In a Time of Competing Crises, Environmental Action Matters More than Ever

Jun 3, 2022 | Richard Black, Cedric de Coning, Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Hafsa Maalim, Melvis Ndiloseh, Dan Smith, Caspar Trimmer
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Last week saw the launch of SIPRI’s major policy report Environment of Peace: Security in a New Era of Risk, looking at how to manage the growing risks emerging at the nexus of environmental degradation, peace and security.

Rising food prices are just one aspect of a set of circumstances testing global resilience and cooperation. Many countries around the world are struggling with immediate security issues. The economic and social havoc wreaked by the Covid-19 pandemic persists. However, none of these are reasons to postpone dealing with the environmental crisis; rather, they reinforce the urgency to get on with it. Investing in a green transition will reduce the number of environmental tipping points that we risk crossing, while also creating jobs and reducing the threat from rogue fossil fuel-producing states.

In researching Environment of Peace, we scoured the landscape for telling examples, first of the ways environmental and security factors interact to intensify risk, and second of how different types of organization have managed to contain such risks in ways that promote peace and environmental integrity.