Transforming Our Common Crisis: Complexity, Climate Change, and the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus
Publisher: Journal of Peacebuilding & Development
Author(s): Eric Abitbol and Erin McCandless
Date: 2022
Topics: Climate Change, Governance, Humanitarian Assistance
For some three decades, concern about the climate crisis and the multi-dimensionality of its effects and challenges has been growing. Climate change is now widely recognized as a threat multiplier, heightening the likelihood, frequency, and intensity of natural hazards as well as increasing displacement, inequality, and even violent conflict (Brown et al., 2007; Huntjens & Nachbar, 2015; von Uexkull & Buhaug, 2021). While the Global North is disproportionately responsible for the causes and effects of the expanding crisis, the Global South bears the brunt of its devastating effects. Injustices stemming from the climate crisis are of global proportions, with implications across natural, built, and socio-political environments. Although climate change and conflict do not always share causal links, the relationship between them and other forms of disaster, fragility, and uneven development is intersectional, multidirectional, and compounding, with dire humanitarian consequences.