a climate of conflict

8/3/2019 A Climate of Conflict

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Growing strains on ecosystems translate directly into national, regional

and global security threats. Pollution, desertication, scarcity o resh

water, changing weather patterns resulting in foods, storms, etc, causeood insecurity and population displacements, which may lead to politi-

cal instability and violent conficts. These, in turn, risk setting back

development by decades.

Two-thirds o the world’s population live in countries that are at high

risk o instability as a consequence o climate change. Many o the

countries predicted to be worst aected by climate change are also

aected, or threatened, by violent conficts. The very poor are hit the

hardest.

Climate change also impacts on regional and global economic pat-

terns, with new risks or investors and corporations. Consequently, the

need or social, environmental, political and economic stability must go

hand in hand. Tackling the challenges o climate change must include aholistic perspective o state- and human security. Greater awareness and

preparedness is needed on the part o organisations, businesses, public

ocials and state agencies. This timely and essential report not only

outlines the challenges and risks, but also includes an important list o

recommendations.

The publication was produced by International Alert, one o Sida’s

long-standing partners in the eld o peace building and confict man-

agement. International Alert is a non-prot organisation based in the

United Kingdom. It is a peace-building organisation undertaking re-

search and advocacy, as well as implementing projects together with

local partners in developing countries. Sida supports International Alertwith organisational and programme support. The publication was

adapted by Sida to serve as reerence material or the Sida Development

Area seminar “Confict Risks, Human Security and Climate Change”

held on 18 February 2008. Other material related to the seminar may be

ound on www.sida.se/area.

Henrik Hammargren

Head o Division – Peace and Security

Preace



Published by Sida 2008

The inormation department and the division or peace and security

Main authors: Dan Smith, Janani Vivekananda

Graphic: Svenska Graikbyrån

Editors o the Sida ed ition: Jon Hedenström och Henrik Hammargren

Printed by Edita Communication, 2008

Art. no.: SIDA44enISBN 978-9-586-807-2

This publication can be downloaded/ordered rom www.sida.se/publications



Content

Preace......................................................................................................1

Acknowledgements..................................................................................5

Executive Summary ..................................................................................7

Climate, poverty, governance .............................................................7

Countries at risk ..................................................................................7

Adaptation ..........................................................................................8

Adaptation and peacebuilding ...........................................................8

Twelve recommendations or addressing climate

change in ragile states ......................................................................... 9

. Climate change, development and peacebuilding ..........................11

2. The double-headed problem o climate changeand violent conlict .................................................................................14

Risk and risk management ............................................................... 14The consequences o consequences .................................................. 16

Textbox: Kenya ................................................................................. 16

Water ................................................................................................. 17

Textbox: Bangladesh ......................................................................... 18

Agriculture .........................................................................................19

Energy ................................................................................................20

Health ...............................................................................................20

Migration and urbanisation .............................................................20

Climate change and global insecurity .............................................. 22

Textbox: Sida and migration .............................................................22

Governance matters ..........................................................................23Textbox: Mali & Chad....................................................................... 24

Key risks .......................................................................................... 24

Textbox: Sudan – Darur .................................................................. 28

. The uniied solution ........................................................................... 30

Why the international community should act ..................................30

Regional cooperation ........................................................................ 31

A role or the private sector ...............................................................32

Complexities o cooperation ..............................................................33

Current rameworks and action on climate change ..........................34

Text box: Liberia ...............................................................................38

Peacebuilding ....................................................................................39Linking peacebuilding and climate adaptation ................................ 41



4

Textbox: Nepal ..................................................................................42

Textbox: Colombia ............................................................................44

Developing social resilience ...............................................................46

The practicalities o adaptation ........................................................ 47

Textbox: Rwanda...............................................................................48

4. Conclusions and recommendations.................................................50

Twelve recommendations or addressing climatechange in ragile states .......................................................................52

Sida, Environment and Climate Change .......................................... 56

List o states at risk ............................................................................. 57

Reerences ..............................................................................................58



5

Acknowledgements

Preparation o this report owes a lot to the participation o Kaitlin

Shilling, o the Program on Food Security and the Environment, Stan-ord University, Caliornia, who contributed data and analysis on climate

change and its consequences in a number o countries and regions. She

also helped us explore the relationship between ood insecurity, govern-

ance and confict potential in both generic and country-specic terms. In

addition, our work beneted rom the generosity o Dr. Fiona Rotberg, o

the Silk Road Studies Institute, Uppsala University, Sweden, with urther

contributions o data and analysis. Financial support or a project consul-

tation in New York during the report’s preparation was provided by the

Center o International Cooperation, New York University. We are

grateul to the Center not only or that assistance but also or the time,

energy and insights o CIC’s Co-Director, Dr. Bruce Jones. None o these

colleagues or their institutions bears any responsibilities or any errors or

uncertainties o act or analysis that remain. This report is the responsi-

bility o International Alert and does not necessarily refect the views o

any o our donors.



7

Climate change is upon us and its physical eects have started to unold.

That is the broad scientic consensus expressed in the Fourth Assessment

Review o the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. This reporttakes this nding as its starting point and looks at the social and human

consequences that are likely to ensue – particularly the risks o confict

and instability.

Climate, perty, ernanceHardest hit by climate change will be people living in poverty, in under-

developed and unstable states, under poor governance. The eect o the

physical consequences – such as more requent extreme weather, melting

glaciers, and shorter growing seasons – will add to the pressures under

which those societies already live. The background o poverty and bad

governance means many o these communities both have a low capacityto adapt to climate change and ace a high risk o violent confict.

To understand how the eects o climate change will interact with

socio-economic and political problems in poorer countries means tracing

the consequences o consequences. This process highlights our key

elements o risk – political instability, economic weakness, ood insecurity

and large-scale migration. Political instability and bad governance make

it hard to adapt to the physical eects o climate change and hard to

handle any conficts that arise without violence. Economic weakness

narrows the range o income possibilities or the population and deprives

the state o resources with which to meet people’s needs. Food insecurity

challenges the very basis o being able to continue living in a particular

locality and, as a response to that and other kinds o insecurity, large-scale migration carries high risk o confict because o the earul reac-

tions it oten receives and the infammatory politics that oten greet it.

Cuntries at riskMany o the world’s poorest countries and communities thus ace a

double-headed problem: that o climate change and violent confict.

There is a real risk that climate change will compound the propensity or

violent confict, which in turn will leave communities poorer, less resilient

and less able to cope with the consequences o climate change. There are

46 countries – home to 2.7 billion people – in which the eects o climate

change interacting with economic, social and political problems willcreate a high risk o violent confict.

Executive Summary



8

There is a second group o 56 countries where the institutions o govern-

ment will have great diculty taking the strain o climate change on top

o all their other current challenges. In these countries, though the risk o

armed confict may not be so immediate, the interaction o climate

change and other actors creates a high risk o political instability, with

potential violent confict a distinct risk in the longer term. These 56

countries are home to 1.2 billion people.

In most o the confict-threatened group o 46 states (many o themcurrently or recently aected by violent confict) and in many o the

group o 56 that aces the risk o instability, it is too late to believe the

situation can be made sae solely by reducing carbon emissions world-

wide and mitigating climate change. Those measures are essential but

their eects will only be elt with time. What is required now is or states

and communities to adapt to handle the challenges o climate change.

AdaptatinIn most o the countries that ace the double-headed problem o climate

change and violent confict, the governments cannot be expected to take

on the task o adaptation alone. Some o them lack the will, more lack

the capacity, and some lack both. What is required is international

cooperation to support local action, both as a way o strengthening

international security and to achieve the goals o sustainable develop-

ment.

Without dropping or downplaying mitigation, the international policy

agenda thus needs a signicant increase in the energy and resources that

are ocused on adaptation. Against estimated costs o adaptation that

range rom $10-40 billion, the resources currently available amount to a

ew hundred million dollars with another billion somewhere in the

pipeline.

At the same time as adaptation must receive more emphasis and more

unding, it matters even more that it is the right kind o adaptation andthat money is spent in the right way. To organise adaptation as top-down

programmes will alienate local communities because it will eel like a

series o external impositions, decided by government authorities rom

which they eel distant and explained by outside experts with whom they

have nothing in common.

A dierent approach is possible, based on peacebuilding, engaging

communities’ energies in a social process to work out how to adapt to

climate change and how to handle conficts as they arise, so that they do

not become violent. It is an approach that brings the hard science o

climate change – which local communities do not and cannot be expect-

ed to know in the rst instance, and which must be communicated

clearly – together with local knowledge and understanding to gure out

the best mode o adaptation.

Adaptatin and peacebuildinThe double-headed problem o climate change and violent confict thus

has a unied solution – peacebuilding and adaptation are eectively the

same kind o activity, involving the same kinds o methods o dialogue

and social engagement, requiring rom governments the same values o

inclusivity and transparency. At the same time as adaptation to climate

change can and must be made confict-sensitive, peacebuilding and

development must be made climate-sensitive.

A society that can develop adaptive strategies or climate change inthis way is well equipped to avoid armed confict. And a society that can



9

manage conficts and major disagreements over serious issues without a

high risk o violence is well equipped to adapt successully to the chal-

lenge o climate change. Climate change could even reconcile otherwise

divided communities by posing a threat against which to unite and tasks

on which to cooperate.

Twele recmmendatins fr addressin climate chane infraile states

1. Me the issue f cnflict and climate chane hiher up the

internatinal plitical aenda

New initiatives are needed to gain agreement on the importance o

adaptation, especially in ragile states, and to develop international

guidelines and make available adequate unding.

2. Research the indirect lcal cnsequences f climate chane

Research is urgently needed on how the social and political consequences

o climate change are likely to play out in specic regions, countries andlocalities.

3. Deelp and spread research cmpetence

University and research networks need mobilising and strengthening to

develop and spread competence on these issues, especially where conse-

quences o climate change will hit hardest.

4. Impre knwlede and enerate plicy thruh dialue

International cooperation needs to promote dialogue on adaptation

among local communities, national governments and regional organisa-

tions.

5. Priritise adaptatin er mitiatin in fraile states

In ragile states, priority should be given to understanding and address-

ing the consequences o the consequences o climate change to prevent

violent confict.

6. Deelp the riht institutinal cntext: d ernance fr

climate chane

Developing competence on adaptation needs to be treated as part o

good governance everywhere.

7. Prepare t manae miratin

Research identiying likely migration fows can help identiy both mi-

grant and host communities where dialogue should be started early to

prepare to manage the process.

8. Ensure Natinal Adaptatin Plans f Actin are cnflict-sensitie

National Adaptation Plans o Action should take account o a state’s

socio-political and economic context and confict dynamics.

9. Climate-prf peacebuildin and deelpment

Peacebuilding and development strategies should include adaptation to

climate change and make explicit how activities on these three intercon-nected strands strengthen one another.



0

10. Enae the priate sectr

Guidelines are needed to help companies identiy how their core com-

mercial operations can support adaptation.

11. Link tether internatinal framewrks f actin

Greater eorts are needed to link the variety o separate international

approaches with the related issues o peacebuilding, development,

adaptation and disaster management.

12. Prmte reinal cperatin n adaptatin

International cooperation on adaptation is or regional bodies as well as

or the UN.



Climate change is the latest hot topic on the international agenda. Even

beore the Nobel Peace Prize or 2007 was awarded to the Inter-govern-mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and to Al Gore, the issue’s

prole was rising. At the end o 2006, Sir Nicholas Stern headed a major

review o the economics o global warming or the UK government and

gained considerable media coverage.1 In 2007 the IPCC itsel produced

its Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) with major media attention as each

o its three working groups issued their ndings.2 The AR4 has moved

the climate change debate along in several ways. First, it refects a major

increase in the degree o scientic consensus about the reality o climate

change and, second, growing consensus that it is caused by human

activity. Third, the AR4 emphasises that the consequences o climate

change are already unolding and, ourth, it makes long-term projections

about the extent and physical consequences o climate change that are

more serious and ar-reaching than in previous reports.

The evidence and arguments o the international scientic body will

be neither queried nor extended in this report. Our starting point is the

IPCC’s nding that climate change and its consequences are not topics

or the long-term uture alone – they are upon us.

Some governments and international organisations are developing

strategies to address the causes o climate change and mitigate global

warming by reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption. But

mitigation, even i taken up immediately and on a massive scale, cannot

prevent the initial eects o global warming rom unolding through

world weather systems and aecting the lives o hundreds o millions o people.

