Women in Local Governance Are Key to Building Resilience to Climate-Fragility Risks

Dec 3, 2019 | Molly Kellogg and Lauren Olosky
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The United Nations has recognized climate change as having important implications for peace and security, acting as a “threat multiplier” to other drivers of insecurity. In already fragile contexts, the impacts of climate change––including sea level rise, extreme weather events, and prolonged periods of drought––can exacerbate risks that can fuel, prolong, or deepen conflict dynamics. In this year’s Global Risks Report, the World Economic Forum cited high risks from rapid urbanization in climate-vulnerable contexts, which “not only concentrates people and property in areas of potential damage and disruption, it also exacerbates those risks—for example by destroying natural sources of resilience such as coastal mangroves and increasing the strain on groundwater reserves.”