The Nature of Conflict and Peace: The Links between Environment, Security and Peace and Their Importance for the United Nations


Publisher: World Wide Fund for Nature and adelphi

Author(s): Lukas Rüttinger, Raquel Munayer, Pia van Ackern, and Florian Titze

Date: 2022

Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes, Disasters, Livelihoods, Programming, Renewable Resources

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A new report by WWF and adelphi looks at the complex nexus between nature and security. The report outlines four pathways through which environmental degradation and biodiversity loss act as drivers of insecurity and exacerbate conflict situations, besides advancing further environmental degradation. The report also provides recommendations for organs, programmes, funds, specialised agencies and bodies of the UN system to act as starting points and possible next steps to work towards a comprehensive environmental security agenda.

The report seeks to complement the climate-security nexus by addressing environmental risks to security that are not (primarily) related to climate change. Hence, the nature-security nexus puts biodiversity and ecosystems rather than climate change at its centre. This perspective allows for assessing the whole breadth of interactions between environment, peace and security