Climate change is upon us and there is an urgent need to work out

how to adapt to it. This is the next step in governmental policy. There

have been some moves in this direction, with the 2006 Stern Review

oering policy-makers a comprehensive assessment o the impact climate

change will have on the global economy. Working Group II o the IPCC

on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability also oers valuable analysis o

the implications o the physical eects o climate change across the

world.

This report sets out to look urther into these consequences o conse-

quences o climate change. It looks at their socio-political eects –particularly in ragile states – and their implications or the risk o violent

confict.

. Climate change,development and

peacebuilding



2

The people or whom the knock-on social consequences o climate

change will be most serious and hardest to adapt to are largely those

living in poverty, in under-developed and unstable states, under poor

governance. For them, the impact o the physical consequences will inter-

act with a mix o these economic, social and political actors to produce a

low capacity to adapt and a high risk o serious consequences such as

widespread malnutrition and starvation, mass migration or violent

confict.These ragile states thus ace a double-headed problem: that o cli-

mate change and violent confict. I nothing is done, the relationship

between the two parts o the problem will be mutually and negatively

reinorcing. There is a real risk that climate change will compound the

propensity or violent confict which, in turn, will leave communities

poorer, less resilient and less able to cope with the consequences o

climate change.

But there is also an opportunity here: i it is targeted and appropri-

ately addressed, this vicious circle can be transormed into a virtuous

one. I communities can enhance their ability to adapt to consequences

o climate change, this will help reduce the risk o violence. And peace-

building activities, which address socio-economic instability and weak

governance, will leave communities better placed to adapt to the chal-

lenges o climate change which, in turn, will result in more peaceul

societies regardless o how climate change unolds. Indeed, climate

change oers an opportunity or peacebuilding, or it is an issue that can

unite otherwise divided and unreconciled communities. It oers a threat

to unite against and multiple tasks through which to cooperate.

So, as the Stern Review argues with reerence to economic policy,

even i the science is wrong and the predictions o the uture impacts o

climate change are not ultimately borne out, taking account o climate

change will create a win-win situation in ragile states.

The physical consequences o climate change may be largely in thehands o nature, but the consequences o these consequences are not.

The issue o adaptation to climate change is at heart a matter o govern-

ance – the strength o government institutions, the state’s eciency (or

lack o it) in providing basic services, and the infuence o regional and

international cooperation. It is the state’s job to handle the eects o

climate change so as to minimise harm to its citizens; states with good

governance are by denition better equipped or the task than those

without.

For example, where global warming shortens the growing season, the

result will be a risk o ood insecurity. The government’s response will

dene whether this insecurity is redressed through a redistribution o

resources, or whether it leads to a violent struggle or control o dwin-

dling resources, or to large scale migration. Equally, global warming

may make it impossible or people to carry on living and working in low-

lying coastal areas. In this case, the response o government will dene

whether those people are looked ater and get alternative economic

opportunities or are neglected, resentul and ready to support violently

overturning an unjust social order.

The task o rising to the challenge o adaptation to ace the social and

political consequences cannot be let in the hands o individual states that

are already unable (even when willing) to care properly or their citizens.

The only prospect o handling these challenges positively is through

international cooperation. That means mobilising not just internationalorganisations such as the UN and its agencies but, more especially,



regional and sub-regional groupings. It means drawing on the capacities

o stronger neighbours to help the less capable governments. It means

richer governments – the western donor governments but also China,

India and other new donors governments, such as those rom the Middle

East – stepping up to provide the resources to analyse and prepare or

these challenges.

At the same time, the place where adaptation must happen is in local

communities themselves. International and national policies need to beshaped so as to engage in the task o adapting the energies o those with

most to lose by inaction and most to gain by responding creatively to the

challenge o climate change. In many countries, rising to the challenge

will mean unprecedented degrees o cooperation between local and

national leaders, between the ormal and inormal authorities, and

between the state and its people.

The purpose o this report is to understand how the consequences o

climate change can lead to violent confict, and to show how this will

hinder the eort to adapt to climate change. Out o this, we want to

show that peacebuilding and adaptation to climate change can comple-

ment each other in laying the basis or long-term social and economic

development. And lastly, we want to identiy policies and mechanisms

that will help communities understand the challenges o climate change

and respond in such a way that they avoid violent confict.



4

Climate change and violent confict present countries and communities

with a double-headed problem. The two parts are mutually reinorcing;many o the countries predicted to be worst aected by climate change

are also aected or threatened by violence and instability.

The increase in global average temperatures that is already unolding

and is projected to continue will change the climate in many parts o the

world. The eects will vary – sea-level rise threatening low-lying small

islands and coastal areas, more severe droughts and shorter growing

seasons in some places, more storms and foods in others, glaciers melt-

ing, deserts orming. These will combine with existing pressures on

natural resources and lead in many areas to ailing crops, inadequate

ood supplies and increasingly insecure livelihoods. These urther conse-

quences will be especially sharp in countries where poverty, exclusion,

inequality and injustice are already entrenched.

From everything we know about how mutually interlocking actors

such as poverty, bad governance and the legacy o past conficts generate

risks o new violence, it is sae to predict that the consequences o climate

change will combine with other actors to put additional strain on

already ragile social and political systems. These are the conditions in

which conficts fourish and cannot be resolved without violence because

governments are arbitrary, inept and corrupt. I the relationship between

climate change and violent confict is not addressed, there will be a

vicious circle o ailure to adapt to climate change, worsening the risk o

violent confict and, in turn, reducing urther the ability to adapt.

Risk and risk manaementThe eects o changing weather patterns will render previous liestyles

and habitats unviable in many places. Some o these changes will be

sudden, such as tropical storms and fash foods. Others will be much

slower in their onset, such as the steadily alling water levels in the

Ganges basin, lengthening droughts on the margins o the Sahel, glacial

melting in Peru and Nepal, and rising sea levels. This will lead to in-

creased ood insecurity – not just ood shortages but uncertainty o supply.

Both sudden shocks and slow onset changes can increase the risk o

violent confict in unstable states because they lack the capacity to

respond, adapt and recover. It is likely that the most common way o thinking about how to respond to these problems is through huge hu-

manitarian relie eorts, since such events and the response to them get a

2. The double-headedproblem o climate

change and violentconlict



5

great deal o news coverage. But there is a growing awareness that what

is really needed is or communities and countries to prepare against

sudden shocks, to build their resilience and their adaptive capacity.

Where that is possible, as we argue in chapter 3 o this report, communi-ties will not only be better prepared against potential disasters such as

foods, but they will, in consequence, also be reducing the risk o conficts

erupting, getting out o control and escalating to violence. Seen in this

light, adaptation to the eects o climate change can be a part o peace-

building and peacebuilding is a way o increasing adaptive capacity. In

the medium to long term, peacebuilding will also increase unstable

states’ capacities or mitigation.

Vulnerability to climate change is the product o three actors –

exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity.3 The rst issue is whether a

country – or a city, or community, or region – is going to be exposed to

physical eects o climate change such as increased requency o extreme

weather. The second issue is how sensitive it is to that exposure – a storm

may hit two cities but only cause foods in one o them because it is low



KENYA Urbanisatin and climate chane

lying. And the third issue is whether there is adaptive capacity which, or

example, enables city authorities to build food deences and be ready

with quick and sae evacuation plans, while the national government has

prepared to care or those who are displaced and can switly allocate

resources or repair and rebuilding when the foods recede.

This can all be best understood as a matter o identiying and manag-

ing risk. Strengthening the capacity to adapt to climate change wil l not

eliminate risk, but it will reduce it. Where there is a risk o violent con-fict because o a combination o actors such as poverty, bad governance

and a recent history o war, the capacity to manage the risks associated

with climate change is also much reduced.

The cnsequences f cnsequencesIn many countries, one cumulative impact o climate change will be to

increase the potential or violent confict. As we trace this process, we are

looking at the consequences o consequences and attempting to track

their interactions with other social processes with roots in dierent

aspects o the human condition. Whether countries and communities can

adapt so as to cope with the adverse knock-on eects o climate change

depends on how a number o variables play out.

It is worth preacing a brie look at these key variables with two gen-

eral comments about the causes o violent confict. It is axiomatic that

confict, as such, is not the central problem – rather, violent confict is. In

other words, conficts are inevitable, necessary and oten productive and

key to social progress. What matters is how the conficts are handled; in

Kenya is one o the countries most aected by climatechange. The country has a population o roughly 6 million,and growing at a rate o 2.6 per cent. Kenya is among theArican countries experiencing rapid urbanisation. In 2007,some 2% o the population lived in urban areas. Due to anexpected annual urban population growth rate o .9 per cent,that gure is expected to reach above 60 per cent by 200.

At the same time, as urbanisation and economic develop-ment increase, urban poverty has risen due to inadequatepolicies, poor governance, inappropriate legal and regulatoryrameworks, dysunctional markets, unresponsive nancialsystems, and corruption. More than 50% o the country’s

urban population now lives in slums, which jeopardise thesustainability o Kenya’s urban centres, now contributing morethan 65% o the GDP.

According to the Kenyan Joint Assistance Strategy (KJAS),the country is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events.Floods ollowed by droughts during the late 990’s cost thecountry some 4% o its GDP, making it dicult or thegovernment to maintain its country ’s economic growth.

Although Kenya is exposed to climatic variability everyyear, there is a risk that climate change will exacerbate thesituation. The increase in temperatures could cause morerequent and severe droughts as well as foods and rising sealevels. As in many other countries, the impact o climate

change especially aects poorer communities which are morevulnerable.

Weather events can also severely impact households andtheir security, through potentially negative eects on liveli -

6

Ttal aid asprprtin f gDP

The ten biest dnrs, 2005, m USD

4,1%

4

86

66

6

50

42

28

24

United States

EC

United Kingdom

SAF+ESAF+PRGF (IMF)

Japan

Germany

Sweden

Denmark

Netherlands

UNHCR



particular, whether the participants can reach an acceptable outcome

without violence. In this perspective, the consequences o consequences o

climate change are bound to include confict, but need not include violent

confict up to and including the level o war.

Secondly, when violent conficts do break out, it is always against the

background o a number o dierent actors interacting with one another.

Poverty and poor governance are actors that requently have a signicant

role as the background causes o violent confict; a history o ethno-nationalist politics, environmental degradation and the legacy o previous

armed conficts are urther such actors. I these are background causes,

in the oreground lie the demands, grievances and positions o the con-

tending parties and the behaviour and credibility o political leaders. It

would be misleading to think that climate change alone will cause violent

confict; the problem, rather, lies in the interaction between the eects o

climate change and these other actors.

WaterClimate change will signicantly aect resh water supply. Worldwide,

over 430 million people currently ace water scarcity, and the IPCC

predicts that these numbers wil l rise sharply because climate change will

aect surace water levels that are established by rainall and glacial

melting. In some situations, increased glacial melting will cause inland

water levels to rise in the short term, ollowed by a downturn later, but

the overall projected impact o climate change is that water scarcity will

increase with time.

hood. They can also lead to increased migration to urbanareas, which increases the slums that are oten breedinggrounds or conficts, crime and instability, as has been viv idlyand tragically shown in the post-election violence at the starto 2008.

For the past two years, Sida has supported the Kenyangovernment’s urban renewal and inrastructure developmentwith the objective o improving the living conditions o theurban poor.

The Swedish government has identied climate change tobe an issue aecting all sectors o government and keyministries responsible or areas such as water and naturalresources, transportation, energy, and public works. Integrat-ed urban development planning is one tool that can be used topromote sustainable growth o urban areas. Mitigation andadaptation o urban development to the impact o climatechange is a key challenge. Raising awareness o the causes oglobal warming, as well as putting relevant governmentpolicies and planning tools into place, is crucial to the develop-ment process.

Surces;

– Kenya Joint Assistance Strategy, 2007-202– UNFPA, State o the world population 2007 – Unleashing the

potential o urban growth

– Sida

TANZAN IA

ET H I O P I ASU D AN

U G AN D A

KENYA SO M AL I A

Nairbi

Nakuru

Kisumu

Mombasa

FACTS200km

Source: Sida

Area: 582,646 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Nairobi 2,42,000 (est. 200)Number f inhabitants: 5,00,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: republic, unitary stategDP per capita: 694 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin:countries to receive most development cooperation via Sida. In 2006,

receive development cooperation rom Sweden. Poor governance andwidespread corruption have periodically made development cooperation

development have motivated continued Swedish support.During the period 2004-2008, Sida has and is working to promoteadvances in the ollowing areas:

- economic- social development,- sustainable management o natural resources,- democratic governance.

