Making Peace with the Climate: Conflict Resolution in a Climate-Changing World
Publisher: European Institute of Peace
Author(s): Michael Keating, Julie Raasteen, and Oli Brown
Date: 2020
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Dispute Resolution/Mediation, Peace Agreements
The European Institute of Peace (EIP) has undertaken a series of structured interviews with more than a dozen leading conflict resolution professionals to draw out lessons on climate change and conflict. The findings provide ideas on how mediators might address climate change in their conflict resolution efforts. The key findings are: (1) Climate change should matter to conflict resolution practitioners because it matters to conflict. (2) Climate change poses challenges and opportunities for peacemaking. (3) Conflict resolution practitioners will need to help parties address the security impacts of climate change by laying the foundation for sustainable peace in peace agreements, and in the finance mechanisms and political structures needed to implement those agreements. Conflict resolution practitioners do not need to be climate change experts themselves but they do need to ensure that technical and scientific knowledge is appropriate to the context and introduced in a timely manner. (4) Climate change should be addressed in the wider peace process and reconstruction phase. It is the responsibility of the practitioners in charge of peace processes to ensure that, when climate change issues are relevant, they are not ignored.