From Vicious to Virtuous Cycles
Publisher: Environmental Law Institute and United Nations Environment Programme
Author(s): Jon Barnett
Date: 2015
Topics: Climate Change, Cooperation
This perspective is an abridged version of the speech given for the second Al-Moumin Distinguished Lecture on Environmental Peacebuilding. The Al-Moumin lecture series is part of a broader effort by ELI, UNEP, AU, and other institutions to foster analysis and dialogue regarding the connections between conflict, peace, and the environment.
Within the scope of climate change and security there are many undesirable outcomes. They range from the impact on poverty to the sovereignty of small island states. Within this pantheon we seem obsessed with climate change and violent conflict. Yet this is the security risk where theories of causality are weakest. We have almost no explanation as to how climate change might lead to civil war or war between states. We have been thinking about this for more than twenty years. World population has massively increased in that time, as has consumption of resources. But there hasn’t been a conflict caused by environmental change.