Janani Vivekananda

Senior Adviser
adelphi
Germany

Aug 14, 2018

Janani Vivekananda is a Senior Adviser at adelphi, working on the linkages between climate change, peacebuilding, and risk analysis. She is also a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association. Janani holds a B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford, and M.Sc. in Violence, Conflict, and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her work on issues of peace and security, vulnerability, adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and conflict and resources has developed through previous positions with International Alert, United Nations Development Programme, and Plan International. Her work as a Senior Adviser with adelphi seeks to bridge the gap between on-the-ground research and policy practices in order to better support sustainable development and peace.

Her current research and on-the-ground work focuses on climate fragility in the Lake Chad Basin, an area that is experiencing an acute humanitarian crisis. The two-year project seeks to address the relationship between humanitarian action and climate change, as climate change is exacerbating conflict by increasing uncertainty around rainfall and other environmental factors. The conflict in the region means that there is not enough scientific research on climate dimensions, giving rise to misinformation and unsuccessful programming. Janani’s work seeks to increase scientific research in the region for a more robust climate analysis, and set out risks and propose solutions so that humanitarian aid and peacebuilding efforts can be more effective. Her work draws significantly on the importance of local and community knowledge, involving local researchers to better understand the reality on the ground and the ways that relationships between different groups of people influence conflict.

Janani’s work expands the understanding of conflict dynamics, combining environmental factors with other factors such as gender, power dynamics, and justice for a more successful and complex conflict analysis. She came to environmental peacebuilding and climate change from a peacebuilding background, having previously researched conflict dimensions in South Asia, Central Asia, and Africa. Janani argues that climate change must be thought about as one of the many dimensions of conflict and peacebuilding: “Basically, climate change is one of the factors of conflict, but there’s no one single understanding—it’s all subjective, based on the situation. When you come at this from a conflict background, there’s no ranking of factors where one factor is more important than the others. Climate change interacts with other intersecting aspects of conflict.” This understanding has informed her work as she investigates the connection between climate change, peace, and sustainable development to increase knowledge and risk assessments for humanitarian action and peacebuilding in conflict-affected areas.

Janani sees the Association as an important way to build a trans-Atlantic network for practitioners, scholars, and decision makers. Until this point, she has been mainly connected to a European community of practitioners, and sees the Association as an important way to get involved with people working on similar issues in the United States and all over the world. She notes, “We are all working toward the same thing. It’s important to learn from different areas of progress, and the Association provides a place for that.”