Climate Change, Conflict and Security Scan: Analysis of Current Thinking
Publisher: Overseas Development Institute
Author(s): Leigh Mayhew, Katie Peters, Hannah Measures, Christie Nicoson, and Maria Stavropoulou
Date: 2019
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Disasters, Governance, Livelihoods, Peace and Security Operations
Countries: Belgium, Germany, Norway, Sweden, United States
In the second instalment of ODI’s climate change, conflict and security scan, the authors summarise the latest developments on Twitter, in the blogosphere, and in grey and academic literature, to find new themes and emerging discourse on the intersection of climate and conflict risk. A review of evidence across this quadrimester, spanning August to November 2018, reveals a continuation of themes identified in the first scan. These include:
- contributions to the theoretical framings used to understand the relationship between climate change and conflict
- a continued emphasis on the national security implications of climate change for western nations
- links to climate-related disasters and the politics of vulnerability.
The authors discover new areas of focus, such as conflict risk associated with the transition to low carbon development and geo-engineering, and find concrete analysis being undertaken through climate-fragility risk assessments in the Lake Chad region. This scan is intended to help policy-makers, practitioners and academics to get to grips with the emerging literature, discourse and social media coverage of the intersection of resilience, climate change, disasters, conflict and security. Organised according to medium, the authors encourage readers to be selective, and go straight to the themes that interest them most. Learning from the experience of producing the first scan, they have slightly adapted the methodology, but it remains largely comparable.