Work on human rights, gender equality and reducing thespread o HIV/AIDS shall permeate all contributions.



This will be especially problematic in middle-income countries making

the transition rom agricultural production to industry. Such states, o

which the largest and most advanced in the process are India and China,

ace an urgent situation as their water resources are already stressed and

depleting while demand is growing rapidly.

The confict risk i water resources are inadequate lies in poor man-

agement that either wastes water by inappropriate use o it and inad-

equate conservation measures, or politicises the issue and seeks a scape-goat on which to blame shortages. Conficting claims to water resources

have been a eature o numerous conficts as major rivers are very oten

shared between countries. The situation is particularly problematic when

a militari ly strong state or region is downstream to a mi litarily weaker

state or region. China, India, Mexico, the Middle East, Southern Arica

and Central Asia are among the countries and regions o the world that

have been and are likely to be aected by violent confict over water

rights. Tensions over water rights and supply also can be worsened by

development programmes that privatise control o the resource without

looking ater the rights o the poor.

The experience o Bangladesh illustrates some o the possibletensions that link climate-related migration to v iolent confict.

In the recent past, migration has led to violent confict bothwithin Bangladesh and in neighbouring regions o India.Bangladesh has a growing population or whom there is

not enough land available, and is vulnerable to severe eectsrom climate change. Part o the country’s vulnerability lies inits topography: about hal o Bangladesh is located only a ewmetres above sea level, and about a third is fooded in therainy season. The Indian Farakka Barrage has made theproblem worse over the past 0 years. Completed in 975,close to the border with Bangladesh, the barrage divertswater rom the Ganges River to its Indian tributary, reducingthe fow o water in the Bangladeshi tributary. This disturbanceto the natural balance o the large Ganges-Brahmaputra deltahas caused several severe problems:• salt water intrusion into Bangladeshi coastal rivers,

reaching as ar as 00 miles inland on occasion;• consequent decline in river shing;• summer droughts, making the land less productive;• loss o land to the sea because the reduced river fow

meant less sediment was carried into the delta area togive it natural protection against the sea;

• worsened fooding when cyclones hit.

These problems directly aect about 5 million people,4 exacerbating the eects o other eatures o rural lie –

including, not least, poverty, unequal land distribution and,among small armers, economically inecient systems oinheritance that divided land among amily members into eversmaller plots.



2,2%

40020

99

78

69

6

5

50

50

46

24

IDAUnited Kingdom

SAF+ESAF+PRGF (IMF)

EC

AsDF (Asian Dev.Fund)

Netherlands

Canada

Denmark

United States

Germany

Sweden



AricultureTemperature change and rainall are decisive or crop and livestock

production in the developing world. The IPCC prediction o a tempera-

ture rise o 1–3°C in the next 50 years in the global ‘business as usual’

scenario would mean crop yields alling in mid- to high-altitude regions.

I this is borne out by events, regions most likely to be aected by de-

creasing crop yields include ones that are already prone to ood insecu-

rity, such as Southern Arica, Central Asia and South Asia.7

Studies inIndia have already seen rice and wheat production decrease as tempera-

ture increases, aecting the ood security o agriculture-dependent

communities.8 Projected sea-level rise rom glacial melting will aect

low-lying coastal areas with large populations, reducing the amount o

cultivatable land across South Asia and in other areas around the world.

Any disruption in the agricultural sector can massively aect ood

security, especially or the poorer sections o society. Increased uncer-

tainty about ood supply will orce communities to nd alternative

strategies, which oten clash with the needs o other communities also

acing increased livelihood pressure. In Arica’s Sahel region, desertica-

tion is reducing the availability o cultivatable land, leading to clashes

between herders and armers. In Northern Nigeria, Sudan and Kenya,

these clashes have become violent.9 The situation in Darur is most

notable (see separate box).

Unable to make a living, many people have migrated. There

have been two nearby destinations, as

well as others much urther aeld. Since the 950s,2–7 million Bangladeshis have migrated to India (oten

illegally), attracted by the higher standard o living and lowerpopulation density, moving mostly to the adjacent states oAssam and Tripura.5 And about 400,000–600,000 peoplehave moved within Bangladesh to the Chittagong Hill Tracts(CHT), where they have cleared trees on the steep hillsidesand begun arming, resulting in soil erosion and unsustainablelivelihoods. In both the neighbouring Indian states and theCHT, there have been conficts.

Chittagong Hill tribes in Bangladesh were involved inviolent confict with the state or two decades rom 97 until

an agreement was reached in 997. Among the grievanceswas the infux o people rom the plains, whom the Chittagongtribes viewed as a threat. Bangladeshi migration to the north-east Indian region o Assam also contributed to socialrictions. The natives resented the newcomers and accusedthem o stealing land. The immigrants’ arrival aected theeconomy, land distribution and the balance o political power.6 Violence rst erupted in the early 980s.

These problems continue and urther migration as a resulto climate change will make them worse. In Bangladesh thesepressures combine with persistent political problems thathave produced bomb attacks on civilian targets and pressurein some parts o the state or a State o Emergency to bedeclared. I local and national governments cannot developmeasures to cope with the pressures on resources rommigration and climate change, the risk o urther and moreintense violence is very high.

9

Dhaka

Khulna

Rangpur

Chittagong

B A Ng LA DE S H

BH UT AN

I ND I A

I ND I A

NEP AL

B U R M A

100km

Area: 47,570 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Dhaka 6,900,000 (est. 2006)Number f inhabitants: 44,400,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: republic, unitary stategDP per capita: 407 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin: Bangladesh is one o the20 partner countries to receive most development cooperation viaSida: 28 MSEK (2006). Swedish support is aimed primarily atcontributions or human rights, democratic governance,basic education or children and the health sector.

FACTS

Source: Sida



20

EneryIncreasing energy consumption is a key reason or global warming but

climate change will increase energy requirements in developing coun-

tries. Access to reliable, sustainable and aordable energy supplies is vital

or development. For example, rerigeration allows local hospitals and

clinics to store vital medicines saely; electricity is the basis o modern

communications; power is needed to pump water or irrigation and to

bring water up rom deep wells; and neither industrialisation nor urbandevelopment has so ar been possible without large-scale energy con-

sumption.

Because energy is such a key development resource, care has to be

taken in shaping climate policy. Attempting to develop a strategy to

mitigate climate change that includes reduced energy consumption or

poor countries would reduce human security, increase poverty and

threaten ood security. Similarly, reducing energy consumption in

middle-income countries would slow economic growth, make poverty

reduction much harder to achieve, and generate very high risks o

political instability and confict.

At the same time, o course, meeting increased energy requirements

on the basis o business as usual will simply make global warming worse

as carbon emissions continue to rise. However, making the transition

rom ossil uels to alternative energy sources is proving to be compli-

cated even in rich states with stable, capable governments. It is even

more dicult in poor states because the costs o making the transition

are relatively higher (i.e., the transition will consume a larger share o

scarce economic resources).

Adapting to the energy pressures created by climate change without

negative consequences and at aordable costs is a major challenge.

Failing to meet it will exacerbate the confict potential in numerous

countries.

HealthClimate change will pose signicant risks to human health. Predicted

increases in temperature and rainall in certain regions are likely to

increase the incidence o water-borne diseases such as cholera and malar-

ia which, i unaddressed, could lead to epidemics. Large epidemics could

impact the socio-economic power balance and alter the relations be-

tween communities and countries based on availability o material

resources to adapt. This could potentially lead to some level o instability

or confict.

Increased natural disasters such as storms and cyclones will lead to

increased casualties, putting pressure on already stretched medicalresources. Heat waves and water shortages will have an adverse impact

on sae drinking water and sanitation that will disproportionately aect

the poorest and most marginalised communities, including reugees and

internally displaced people.

Failure by the state to provide or basic public health in ragile states

is a undamental actor that erodes the social contract between state and

citizens which, in most cases, leads to increased political instability and,

oten times, violent confict.

Miratin and urbanisatinFaced with sudden shocks and with long-term challenges brought about

or compounded by climate change, people will move. Taken world-wide,this migration is likely to be on a very large scale, or the basic living



2

conditions o hundreds o millions o people will be infuenced by climate

change. Stern estimates the scale o migration to reach 200 million by

2050. Some movement will be rom one rural community to another, by

those hoping to maintain their old liestyles in a new place. Some move-

ment will be rom rural areas where agrarian liestyles have been over-

whelmed by climate change, into urban centres to search or better

livelihood options. Others still will cross borders in the hope that a new

land will oer better prospects. In each case, those leaving non-viableareas will oten migrate to areas that are already only barely viable. A

signicant part o this new trend o global migration will accelerate

urbanisation, adding to urban poverty, confict and, probably, criminality.

The indirect implications o climate change such as migration and

urbanisation present a particular challenge, both to conventional ap-

proaches to confict prevention and to adaptation strategies or climate

change. Migration in itsel need not be a destabilising actor; it oten

benets both those who move and the communities and countries into

which they move. But the experience o many countries also shows that

there is oten great diculty in accepting immigration. Problems arise

particularly when those who already live in an area eel that newcomers

are an unwanted burden. This is especially so when communities in

search o new livelihood options move to areas that are only just viable.

Their presence there can compound social pressures, as it has done in

Assam and Bangladesh, or example.10 In the case o urbanisation, it is



22

SIDA AND MIgRATIoNSida have increased its eorts regarding migration and develop-

ment. Migration is closely linked to development, and the desire

or better living conditions. Migration, both voluntary and orced,

and both domestic and trans-border, is oten linked to develop-

ment aspects both in areas and countries o origin and destina-

tion.

For several years, Sida has worked on the link between theenvironment and natural resources on one hand, and security on

the other, and has provided unding or a study entitled ‘Envi ron-

mental Exodus - An emerging crisis in the global arena’, pub-

lished in 995. This study speciically examines the phenomenon

o environmental reugees.

Sida is currently planning to und a review o the analysis o the

study to get an updated analysis o the impact o environmental

degradation and climate change on migratory patterns in the

world, and more speciically, as they relate to Sida’s ocus

countries in Arica . The results o the analysis may serve as

input or projects and programmes in these countries planned or

inanced by Sida, and may also give rise to new contribut ions

and activities.

The analysis will also serve as a contribution to the global

debate on the topic, and increase awareness and understanding

among Sida sta o environmental degradation and climate

change and their links to migration.

In order to obtain a more regular analysis o the l ink between

environment and security, including migration, and to secure a

Swedish resource base, Sida and the Swedish Deence Research

Agency (FOI) explore ways o establishing a helpdesk. Such

helpdesk would be tasked to monitor international development,

making analyses, acilitating knowledge transers and express-

ing opinions.

(Sida)

noteworthy that even very rapid urbanisation has been managed without

violent confict in prosperous and politically stable nations such as Japan;

it is not the process, but the context and the political response to immi-

gration that shape the risks o violent confict.11 Nonetheless, that context

has so oten been conducive to violence and the political response has so

oten been infammatory that migration has to be recognised as not only

a likely consequence o climate change, but also as a major risk actor in

the chain o eects that link climate change and violent confict.

Climate chane and lbal insecurityFailure to help already stressed communities cope with the additional

pressure to their livelihoods caused by climate change means that exist-

ing grievances will intensiy and the risk o violent confict wil l increase.

Predictions are always uncertain but it is important to identiy risks. Our

research or the map in this chapter indicates that problems that will be

induced or exacerbated by climate change will combine with other

actors to create a high risk o armed confict in 46 confict-aected

states. We identiy a urther 56 in which the burden o climate change

consequences could induce serious political instability, putting them at

risk o violent confict in the long term.

The 46 countries acing a high risk o armed confict are characterised

by some combination o current or recent wars, poverty and inequality,

and bad governance. The latter oten involves corruption, arbitrary

authority, poor systems o justice and weak institutions o government,

causing deciencies in economic regulation and basic services. The combi-

nation varies rom place to place but all o them suer rom a lethal mix o

dierent types o vulnerability and, consequently, have a high propensity

to violent confict. The armed conficts that could ensue will probably be

ought out with varying degrees o intensity and violence. Some wars kill

hundreds o people, others kill hundreds o thousands.



