Security Risks of Environmental Crises: Enviroment of Peace (Part 2)


Publisher: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Author(s): Karolina Eklöw, Farah Hegazi, Florian Krampe, David Michel, Elizabeth Smith, Cedric de Coning, Joshua Busby, Marc Lanteigne, Corey Pattison, and Caleb Ray

Date: 2022

Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Causes, Gender, Governance, Livelihoods, Peace and Security Operations, Public Health, Renewable Resources

Countries: Chad, Guatemala, Mali, Somalia

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SIPRI’s Environment of Peace initiative focuses on managing the risks that are created by two interwoven crises: the darkening security horizon and the immense pressures being placed on the natural world and the systems that support life on earth. 

This part—Security Risks of Environmental Crises (part 2)—shows how combinations of environmental and security phenomena are generating complex risks. Through a theoretical framework informed by the literature, Cedric de Coning, Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), and his team explore different pathways from environmental stress to conflict and how the darkening security horizon and environmental crises are interacting to generate different types of risk: compound, cascading, emergent, systemic and existential. The analysis is supported by numerous case studies, spanning a variety of social-ecological systems and different types of risks. Part 2 also discusses options for responding to these complex risks.