What Next for Climate Security? Implications From IPCC Working Group II 6th Assessment Report

Apr 11, 2022 | Elisabeth Gilmore, Halvard Buhaug, and Helen Adams
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The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6^th Assessment Report (AR6) from Working Group II (WG2): Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability presents the stark implications of climate change. At today’s warming level of 1.1°C, a wide range of impacts to people and nature are attributed to human-caused climate change, including hindering progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), damaging infrastructure and economic activities, harming human health and causing excess deaths, and increasing humanitarian needs. Some impacts, like those on sensitive ecosystems, are already irreversible. The more vulnerable are hit harder, due to pre-existing structural conditions that increase their exposure and sensitivity to hazards.

Here, we draw out the key points from AR6 WG2 about reducing risks related to climate security. The report finds that climate change is deepening existing conflicts by undermining adaptive capacity and increasing vulnerability. Moderating these impacts requires reducing the human consequences of conflict through investments in human development and livelihood security. Over the longer-term, higher global warming levels will increase conflict risk through severe impacts on known conflict drivers, namely food and livelihood insecurity. However even at 2℃, through sustained societal development to reduce the drivers of conflict and a heightened commitment from the Security Council to support peace, the world could experience lower levels of violence than today.