2

The second group o 56 countries is not so immediately unstable but

their government institutions may not be able to take the strain o cli-

mate change or a variety o reasons, including a record o arbitrary rule,

recent transitions out o dictatorship and war, economic underdevelop-

ment or instability, and lack o technical capacity to handle the issues.

gernance mattersPolitical stability rests on the strength o the social contract between the

government and its citizens. Citizens adhere to the law and pay taxes in

return or the state providing or their basic needs, such as security and

inrastructure.12 When the state is perceived to be ailing in its basic

unctions, this contract is eroded.13 And as the basic problems that

government has to solve get deeper, because the demands or resources

are becoming more desperate, so the task or government gets more

dicult, and the likelihood that it wil l ail in its basic unctions accord-ingly increases.

This issue is crucial or two reasons: rst, because the decisions that

governments take can be extremely important in either moderating or

accelerating the social impact o climate change; second, because some

state unctions are particularly important in relation to the risk o violent

confict. These unctions include the provision o primary health care and

education, the saeguarding o human rights and democratic systems, and

the maintenance o an accountable and eective security sector, including

police, army and judiciary.15 In the event o climate change, an already

weak government may nd itsel unable to meet these basic needs, and

one o the consequences o that is an increased risk o violent confict.

In addition, violent confict can severely limit the ability o govern-

ments to assist in adaptation. Poor governance, combined with other

Reugees in Somalia is waiting or ood distribution Photo: Phoenix

by an international help organisation



24

Mali and Chad lie along the same latitudes with largeportions o their land area covered by the semi-arid Sahel.While they share many o the same bio-physical eatures,

their economic and political situations are radically dier-ent, creating very dierent levels o vulnerability or the twocountries.

Mali and Chad are heavily reliant on agriculture ororeign exchange through cotton exports, and or ood ortheir populations. Neither country has a well- developedindustrial sector; what industry there is ocuses on agricul-tural processing. Both have signicant, though under-developed, natural resources. There has been renewedinterest in oil in Chad and it may become an importantsource o revenue or the government. There is potential orrenewed and increased tension in both countries between

the herders in the north and the armers in the south asthey all try to cope with dwindling water resources.Despite these similarities, the two countries ace

radically dierent utures. Chad is struggling to maintaincontrol as reugees rom Sudan spill over its borders,bringing with them more violence and disruption. What inter-national community is present in Chad is ocused onemergency relie, and even many o those agencies arepulling out as the situation becomes more insecure. Chad’slack o inrastructure, especially roads, makes it verydicult to deliver aid or technical assistance. Investment inagricultural inrastructure has been minimal and Chad relieson rain-ed systems or ood and cotton. The lack o

transportation means that the cotton-growing regions alsohave to devote precious resources to growing ood as well,as they cannot rely on importing ood rom elsewhere in thecountry or rom abroad.

In contrast, Mali has an elected democracy whose reachextends beyond the capital to provide at least minimalservices. During the 990s, the country emerged rom a

debilitating civil war and the government took the lead inregional eorts to stop the prolieration o small arms andlight weapons. The country is sel-sucient in ood, at leastwhen there is no drought. The international community isactively engaged in several sectors, and the US hasselected Mali to be one o the beneciaries o the Millen-nium Challenge Corporation account, which is only used or’well perorming‘ poor countries, and which thus highlightshow well Mali is doing on various development indicators.

Even so, Mali is as exposed to the impacts o climatechange as Chad. Both are likely to experience highertemperature, the expansion o the Sahel desert, and less

rainall during a shorter rainy season. All o these actorswill have a heavy impact on the agricultural sectors and arelikely to exacerbate existing tensions between herders inthe north and armers in the south.

Where the two countries may di er is in how they react.The ood security situation o both countries will be an earlyindication o how the countries manage to adjust to thechanging environment. Chad is already extremely oodinsecure, but a change or the worse in the climate couldworsen an already dire situation. The pressure on resourc-es may cause an increase o internally displaced peoples, inaddition to orcing people to emigrate out o the countryaltogether, thereby increasing population stresses on other

countries. The health o the livestock population will also bea key indicator or management. In previous droughts thecountry lost a great deal o li vestock, crippling the liveli-hoods o a large portion o the population. Lake Chad is

actors, can explain why similarly bad droughts in both Ethiopia and

Hungary led to violence only in Ethiopia, and why tropical storms in

Haiti and the Dominican Republic led to violence only in Haiti.16

It is not poverty alone but uncertainty and the perceived threat o

uture insecurity that increase the risk o violent confict.17 Further, some

research indicates that the risk o poverty or its sudden onset also in-

creases the likelihood o individuals joining an armed group.18 The

infuence o climate change will be elt as more requent storms andnatural disasters not only cause loss o lie and homes, but more generally

cause uncertainty and long-term decline in the possibility o maintaining

secure livelihoods. In the developed world, these uncertainties and risks

can be absorbed by the state’s welare mechanisms and insurance sys-

tems. However, in states where such saety nets are already under im-

mense pressure, or do not exist at all due to underdevelopment, weak

governance and/or confict (most notably in countries aected by con-

fict), the risk o instability cannot be dealt with in this way.

Key risksThis overview o the double-headed problem o climate change and

violent confict reveals a number o key risks that have to be addressed

through new policies:



25

also disappearing rapidly due to declining rainall andincreased demand or its water, in addition to othervariations in climate patterns.4

Mali’s relatively good governance, economic perorm-ance and political stability since the civil war ended in 995

all suggest that it is much better placed than Chad torespond in an eective and timely way to the challenge oclimate change, by adapting crops, and preparing to handle

potential resource conficts through traditional mediation.

N'Djamena

CHAD

Moundou

Abeche

FACTS

N I G E R

S U D A N

L IBYA

N I G E R I A

C . A . R E P U B L I C

CAME -ROON

Area: ,284,000 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Ndjamena 754,000 (est. 2007)Number f inhabitants: 0,000,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: republic, unitary stategDP per capita: 75 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin: Sweden gives support tohumanitarian and reconstruction contributions throughout Chad.The support or 2008 is in the order o 70 MSEK to reugees, internal

Commissioner or Reugees (UNHCR), the UN International Children’sEmergency Fund (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the UN

and Red Crescent societies and a ew non-governmentalorganisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières.

Bamak

Sikasso

Segou

Mopti

MAL I

200km

FACTS

Area: ,240,92 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Bamako ,700,000 (est. 2008)Number f inhabitants: ,900,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: republic, unitary stategDP per capita: 47 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin: Sweden has increased its

governance, social development and sustainable development o naturalresource sectors. In 2006, development cooperationthrough Sida totalled 87 MSEK. Source: Sida

GU I NEA

ALGER I A

MAUR ETAN I A

S ENE -GAL

COTED ' I V O IRE

N I GER

B UR K I NAFASO

Political instability: Weak governance structures underlie the problem o

vulnerability to the impact o climate change. Weak governance is one o

the key links in the chain o consequences o consequences. Climate

change will put increased pressure on basic state unctions such as the

provision o basic health care and the guarantee o basic ood security.

Failed states, ragile states and states in transition, where such institutions

either do not exist or are already unable to provide or the basic needs o

their citizens, are particularly at risk.

Economic weakness: Economic instability will leave communities highly

vulnerable, both to sudden environmental shocks and slow erosion o their

livelihood security. The socio-political impacts o climate change will

aect poor countries more than urther developed states. Poorer countries,

which tend to be agrarian states, wil l be ar more susceptible to alling

crop yields, extreme weather events and migratory movements. In poorer

countries, there is no insurance, either private or state-based, against the

eects o crop ailure. These impacts o climate change will hinder eco-

nomic development and the lack o economic development hinders the

ability to adapt to climate change. Empirical studies show that poor

countries acing additional pressures are more prone to confict. Climate

change can thus increase obstacles to economic development, worsening

poverty and thereby increasing the risk o violent confict is these states.



The confict and resulting human tragedy that have unoldedin Darur since 200 have grabbed international headlines.As the UN Security Council hammered out a deal to get aninternational peacekeeping orce deployed there, discus-sions about how to understand the causes o the confictintensied.

When Darur rst made headlines, the most common

way o explaining the context was in terms o ethnicdierences between Arabs and Aricans. More recently,some have argued – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moonamong them – that ‘ the Darur confict began as an ecologi-cal crisis, arising at least in part rom climate change’.9

No confict ever has a single cause. In the case oSudan, the escalation o violence has been attributed tosuch actors as: historical grievances; local perceptions orace; demands or a air distribution o power betweendierent groups; the unair distribution o economicresources and benets; disputes over access to andcontrol o increasingly scarce land, livestock and water

between pastoralists and agriculturalists; small armsprolieration and the militarisation o youth; and weak stateinstitutions.20

Arab-Arican di erences are not as clear cut as somecommentators rst thought. Political and military alliancesrequently shit between ethnic groups, depending onpragmatic considerations. The d ierence between herdersand armers is also variable. According to the UN Environ-ment Programme2 the rural livelihood structures in Sudanare complex and vary rom area to area. In many cases,armers and herders are not separable as some tribespractice both herding and crop cultivation.

The impact o climate change, in particular the 20-yearSahelian drought, played a major role in intensiyinggrievances in Sudan because it meant there was less landor both arming and herding. These issues played out

against a background o economic and political marginalisa-tion, as well as violence. The number o violent confictsattributable to t raditional disputes over the use o landescalated dramatically rom the 970s on.22 In the mid-980s, when the north -south Sudanese civil war broke outagain ater a 0-year hiatus, the government used Arabtribal militias as a means o keeping the southern rebels at

bay in Darur. As a result, ethnic identity started to becomemore politicised, eeding the escalation o conficts overland issues with much more destructive ghting than inormer times. In 200 two Darurian armed groups at-tacked military installations; the response o local govern-ment-backed militias was a urther escalation with acampaign o ethnic cleansing, causing over 200,000 deathsand the displacement o over two million.

Thus climate change alone does not explain either theoutbreak or the extent o the violence in Darur. The other6 countries in the Sahelian belt have elt the impact oglobal warming, including Mali and Chad (see Box 6), but

only Sudan has experienced such devastating confict.Darur is, in act, an exemplary case showing how thephysical consequences o climate change interact withother actors to trigger violent confict.

The confict itsel is taking a urther toll o alreadyscarce resources. Militias in Darur are known or theintentional destruction o villages and orests. The loss otrees in these campaigns reduces the amount o shelteravailable or livestock and the amount o uel wood or localcommunities. This threatens their livelihoods and results intheir displacement, while simultaneously worsening theimpact o desertication, which makes urther confict overland access more likely.

The massive scale o displacement in Darur also has aserious impact on the environment. Camps or displacedpeople mean trees being elled or rewood. The consump-

Food insecurity: In many areas, the physical eects and the socio-political

consequences o climate change will combine to have a proound and

destabilising eect on ordinary people’s daily lives by reducing ood

security. The problem here is not simply ood shortages but uncertainty

o ood supply. This may be the result o losing arable land to desert and

o shorter growing seasons, but can equally be caused by changes in the

ood supply chain, such as the loss o roads through fooding (and in

other places, the loss o rivers through persistent drought). Politicalinstability and violent confict also have an eect on ood security.

Humanitarian assistance can temporarily ll in when there are ood

shortages but cannot address the underlying problem o lack o ood

security – and it is only when ood security is restored that people can

eel sae. In the absence o ood security, confict and migration are

almost inevitable consequences.

Demographic changes – migration and urbanisation: Demographic changes

always entail a change in power systems and resource allocation. Cli-

mate-change-related movements o people will place strain on host



tion is greater in the many camps where manuacturingbricks is being taken up as a means or people to earn aliving, encouraged by development organisations. Thesecamps can require up to 200 trees per day or brick-making.2 Over the weeks and months, combined with thewood needed or domestic use, this adds up to a rate odeorestation that renders the camps unsustainable.

Deorestation already extends as ar as 8 kilometresrom some camps, as people go urther and urther aeldto nd wood. Most o those who go to gather wood in thisway are women and children, and this task makes themextremely vulnerable to continuing violence rom the militiagroups. The incidence o rape has risen as an inevitableresult. As the wood runs out, the camps eventually have tomove. This is not only hugely disruptive to the hundreds othousands o camp inhabitants, but it is also detrimental toDarur’s existing problems o drought, desertication anddisputes over land-use, which were contributory actors tothe confict rom the outset.

SUD AN

D

A R

F U

RKhartum

200km

Source: Sida

D E M . R E P .O F C O NG O

EGYPTL IBYA

ETH IOP IA

UGA -N DA KENYA

ER ITREA

CENT .AFR . REP .

