COP28 Introduced Peace and Conflict into the Climate Discussion. What Comes Next?

Apr 3, 2024 | Megan Ferrando
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At the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (28th Conference of the Parties, COP28) in Dubai last December, 74 countries, organizations, and multinational development banks officially linked climate change and conflict for the first time in the conference’s history by signing the Declaration on Relief, Recovery, and Peace. Although not legally binding, this declaration recognizes that countries affected by conflict and fragility are significantly more vulnerable to the effects of climate change and calls for the scaling up of climate finance to help them better prepare for and respond to climate impacts. In recent years the link between conflict and climate change has been established through a growing body of literature as well as reports from actors on the ground. Experts have found that 70% of the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change are also the most fragile. Nevertheless, climate funding for countries at risk of or facing conflict is severely lacking: Those affected both by climate change and conflict receive, on average, just one-fifth of the money for climate finance that conflict-free countries do on a per capita basis. The UN’s Climate Security Mechanism even noted that the more fragile a country is, the less climate finance it tends to receive.