For Humanitarians, Climate and Conflict Are Becoming Harder to Separate

Dec 16, 2024 | Will Worley
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From flooding in refugee camps in Sudan, to militants in Somalia controlling scarce water, the intersection of climate and conflict is an increasingly important challenge for humanitarians, and fast becoming a key policy area at UN climate summits. The second Conference of the Parties in a row – last month’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan – held a Peace, Relief and Recovery day, separate from the official UN negotiations, with discussions on a raft of initiatives (more on that lower down).

But in Baku, the climate-conflict policy agenda wasn’t just limited to sideline discussions: A draft text of the COP29’s headline climate finance target, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), mentioned “conflict” six times, and “fragile” three times, in a bid to get more dedicated climate finance to those places.