CHAD

Port Sudan

Kassala

El Obeid

Area: 2,505,8 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Khartoum 5,894,000 (est. 2004)Number f inhabitants: 7,000,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: republic, ederal stategDP per capita: ,090 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin: Sweden supports humanitarianand reconstruction contributions throughout Sudan, contributions thattotalled 0 MSEK in 2006. Sweden is an active donor to the UN’speace support operation UNMIS and the EU’s support eort to theArican Union’s contribution in Darur, AMIS. Sweden plays an active rolein diplomatic eorts to bring about peaceuldevelopment throughout Sudan.

FACTS



6,64%

77

2

96

55

99

45

45

44

24

2

United States

EU-Commission

United Kingdom

Netherlands

Norway

Sweden

Germany

WFP

Denmark

France

communities that already have scarce resources, whether because o

population growth, government policy or as an eect o climate change

itsel. In such circumstances, there is a higher risk o violent confict.

Some o the world’s mega-cities are on the coast and are themselves at

risk over time rom rising sea levels. The combination o population

growth, inward migration, declining water supply, other basic shortages

and rising sea levels in a city o 15-20 million or more inhabitants adds

up to a challenge with which even the most eective city and nationalgovernment would nd hard to cope. Where governance is poor, a social

disaster seems close to inevitable.

29



0

. The uniied solution

The double-headed problem o climate change and violent confict has a

unied solution. The capacities that communities need in order to adaptto the consequences o climate change are very similar to those they need

in order to reduce the risk o violent confict. Addressing one part o the

problem in the right way is itsel a means o addressing the other part.

Indeed, climate change oers an opportunity or peacebuilding: in

divided communities, climate change oers a threat to unite against; the

need or adaptation oers a task on which to cooperate.

The community is the vital level or action to adapt to and meet

climate change but international cooperation is also essential. Climate

change and its physical consequences do not respect national borders so

policy and action to address the problem must be developed internation-

ally. This truth has ormed the cornerstone o eorts to mitigate climate

change or two decades already.

The knock-on socio-economic consequences do not respect national

borders either. Large-scale migration, loss o economic output, loss o

livelihood security, increased political instability and greater risk o

violent confict will all have consequences that cross national borders.

The logic that promotes international cooperation or mitigation works

in the same direction when it comes to adaptation.

Furthermore, in many countries that ace the double-headed prob-

lem, the government is going to be either unwilling or unable – or both –

to take on the task o adaptation and peacebuilding. In many o the

countries most at risk, the government – and more than that, the system

o governance – is part o the problem. The task o helping communitiesadapt to climate change cannot be let to such governments. There is no

alternative except international cooperation to support local action.

Why the internatinal cmmunity shuld actThere are two central motives that should drive international eorts to

address the double-headed problem we have identied: the rst is to

maintain international peace and security; the second, linked to the rst,

is to support sustainable development.

To maintain international peace and security: The UK government initiated a

debate on security and climate change at the UN Security Council in April 2007. There was considerable resistance to this rom other govern-

ments and it could not be said aterwards that many other governments



had been convinced by the UK’s arguments. But the very act that the

UN Security Council was used in this way signalled that climate change

is beginning to be considered an issue o international security. The

London-based International Institute o Strategic Studies, in its annual

Strategic Survey in 2007, similarly identied climate change as a major

issue o international security and argued that this would become more

widely understood as the eects o climate change begin to bite.24

Where the inability to adapt to climate change combines with otherstresses to produce violent confict, neighbouring states and the interna-

tional community will be aected, not least through the fight o reu-

gees. Even viewed through a narrow economic prism, the cost o a civil

war is ar higher than the cost o adaptation, so any reluctance in the

international community to invest in the adaptation needs o poor

communities would be a alse economy.

More broadly viewed, a world that is orced into belated eorts to

adapt to climate change is almost certainly one in which rivalries be-

tween states escalate. Without going into speculative scenarios, the risks

that the world aces in relation to climate change will include increased

insecurity – unless climate change is treated as an opportunity and

becomes the occasion or enhanced cooperation. That is a strong motive

or timely international cooperation.

To support sustainable development: The international community has al-

ready acknowledged that ailure to take climate change into account in

development policies and strategies will threaten the achievement o

international development goals to reduce poverty and increase literacy

and health.25 Similarly, not paying attention to climate issues in develop-

ment and peacebuilding can worsen tensions over resources and increase

the risk o violent confict. For example, in Liberia, UN-led programmes

are retraining ex-combatants in agricultural skills and reintegrating

them into arming communities. According to IPCC projections, how-ever, the region will ace a 50 percent cut in crop yields by 2020.26 Unless

the techniques taught are appropriate or the changed environment o

the near uture – techniques such as hal moon planting and water

harvesting, or example – the new livelihood opportunities or ex-com-

batants will be wiped out well within their working lietime. The exist-

ence o unemployed and rustrated ex-combatants is widely regarded as a

contributory actor to violent confict,27 and violent confict holds back

economic development. But ensuring that development and peacebuild-

ing programmes are sensitive to climate change will bolster or even oster

local adaptation and reduce the risk o climate change contributing to

violent confict.

Reinal cperatinIt is not only at the level o the UN that international cooperation is

relevant. While the world body’s role is crucial, it needs to be supple-

mented by regional and sub-regional bodies such as the Arican Union

and the Organisation o American States, and sub-regional organisations

such as the Economic Community o West Arican States, the Associa-

tion o South East Asian Nations, and the South Asian Association or

Regional Cooperation. Like the EU, but with much less wealth and

economic power at their disposal, these bodies represent the common

interests o their member states in stability, security and growing trade

and prosperity. They can oten provide a orum or concerns and amechanism o support or their members that are closer to the actual



2

concerns o the states involved and less likely to be experienced as an

outside threat than, or example, action initiated at the UN level or

undertaken by rich northern governments. They could thereore have

greater eectiveness and legitimacy in helping develop responses to some

o the key risks in the knock-on consequences o climate change.

Some o the measures o adaptation mentioned later in this chapter,

such as building stocks o agricultural products as an economic reserve,

developing new crop techniques and systems, or identiying post-disasterre-employment opportunities, might be best developed on a regional or

sub-regional basis. Signicant numbers o states lack the capacity or the

economic resources to make these preparations alone but could play a

part in a cooperative system.

Some o the dicult issues o migration could perhaps also be best

handled through cooperation at the regional level, developing a rame-

work not only o law, but o interlocking claims and duties on and or one

another.

A rle fr the priate sectrThe responsibility is not just with governments and inter-governmental

organisations. The private sector also has a role to play. International

companies operating in at-risk countries have both an interest and a

responsibility in saeguarding their investments by working together with

governments and communities on adaptation. At a national and local

level, again, there is both a company interest and a responsibility to be

part o adaptation. Local communities, ater all, include small and

medium-sized companies, local producers and traders.

Many corporations are already making steps towards sustainable and

environmentally riendly business practices. Many companies have

developed corporate social responsibility policies that aim to minimise

the adverse impacts o the companies’ on the social environments around

them. However, without adequate inormation on the socio-economicconsequences o climate change, some o these well-intentioned policies

could actually restrict the adaptation options o some communities in the

near uture. For example, promoting air trade coee is an important

step towards generating better conditions or coee armers. Yet the

predicted increase in temperature o 2°C will dramatically decrease the

amount o land suitable or growing coee.33 I more armers were to go

into coee production because they were guaranteed a air price, and i

there were to be no planning or alternative livelihood strategies when

climate change strikes, the long-term eect could be harmul.

Well-inormed, climate-aware and context-specic business practices,

on the other hand, have the scope to provide new adaptation options

such as new livelihood opportunities or strengthened inrastructure. For

example, i dierent crops are to be armed, it is essential that there is

ecient distribution o the seeds and o the products – a role or the

private sector. Establishing quick re-employment options ater drought or

extreme weather also oers a role or private companies.

At a dierent level, business practice should be climate-sensitive, not

only in terms o reducing carbon emissions and thus attempting to

address the long-term roots o the problem, but also in terms o support-

ing adaptation to address the short and medium-term consequences.

This can involve not only the obvious companies, such as those in energy

and transport, but others, such as the nance sector, which is capable o

transorming into practical commercial considerations the argument inthe 2006 Stern Review that responding constructively to climate change



is economically benecial. Adaptation will require investment, and in

some cases will be suitable or private sector investment.

Cmplexities f cperatinThere is already a considerable international agenda or cooperation on

the issue o climate change. For many observers and especially or

environmental activists, this agenda does not go nearly ar enough on

mitigation. But the perspective advanced here is dierent: important

though it is to mitigate global warming, examining the interrelationship

between climate change and the risk o armed confict leads to the

conclusion that adaptation needs more attention and more action. Some

academic commentators have pointed to ‘the long-standing unease in the

policy community with regard to adaptation’.34 Though adaptation doeseature on the international agenda, it is mitigation that takes the lion’s

share o the headlines and the policy initiatives. It is time to recognise

that while mitigation is essential, its benets will come slowly and, in the

meantime, adaptation is urgent.

Trade-ffs and syneries between adaptatin and mitiatin

The IPCC’s AR4 notes the risk o an unwelcome trade-o between

adaptation and mitigation because resources committed to one are not

available or the other. As ar as the poorest countries are concerned, the

act is that their carbon emissions have been marginal compared to

industrial countries and, more recently, the ast developing middle-income countries. Arica as a whole, home to 14 percent o the world’s

population, is responsible or 3.6 percent o global carbon dioxide emis-

Villagers carry tubing or a water supply to their Photo: Phoenix

village in the mountains.



4

Internatinal framewrks

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC):

International eor ts to tackle climate change are primarily

pursued through the UNFCCC. The UNFCCC is an international

environmental treaty produced at the United Nations Conerence

on Environment and Development, known as the Earth Summit,

held in Rio de Janeiro in 992. The parties to the UNFCCC meet

annually; the December 2007 meeting in Bali is the th Coner-

ence o Parties. The UNFCCC acts as an umbrella or international

dialogue, policy and unding on climate change. Its overarching

mandate, stated in article 2 o the Convention, is to limit green-

house gas levels to a ‘level that would prevent dangerous

anthropogenic intererence with the climate system’. Under this

ramework, mitigation o climate change dominates the agenda,

with most unding and policy attent ion geared towards the uture

o the Kyoto Protocol and a number o separate initiati ves.

Interernmental Panel n Climate Chane (IPCC): The

IPCC is the most authoritative source o internationally accepted

scientiic assessments. These assessments eed into the

UNFCCC process and constitute its scienti ic basis. However,

though based on pure science, the reports o the IPCC are

produced through intense political negotiation, especially over the

conidence with which uture e ects are predicted, and concern-

ing the analysis o how observed eatures o climate change are

caused. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) rom the IPCC has

come out during 2007 and is more ar-reaching in its socio-

political analysis o the impacts o climate change than its

predecessors. Working Group II o the IPCC, in par ticular, has

looked more closely at the climate impacts and vulnerabilities o

ragile communities than in previous reports. However, it is not

the role o the IPCC to provide an assessment o the likely

impacts o climate change on violent conlict, so the issue o

conlict and peacebuilding potentia l is not explored in the AR4.

UN Internatinal Stratey fr Disaster Reduct in (ISDR):

The ISDR was set up to coordinate approaches at a local, national

and international level with the aim o building disaster-resilientcommunities by promoting increased awareness o the impor-

tance o disaster reduction as an integral component o sustain-

able development.

The Hy Framewrk fr Actin (HFA): This is a 0-year

action ramework (2005-205) or disaster r isk reduction. Its

three aims are to: integrate disaster risk reduction into sustain-

able development policies and planning at all levels, with

emphasis on disaster planning, mitigation, preparedness and

vulnerability reduction; develop and strengthen institutions,

mechanisms and capacities at all levels; and to systematically

incorporate risk reduction approaches into the implementation o

emergency preparedness, response and recovery programmes.

Neither the ISDR nor the HFA was designed to address directly

the issues posed by climate change and conlict but they provide

useul rameworks to guide and monitor action. However, these

rameworks are only as eective as their implementation. NGOs

are already inding that action around the HFA is highly top-down

and does not suiciently include local actors.

glbal Enirnment Facility (gEF): Multilateral unding or

climate change is mainly channelled through the GEF, a unding

agency established in 99. While most unding or climate

change over the last decade has been or mitigation, the GEF has

recently set up our new unds or adaptation in developing

countries. However, one barrier to using these unds is t he GEF

rules, which state that they can only be used or the ‘incremental

costs o global beneits’. While it is relati vely easy to calculate the

costs o global beneits arising rom mitigation projects, it is

more diicult to do so or adaptation projects as beneits are

usually local rather than global. The our unds are:

• The Least Developed Countries Fund: This und is only or

those countries classiied as LDCs. It thereore excludes

many middle-income countries that also ace the risk o

instabilit y or violent conlict in the ace o climate change. It is

reliant on voluntary contribut ions or unding. Since its launchin 200, the LDC und has at tracted $20 million in pledges,

but only $48 million has been received as o April 2007.

