully crafted monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) efforts, the Peace Pillar captures and translates climate security foresight and analysis into peacebuilding action where it is needed most. It also elevates evidence-based insights, lessons learned and recommendations to increase programme effectiveness, maximise return on investment and refine future climate-smart peace programming. 

Learning for impact 

Integrating climate and environmental considerations into peacebuilding programming is a pragmatic investment in sustainable peace.

To better assess the impact of efforts that integrate climate and environmental security into peace programming, the Peace Pillar monitors and evaluates the outcomes of its project interventions across peace, climate, and environmental dimensions. This investment in learning is essential because, as daily headlines remind us, the future will likely look very different from the past. To motivate anticipatory action and be better prepared for an uncertain future, we need to encourage interdisciplinary thinking and track progress (as well as setbacks). This includes evaluating and measuring climate security outcomes with our eyes wide open, recognising that impacts and responses to those impacts often interact in complicated and unexpected ways. Achieving this requires better integration and coordination across traditionally separated sectors and policy areas, including humanitarian assistance, development, peacebuilding and climate change. 

The Peace Pillar projects are proactively investing in learning and improving in real time. While each individual project has different objectives and often operates in unique implementation contexts, they share a connective tissue: the ability to learn collaboratively and collectively. This shared learning is channelled through the Peace Pillar MEL Lab, allowing patterns and trends in climate security risks and opportunities to emerge more clearly across contexts and regions. For example, common entry points to generate co-benefits include addressing governance, strengthening social cohesion and reducing marginalisation and exclusion—all of which help build resilience to both climate impacts and conflict risks. 

Acting now for a resilient future

The Peace Pillar projects demonstrate that targeted investments in evidence-based, integrated peacebuilding amplifies the impact of resources, reduces long-term costs and achieves durable outcomes. While much remains to be learned as these projects continue their next phase of implementation and evaluation, we cannot afford to wait for perfect answers before acting. The cost of inaction is too high. Integrating climate and environmental considerations into peacebuilding programming is a pragmatic investment in sustainable peace. By addressing the root causes of conflict and building resilience to future shocks, integrated peacebuilding delivers high returns on investment today while ensuring that donor resources are used to create lasting change for a more resilient future. 

This op-ed was authored by Cynthia Brady