• The Special Climate Change Fund: This is or adaptation

planning and technology transer in all developing countries

and is reliant on voluntary contributions or unding. As o

April 2007, $62 million has been pledged, and $4 million has

been received.

• The Strategic Priority on Adaptation: A three-year initiative to

pilot adaptation capacity-building measures, unded by $50

million rom GEF Trust Funds.28

• The Adaptation Fund: This is intended to und actual adapta-

tion measures in developing countries. It is not yet opera -

tional; the plan is to und i t rom CDM credits, amounting to

an estimated $ billion over the next ive years. O the

countries that have submitted their NAPAs to the UNFCCC,

the total cost o projects proposed to meet only the immedi-

ate adaptation needs is $0 million. Factor in the long-term

costs, and the 89 other countries in need o assis tance, and

it is evident that this und is just a drop in the ocean o what is

required.

CURRENT FRAMEWoRKS AND ACTIoN oN

CLIMATE CHANgE



5

The cost o adaptation is s till hugely under-researched and so an

estimate o how much is needed is d iicult to discern. However,

the World Bank has produced a preliminary estimate that it wi ll

cost approximately $0-40 billion to climate-proo investments in

the developing world.29 Even judged against the lower estimates,

the pledges received to date are massively inadequate.

At the same time as noting the relative paucity o unds availableor adaptation, it is importan t to add that the international donor

community does not only need to spend additional money, it also

needs to change the way it meets its current commitments or

expenditure on development and peacebuilding. These activities

need to be climate-prooed – i.e., the way that development and

peacebuilding money is spent has to alter i the challenge o

climate change is to be met. This should take an important place

on the international agenda, starting wi th the December 2007

Conerence o Parties o the UNFCCC (CoP ) in Bali.

Bali Actin Plan

The Bali Action Plan adopted in December 2007, reairmed that

economic and social development and poverty eradication are

global priorities in combating climate change.

The Bali decisions especially ocus on adaptat ion to climate

change, concerted management o an adaptation und, and

inclusion o adaptation as one o the central parts o a uture

process to achieve the UNFCCC goals. Matters related to conlict

risks are particularly mentioned or the least developed countries

and countries in Arica aected by drought, desertiication and

loods.

oranisatin fr Ecnmic Cperatin & Deelpment

(oECD): One orum that has begun looking at integrat ing the

development, peacebuilding and climate adaptation strands is the

OECD. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is extending

the chapter on Environment and Resources in the OECD’s

Guidelines or Conlict Prevent ion to take account o climate

change. And the DAC Network on Conlict, Peace and Develop-

ment Cooperation is researching the links between the environ-

ment, conlict and peace, issuing bries and speciic assessments

on land, water, valuable minerals and orests0 The OECD’s

Working Party on Global and Structural Policy has also recently

set up a Climate and Development Project where climate changeand conlict are intended to be addressed with strong part icipa-

tion rom developing countries.

At the reinal leel

The European Commission (EC): The EC is developing a global

monitoring system or environment and security in 2008 as part

o the European Strategy or Space. This monitoring measure is

intended to oversee implementat ion o the Kyoto Protocol; it will

largely beneit mitigation, rather than adaptat ion. There are also

discussions about the need to link climate change to broader

security and development policy strategies and the EC is

establishing a new Global Climate Change Alliance between the EU

and other vulnerable developing countries.

Apart rom the EC, there do not appear to be major regional

initiati ves addressing adaptation and even the EC is only now

coming to this issue.

At the natinal leel National Adaptat ion Programmes o Action (NAPAs): Under the

ramework o the UNFCCC, the core instrument or addressing

adaptation by countries at the national level is through NAPAs. The

idea o a NAPA is to provide a process For Least Developed

Countries to identiy priority activities that respond to their urgent

needs or adapting to climate change. To date, 22 states have

drawn up a NAPA2, and have submitted them to the UNFCCC.

In theory, NAPAs take into account existing coping strategies at

the grass-roots level, and build upon them to identiy priority activ-

ities, rather than ocusing on scenario-based modelling to assess

uture vulnerabili ty and long-term policy at state level. However,

the process o drat ing the NAPAs so ar seems to rest more on

assistance rom donors such as the World Bank and the UN

Environmental Programme rather than on participation rom

community groups and civil society. The NAPAs have an evident

potential or integrating peacebuilding and development concerns

with adaptation to climate change, but it is too soon to tell

whether actual steps are being taken in this direction. In the

absence o an eort to integrate the plans and action, the risk is

that NAPAs will become just another box or poor governments to

tick on the way to getting some unding.

Sweden´s Plicy fr glbal Deelpment

The new start or the Swedish Policy or Global Development, as

proposed by the Minister o Development Cooperation, ocuses on

six global challenges or achieving air and sustainable global

development. Three o the identiied challenges are related to

climate change and the risks and consequences o conlicts.



6

sions while, to take a random example, Australia has 0.32 percent o the

world’s population, yet produces 1.43 percent o carbon dioxide emis-

sions.

35

With the exceptions o Libya, the Seychelles, Nigeria and South Arica, Arican countries emit only 0.5 tonnes o carbon dioxide per

capita each year. By comparison, as the world’s largest emitter, the USA

emits over 20 tonnes per capita.36 For poor and politically unstable

countries acing the combined risk o climate change and confict,

thereore, there is not much to gain by concentrating scarce resources

onto mitigation, and however heroic their eorts, they will not make

much o a dent in global emission levels. From the perspective both o the

individual countries and o the international community as a whole, the

priority need in the poorest countries is or adaptation.

An additional trade-o between mitigation and adaptation policies

has been less discussed. In some circumstances, measures to reduce

GHG emissions risk actually hindering adaptation. For example, amongthe World Bank’s activities in Sri Lanka is the new Renewable Energy

or Rural Development Project37 which aims – among other strategies –

to strengthen the national grid through support or privately owned

mini-hydroelectricity plants and other renewable energy projects. It is

likely to divert scarce water supplies rom communities’ consumption and

agricultural needs. That risks weakening ood security at a time when, as

part o adaptation to climate change, it should be strengthened. It also

risks ostering social tensions because o local resentment towards devel-

opment initiatives that misre. Similarly, in Cochabamba, Bolivia,

making water into a marketable commodity by contracting water provi-

sion out to the private sector pushed up prices and led to violent protestsin January to April 2000, with over 100 people injured.38

At the water purication plant. The city is run

by Jusco, a private corporation (a subsidiary o

Tata Steel). It is the only city in India where you

can drink water straight rom the tap without

regrets.

Photo: Phoenix



7

The limits f carbn tradin

Carbon trading is one o the key ways in which states are attempting to

address the problem o climate change at the international level. Most

carbon trading schemes are registered with the Clean Development

Mechanism (CDM), an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing

industrialised countries that have committed to reducing greenhouse gas

emissions to invest in projects that cut emissions in developing countries

as an alternative to more costly emissions reductions in their own coun-tries.

Mitigation is sel-evidently important and carbon trading has long

been seen as a productive way o doing it but, recently, a number o

concerns have arisen around the CDM. A study by Nature in 200739

revealed that the CDM was becoming a lucrative industry where compa-

nies were paid as much as 50 times more than it cost to reduce emissions.

Further investigations have ound that there are loopholes allowing or

spurious credits to be awarded. There is evidence that the majority o

CDM projects would have happened anyway – in other words, compa-

nies were simply using the CDM to generate extra income. There were

even cases o projects being retrospectively given the CDM tag. Thus,

the CDM was not acting as an incentive or new environmentally re-

sponsible activities.40

Among other problems, the CDM’s ailure to take account o poverty

is concerning. Most CDM projects are in countries undergoing rapid

industrialisation and very ew are in Arica; in 2005, these accounted or

only seven projects in all, 2 percent o the total (and, o these, ve were in

South Arica).41 The real problem, however, is the risks entailed in some

o the projects. For example, a World Bank landll gas project in Dur-

ban, South Arica, is actively opposed by most local communities be-

cause o its adverse health eects.42 I the eort is made to mitigate

climate change in this way, pursued at the expense o the needs and well-

being o local communities, there is a risk o social instability. In regionsthat are already unstable and ace a myriad o other pressures, ailure to

take account o confict dynamics can contribute to an escalation o such

instability into violence.

The prblem f maladaptatins

The IPCC’s Working Group on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

has rightly noted the importance o addressing climate change adapta-

tion in ragile states, especially where these responses are so-called ‘no

regrets’ policies – that is, policies that turn out to be o benet to a

community whether or not the predicted climate change impacts occur.

The IPCC warns against the risks o what it calls maladaptations,which are the result o responses to climate change that lack oresight

about climatic or relevant social trends.43 However, the IPCC draws a

problematic conclusion when it argues that this means there should be

more emphasis on mitigation to prevent uture maladaptations that

would increase the costs o climate impacts. It would be equally possible

to turn this the other way around and say that the problem o what might

be called mismitigation – as outlined above – means there should be less

emphasis on mitigation or ear it will go wrong.

The solution is to ensure that maladaptation does not occur at all. In

ragile states, this would mean ensuring that policies on climate change

are sensitive to confict risks and, at the same time, ensuring that peace-

building and development take account o the consequences o theconsequences o climate change. In essence, the process entails incorpo-



Liberia suered extreme violent confict and arbitrarydictatorship rom 980 to 200. The causes o confictare deeply rooted in historically entrenched inequalitiesin the distribution o power and a reliance on violence togain wealth and power.

Almost hal o Liberia’s population o . million livesin the capital, Monrovia. Many areas outside the city are

inaccessible by road and remain isolated. Politicians andcivil servants spend lit tle or no time in those regions, andew o the legal and developmental changes initiated inthe capital are experienced in rural areas. This marginali-sation can express itsel in eelings o apathy and areinorcement o the culture o impunity.

In October 2005, two years ater the ghting ended,Ellen Johnson-Sirlea was elected President. Liberia isnow in the process o consolidating peace, although thesituation remains volatile.

The country carries a heavy burden o debt, while aninfux o returning reugees and internally displaced

people to rural regions exacerbates land disputesbetween ethnic groups. Liberia also aces the problem oits bad neighbourhood: regional instability repeatedlythreatens to destabilise the peace process.

Given the real and perceived inequalities between thoseliving in the capital city and those in rural areas, it is vitalthat communication be enhanced in rural Liberia.International Alert has been working in Liberia since99 and its current work ocuses on the issues ocommunication and participation. The aim is to enablegroups who eel marginalised and alienated to ar ticulate

their views, needs and rights through the media ratherthan resorting to violence. Alert also works to ensurethat journalists are trained in responsible reporting. Inaddition, International Alert is using community radio toimprove access to impartial and balanced inormation inthe eight most confict-aected counties o Liberia, sothat people there understand the ever-changing politicalsituation and eel able to engage with processes originat-ing in Monrovia.

Alongside this work, Alert and its Liberian NGOpartners have organised three popular annual Peace andCulture Festivals, bringing together perormers and

cultural troupes, along with members o local communi-ties, rom the eight counties and the neighbouringcountries o Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The2007 estival was attended by an estimated 0,000

rating adaptation into peacebuilding in a manner that takes account o

uture vulnerabilities to climate change.

Ensurin the apprach is eidence-based

The issue o maladaptation shows that the need is not only to give more

attention to adaptation but to make sure it is eective – more o the right

kind o adaptation. To this end, examples such as those rom Bolivia, Sri

Lanka and South Arica show the importance o basing adaptationpolicies on solid knowledge about local circumstances, including antici-

pated climate change impact and a thorough contextual analysis.

There are two problems with this – one is time. Such work will take

two to ve years to complete. Meanwhile, the eects o climate change

are already unolding. The response, thereore, must be incremental.

Peacebuilding will help develop the adaptive capacities o communities

so they can use the research ndings as they come through. In the

meantime, peacebuilding and development must be as climate-sensitive

as existing knowledge allows, recognising that this knowledge wil l

deepen as time goes by.

The second problem is the risk that the approach to conducting,

reporting and using research will be technocratic, top-down and alienat-

ing. To ordinary people it will eel like outside experts coming and telling

them how things are, how they should live and what they should do. The

likelihood is they will ignore this advice or, i necessary, ght it.

A dierent way o working is possible, grounded in a peacebuilding

approach. This emphasises the importance o local knowledge and seeks

the active participation o local communities in working out how best to

adapt to climate change. While much o the technical knowledge, such as

complex climate modelling, would o necessity need to be transerred

rom states with more advanced research and development capacity,



people. These estivals use cultural activities – comedy,drama, music and dance – to bring people together andhelp heal the divisions that have been created by yearso violence. They serve as a reminder that Liberians romdierent parts o the country and people rom theneighbouring countries have cultures that, while signi-cantly dierent, nevertheless share many core values,

including powerul modes o communication and astrong sense o community. Both need to be mobilisedover an extended period o time to build a sustainablepeace.

The Liberia Media Project is part o a wider strategyto build sustainable peace in Liberia and the sub-regionthrough communicating messages about peacebuildingand reconciliation. The combination o traditional andcontemporary communication mechanisms can enablemedia to represent local people who, in turn, eel moreempowered in their society and are more likely toresolve dierences peaceully.

Across the sub-region, communication and improvedaccess to inormation can have a powerul eect onconficts that spill across borders and threaten areas ostability.

100km

FACTS

Mnria

Gbarnga

S I E RRAL E O N E

G U I N E A

C O TED ' I V O I RE

L I B E R I A Buchanan

Harper

Source: Sida

Area: 97,000 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Monrovia ,000,000 (est. 2007)Number f inhabitants: ,400,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: republic, unitary stategDP per capita: 97 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin: Sweden supports stabilisationand development in Liberia, bilaterally and as an EU member. In 2007,Sweden gave a total o approx 00 MSEK to Liberia in humanitarian andreconstruction support. The support was aimed primarily at thereconstruction o the country and was given through the UN’s Develop-ment Programme via the UNDP and the Save the Children Fund. Thecontributions are aimed at building up the local community, health care,education and inrastructure in the country. The Swedish Governmenthas decided to continue to support Liberia and intendsto increase support in the coming years.

guring out what to do could and should be an inclusive and participa-

tory process. Where communities are divided because o the experience

or risk o violent confict, addressing these problems could, in act,

provide the occasion or developing a practical, problem-solving dialogue

through which cooperative relationships could be established and stead-

ily built up. The aim, in short, is to bring hard science and local knowl-

edge together.

Peacebuildin‘Peacebuilding’ means societies equipping themselves to manage con-

ficts without resorting to violence. It looks dierent in dierent contexts

– the detailed activities range rom local dialogues promoting reconcilia-

tion to advocacy that shapes economic policy and business practices. The

key is to understand that it is not possible to build peace or people and

communities that have been involved in violent confict; rather, those

people and communities must build peace or themselves. It is, however,

possible or outsiders to help and participate in that process.

Peace is sustainable only i it is based on a social process in which

citizens participate as equals. In general, they will do this only when they

see that the peace process oers justice, economic equity and progress,

security and good governance. These are the oundations o peacebuild-

ing which, in the long term, are the basis or strong and responsive

institutions o government. Peacebuilding is thus holistic, acting on all

aspects o a society’s security, socio-economic oundations, political

rameworks, justice systems, and traditions o reconciliation to strengthen

the actors that can contribute to peace. And peacebuilding is also

inclusive o all actors and perspectives, including those who are requent-

ly marginalised or excluded.



40

Peacebuilding works – but it works slowly. It was well over a decade

beore the peace process in Northern Ireland was regarded by most

observers as relatively stable – rom the IRA’s ceasere declaration in

1994 to the return to a power-sharing government in 2007 – and the

violence in Northern Ireland, though painul and protracted, was rela-

tively low-level by international standards, while the peace process was

lavishly unded by comparison with other cases. Peace in Bosnia-Herze-

govina has taken a similarly long period to secure, and the process is byno means completed. In Burundi in 2007, there remain elements o risk

in the peace process that was initiated in 2000. Peacebuilding takes

patience and care and, in its early years, is extremely precarious because

it takes ar ewer people acting irresponsibly to return a country to

violence than are needed to work together to sustain the peace. Yet

peacebuilding can transorm societies into unctional communities that

can exist without the threat o violent confict – a process that we see

unolding in Liberia today.

In Liberia, the key need to which International Alert has been able to contribute is

communication as the basis or social participation in the peace process. In Burundi,

where Alert has been working since 995 when civil war was intense, the organisation

was able to work at several levels. Alert provided space or political and community

leaders to meet, develop mutual conidence and jointly develop ideas or moving the

country onto a peaceul path. Alert also worked with civil society activists to help ound a

national women’s peace organisation that, acting as an umbrella or local women’s

groups, has trained over 0,000 people in conlict resolution, mediation and acilitation.

In the Democratic Republic o Congo, International Alert has recently developed a

programme bringing together people rom dierent regions into a national dialogue on

how to sustain peace and human rights in a country that, rom the colonial period until

recently, knew only dictatorship and war. In the South Caucasus, several Alert projects

help people come together and exchange ideas across entrenched lines o conlict,

helping to develop social oundations or possible uture peace deals.

PEACEBUILDINg EXAMPLES

These activities cannot make peace by themselves, but nor can peace

be made without them. A sustainable peace requires a peace agreement

between the leaders o the contending parties, their continuing commit-

ment to it ater signature, and a social setting to support it and encourage

political leaders’ continued commitment. The problem that peacebuild-

ing addresses is that, through the experience o violent confict, societies

lose the capacity to resolve dicult issues peaceully. Variously, they losethe institutions that can mediate and negotiate disputes and dierences

beore they get out o hand, and they lose the cultural habits o compro-

mise and tolerance that are required or serious dierences to be settled

by agreement. Helping societies regain these attributes is what peace-

building is about.

The way peacebuilding is implemented has to be tailored to the needs

o the specic context. Each society and community has its own modes

and values. Because the point o peacebuilding is to help societies renew

the attributes o a peaceul society, it cannot work on the basis o a top-

down recipe. It has to support and enhance the eorts and energies o

ordinary people, to develop a process rom the ground up so as to ensure

that the opportunity oered by a ormal peace agreement is seized and

lasting peace is created.



4

Linkin peacebuildin and climate adaptatinIn one sense, adaptation to climate change could take many orms, some

o them prooundly destructive. I good land or arming or grazing

becomes scarce, it could be said that when one group attacks another to

drive it away, that is a orm o adaptation. Likewise, i the pressures o

climate change lead large numbers o people to leave their homes and

migrate to urban slums, that also is a orm o adaptation. But what people

want and need are orms o adaptation that protect human security.Successul adaptation to climate change wil l stil l involve changes in

how people live. The key to linking peacebuilding and adaptation with

climate change is to ask how people can best change the way they live.

What is the best process o change – that is, the process that oers the

greatest opportunity to cope peaceully with the challenge o climate

change and adapt to it in a way that protects people’s well-being? It is,

surely, a process that simultaneously meets two objectives: it needs to be

based on a proper appreciation o the challenge – i.e., it needs to be

entically inormed; and it needs to be a process that thoroughly involves

the people whose lives will change so they shape it and buy into it. For

this to be the case, the people involved in the process must understand

the problem (so the science must be communicated clearly), see what the

options are, gauge the impact o inaction, and choose to change. This

approach acknowledges that local knowledge alone is not enough be-

cause climate change throws up unprecedented problems, but nor is the

best hard science enough by itsel, because adaptation needs to be locally

grounded and culturally appropriate.

These considerations are even more important when looking at one o

the most dicult problems thrown up by climate change and one where

some o the greatest ears are likely to reside – migration. As we have

argued earlier, as many examples have shown, migration itsel does not

generate violent confict, yet it can be an important part o the chain o

eects leading to violent confict because o the responses it so oten getsand because o the context. When people nd a large number o new-

comers arriving, the key issue is to try to develop a common understand-

ing o what the problem is, why it has come about, and then what can be

done about it in a way that most meets everybody’s needs. The best time

to have this discussion is beore the pressures o immigration have

become intolerable. Research, good inormation systems and clear

government and inter-governmental policies are all essential. But perhaps

more important than anything is a commitment to timely dialogue in,

with and between the communities that are aected – both those who

are orced to migrate by the physical eects o climate change, and those

who become hosts to the new migrants. The political issues wrapped upin this part o the climate change problem are extremely tangled, with

competing resentments about who benets rom any resources that can

be mobilised, and the risk that the question will be politicised in an

infammatory way. To leave such a potentially explosive set o issues

alone, however, is to risk that explosion occurring.

The best process o change or a successul adaptation to climate

change, in short, is the same as the processes involved in peacebuilding.

In both, energies must be engaged in dierent parts o society – among

communities and their leaders, in the private sector, media, political

groups, social activists, students and intellectuals – and at dierent levels

– among the elite and among ordinary people. In both, the process must

include women as well as men, youth as well as mature adults, minoritiesas well as majority communities, and it must cross political divides as



42

Nepal44 is in the process o emerging rom a 0-year civil

war. The confict, which began in 996, stemmed rom a

combination o issues driven by endemic poverty,

inequality, arbitrary authority and corruption at all levels.

These uelled a widespread sense o injustice and

rustration. An attempt at democratic reorm in 990 ran

out o steam because the elected politicians could notsolve the problems o development in Nepal. Against this

background o rustrated expectations, the Communist

Party o Nepal (Maoist) launched an insurgency, operat-

ing in rural areas marked by lack o access to resources

and social services or marginalised groups.

Nepal’s economy is one o the poorest in the world

with 90 percent o the population relying on subsistence

agriculture or their livelihoods.45 Much o Nepal consists

o rugged terrain and only 20 percent o the land is

arable. The lives o many inhabiting the hilly and moun-

tainous areas depend on ragile ecosystems and, to

make matters more dicult, many armers do not have

secure title to the land they work.

The war unolded as a low intensity confict. On the

government side it was mainly the police orces that

were involved and the Maoists’ insurgent strategy made

steady progress or several years. Things changed when

King Gynanendra came to the throne ater the death o

his brother in the royal massacre o June 200,46 and

decided on a more active pursuit o the war, giving the

army a larger role. The strategy was counter-productive

and the Maoists took control o ever larger areas. The

King steadily increased his authority in and over thegovernment and, in February 2005, took over absolute

power.

The Peoples Movement in spring 2006 (known as

Jana Andolan II) orced the King to surrender absolute

power. The Maoists ceased combat, established an

oce in the capital Kathmandu, and joined the provi-

sional coalition government.

However, the situation is by no means settled and

peace is by no means certain. In early autumn 2007, the

Maoists let the coalition government (though they did

not leave the polit ical process), arguing that the Kingshould be stripped o all his remaining powers and rights

beore elections are held or a Constituent Assembly. To

a considerable degree, apart rom the Maoists, the most

infuential politicians in Nepal today are the same ones

who were unable to sustain democracy in the 990s.

Nepal’s inrastructure, governance mechanisms and

economy are ragile and the transitional government is

still highly dependent on oreign development aid or the

delivery o basic goods and services.

The task o building peace is complicated not only by

the atermath o war and the persistence o its underly-

ing social and economic causes, but also by the eect oenvironmental changes. Because o fooding and land

scarcity, people have had to work poor land. For exam-

ple, the Midland region is severely deorested and

eroded, and there is a shortage o wood and odder or

daily use. Many communities are already under extreme

pressure and their diculties will be compounded by the

eects o climate change.

Impact f climate chane

Recent climatic trends show an increasing mean tem-

perature over recent decades, most markedly at high

altitudes.47 This has already aected the Himalayas, with

glaciers melting, increasing the volume o glacial lakes,

and making them more prone to fooding. As this

process continues, however, fooding will give way towater shortages. There is also a moderate risk that the

monsoon might intensiy due to climate change,48 which

would aect the variability o river fows and hamper the

operation o hydroelectric plants, which are highly

dependent on predictable river fows.49 Being 90 percent

dependent on hydroelectricity,50 Nepal’s energy supply is

likely to be severely aected by the consequences o

climate change.

Deelpment aid and climate-sensitiity

Nepal receives just over $400 million per year inoverseas development assistance, which accounts or

over hal o the government’s total expenditure.5

Despite evidence o climate change already taking place,

Nepal has received little at tention or unding under the

UNFCCC (see separate 7) to assist adaptation eorts.

Furthermore, there is very little acknowledgment o

the eects o climate change among the development

community in Nepal. An analysis o the strategies and

project documents o the 0 largest bilateral and

international donors to Nepal reveals little explicit

mention o climate change. These issues are currently

viewed as ‘secondary’ by aid agencies, especially in

Kathmandu, with attention ocusing on the Constituent

Assembly elections and associated security risks. Nor

does Nepal’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, agreed

Demonstration at the PM´s ocial residence, against Photo: Phoenix

dismissed, killed and tortured people by CPN, maoist.



4

with the World Bank and used as a guide or develop-

ment and assistance, acknowledge the impact o climate

change. This is par ticularly striking because o the

wealth o research on the eect o climate change in

Nepal that was available at the time o its drating.52

This lack o attention to climate change exists

despite an OECD-DAC study’s calculation that approxi-

mately 50-65 percent o total Ocial Development

Assistance investment is in projects that are highly likely

to be aected by climate risks.5 This includes both activ-

ities that may be a ected directly by climate change, as

well as development activities that may aect the

vulnerability o local coping mechanisms to climate

change.54

Peace, deelpment, climate – which takes pririty?

One o the most signicant actors causing Nepal’s civil

war was the ailure o the post-990 democratic govern-

ments to ull the expectation among ordinary Nepalis oa better lie under democracy. The present transitional

government aces the critical task o building trust

among its citizens by ullling their expectations o

reduced poverty, inequality and corruption – that is, by

generating airness and justice in society and govern-

ment. This combination o social, economic and political

development is imperative or Nepal to achieve sustain-

able peace.

Like other countries attempting to make their way

out o a period o violent confict, Nepal aces the

challenge that peace is essential or development and

development is essential or peace. It is not possible to

give one priority over the other. At the same time, as in

other countries, development and peacebuilding have to

be climate-sensitive – which they are not at present – or

the physical eects o climate change will have negative

consequences or peace and development alike. To

achieve these interlocking goals, Nepal needs responsive

and ecient government institutions. Further, it needs a

new social consensus supporting these goals so that

there is community-level participation in development,

peacebuilding and adaptation to climate change.

It is not dicult to envisage a Nepal that is unable tocarry out the necessary combination o tasks. In that

case, even i war has not recurred or other reasons, the

eects o climate change will worsen the situation o

ordinary people, development goals will not be met,

demands and pressures on government will intensiy.

The inability o the government to respond positively will

make a repressive reaction to pressure more likely – and

the ingredients will all be in place or a return to civil war.

In short, the consequences o climate change are

exacerbating the risks o armed confict recurring to

which Nepal is already vulnerable. I ur ther violence

cannot be prevented then, whatever its causes, it will

ensure that development is thrown urther back and

adaptation to climate change is neglected.

Is it possible to envisage a Nepal that manages to

combine peacebuilding, development and adaptat ion?

Some signs o the basis or a more positive scenario are

to be ound in the Peoples Movement in April 2006 and

in the st rength o civil society organisations. Further

signs could be seen in August 2007 when foods hit the

Terai plain, where much o Nepal’s industry and agricul-

ture is located and hal o its population lives. The foods

posed severe risks or short-term development pros-

pects, at a time when grievances have been voiced in the

Terai that their diverse local interests are not ully

represented in the agreements that brought the civil war

to an end. But careul management o the food relie

operations actually brought conficting parties togetherand had a positive impact on the peace process.

This may not have been achieved by design but the

response to the Terai foods oers an illustration o how

climate responses and adaptation strategies could be

used as a vehicle or peacebuilding. Going beyond that

example, long-term response to climate change will work

best i it has been ormulated through dialogue among

the people and communities most a ected. It would be

necessary to repeat this many times over in communities

throughout the country and this kind o problem-solving

dialogue is also needed at the national level. The

scientic knowledge and the organisational resources

and energy needed or this task do exist in Nepal; the

challenge is mobilising them in time.

CH I NA

I ND I A

NEPAL

Kathmandu

Mount

Everest

Makawanpur

NepalganjPokhara

Palpa

100km

Area: 47,8 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Katmandu 856,000 (est. 2006)Number f inhabitants: 27,700,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: monarchy, unitary stategDP per capita: 9 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin: Sweden’s cooperation with Nepalis currently primarily through the EU, which also channels developmentcooperation to the country. Sweden does not carry out any bilateral

development cooperation and has no embassy on location. The embassyin New Delhi, India, is responsible or bilateral relations with Nepal.One contribution in the region, however, is carried out in cooperationwith the International Centre or Integrated Mountain Development(ICIMOD), an international, non-political organisation based in Katmandu,Nepal. ICIMOD ocuses on adaptation and risk management in theHimalaya region, where global warming poses a serious threat to thewater supply. The glaciers are melting, and the reduction in stored wateris aecting more than . billion people downstream. Swedish supportis developing adaptation strategies to increase resistance in the region.There is a strong need or greater knowledge and understandingo these changes in conditions and the increased risk that resultsdownstream. ICIMOD has so ar been in contact with SMHI, StockholmUniversity and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)to include them in the work rom the start. Source: Sida

FACTS



Colombia is included in the list o countries, identied bythis report, with a “high risk o armed confict as a knock-on consequence o climate change”.

A strong relationship already exists between landissues, environmental destruction related to the cocaproduction and the armed confict in Colombia. Theseproblems interrelate and may accelerate urther byclimate change. Environmental degradation undermines

the work or adaptation to climate change. Threatenedecosystems, polluted waters and destructive orestryand mining mean signicantly increased vulnerability.

The armed confict in Colombia has deep historicalroots and a close connection with social and economicalinequality. The historical tendency o land concentration,unclear land titles, as well as the environmental destruc-tion related to drug production, all contribute to theconfict and to poverty problems.

Although regional variations exist, there is a generalhistory o struggle over production centres and territorialcontrol in Colombia. A small elite owns the majority o

the land in the country, and . million rural amilies(54%) do not own any land (EU country strategy orColombia 2007-20 p. ). The land concentrationtends to perpetuate poverty, and land seizures havebeen growing in numbers in recent years. Land controlhas also become a confict actor since illegal armedgroups and groups involved in the drug trade take landby orce (threats and violence) rom poor armers inorder to use it or commercial and illegal purposes. Dueto the internal armed confict, internal displacements,orced land takeovers and inadequate and old cadastralrecords, land title is oten unclear and causes localdisputes.

Violence between military and armed groups (paramili-tary groups, guerrillas and criminal gangs), the orcedtakeovers o land and orced labour in agricultural

production, all contribute to victimizing civilians throughviolations o human rights, increased poverty and orceddisplacements. Further, antipersonnel landmines are aserious problem in various parts o Colombia and a ectthe poor rural population’s possibilities o production andmovement. This especially aects indigenous and Aro-Colombian populations, as well as children (Embassy oSweden in Bogotá,”Appendix to Planeringsdokument ).

Not only do these actors cause a decline in thesocial conditions but they also negatively impact theenvironment. The natural wealth o Colombia is part icu-larly worth protection since the country has 80 percento the earth’s total biological diversity (Embassy oSweden in Bogotá ”Narkotikasituationen i Colombia”2005-06-6). There are several important national parksin Colombia, created to protect animals and plants thatexist only in Colombia. These species are extremelyvulnerable as a result o their dependence on specicconditions or their survival, and are thereore easytargets or environmental destruction.

The environmental problems are also worsened bythe oil and mining industries in the country.The production o cocaine base products rom coca

leaves requires large quantities o petrol and chemicals,which generates serious consequences or the environ-ment by damaging land and water. Furthermore, thepesticide spraying o coca crops, occurring even insidenational parks, is destructive to the environment (Em-bassy o Sweden in Bogotá ”Narkotikasituationen iColombia” 2005-06-6 pp., ). The spraying o cocaelds is also said to spread over and destroy orests andnormal agricultural crops, causing internal displacemento vulnerable groups such as the indigenous population.

A devastation o national parks and the rainorestalso results rom the planting o coca elds, as the latteroten requires the destruction o orest in tropical andhigh-altitude areas, especially suitable or coca produc-

well. The techniques that will be used are also the same: encouraging

dialogue; building condence; addressing the issues that divide groups

and out o which they perceive conficts to grow; learning; mutual

education; developing and strengthening civil society organisations to

carry the work orward; strengthening both the capacity and the ac-

countability o the institutions o government.

The processes o peacebuilding and adaptation are not only similar in

these ways, they are also synergistic. A society that can develop adaptivestrategies or climate change in this way is well equipped to avoid armed

confict. And a society that can manage conficts and major disagree-

ments over serious issues without a high risk o violence is well equipped

to adapt successully to the challenge o climate change.

There could be a urther linkage, because climate change could

become a reason or moving on rom some o the attitudes and behaviour

that were generated by the experience o armed confict. International

Alert has supported dialogues in confict countries that bring together

people who have very dierent and incompatible perspectives but who



tion. The groups o people cultivating coca are otenpoor rural amilies who receive low and unstable incomerom regular crops and see shiting to the more lucrativecoca production as an advantage. However, poor andlandless armers who sustain themselves throughcultivating normal crops, such as coee and potatoes,may constitute a threat to the national parks as great as

the one caused by drug production, as these armersmay cut down and destroy rainorest to create newarable land, thus increasing amounts o ar ticial ertilizerand pesticide used.

Links between the confict and the environment canbe explained through the economic and social inequalityin Colombia, unequal and unclear land title and thepractice o the illegal armed groups nancing themselvesthrough drug production. The industry o drug produc-tion and its high prots urther heightens the corruptionthat permeates parts o the private and public economy(Embassy o Sweden in Bogotá ”Narkotikasituationen iColombia” 2005-06-6 p.). Colombia has a history o

weak rule o law and an absence o state institutions inrural and confict-ridden areas. This urther exacerbatessocial and environmental problems related to the landissue. The confict causes environmental problems that

may urther sharpen the confict, and result in a negativecircle that is dicult to break. There is a strong correla-tion between the land issue, the confict, inequality andthe environment in Colombia, as these actors tend toinfuence and reinorce each other.

(Sida)

share an understanding o the risks and unbearable costs o continuing

with (or returning to) open, armed confict. In the same way, dialogues

could bring together people whose dierent and incompatible perspec-

tives do not prevent them rom understanding the common threat o

climate change and the shared need to adapt to meet this challenge. It is,

seen in one light, no more complicated than adding another crucial item

to the agenda o peaceul dialogue. But because it cannot be blamed on

one conficting party over another, and yet it aects all, climate changemay have more power or bringing people together than much o the rest

o the agenda. Climate change could generate a pragmatic unity because

it oers a threat that can put other problems in perspective. And adapta-

tion to climate change oers tasks that can be the object o cooperation

between ormerly antagonistic groups.

Deelpin scial resilienceClimate adaptation and peacebuilding need comprehensively to address

the key risks aced by ragile states aected by climate change. These

FACTS

Barranquilla

Btá

ECUADO R

P ERU

BRAZ I L

V E N E -Z UELA

CoLoMBIA

P ANAMA

COSTAR I CA

N I CARAG UA

Medellin

Cali

200km

Source: Sida

Area: ,4,748 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Bogotá 7,200,000 (est. 2005)Number f inhabitants: 46,00,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: republic, unitary stategDP per capita: 2,76 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin: The situation in the country is soserious that it poses a threat to the security and development o thewhole region. Swedish support has increased in recent years and

ocuses on contributing to creating conditions or peaceul development,respect or human rights and international humanitarian law, and to

through Sida totalled approx 0 MSEK. Sweden is driving the workwithin the EU and the UN, and is cooperating with non-governmental organisations in Colombia and Sweden.



0,42%

4

55

0

22

15

0

9

9

4

United States

EU-Commission

Spain

Netherlands

Germany

Sweden

Switzerland

Canada

Norway

GEF



46

risks, as outlined at the end o chapter 2 o this report, are political

instability, economic weakness, ood insecurity and demographic chang-

es such as migration and urbanisation. The measures that are adopted

and the way they are implemented have to target not just these our

issues but the linkages between them. Awareness o these risks will help

national governments and donor agencies develop programmes or the

linked goals o development, peacebuilding and adaptation. In so doing,

the result will be societies that are increasingly resilient in the ace o both short-term shocks and slow onset changes.

One way to gauge this objective is by drawing rom the literature on

reducing the risk o disaster and looking at the concept o social resil-

ience. This can be understood as the capacity to absorb stress or destruc-

tive orces through resistance or adaptation; the capacity to manage or

maintain certain basic unctions and structures during disastrous events;

and the capacity to recover ater the event.55 In principle, the idea o

resilience is relevant or thinking about a society’s ability to cope with a

wide range o problems, rom natural calamities, through economic

shocks, to invasion, to slow onset changes in the natural environment.

Key characteristics o a resilient society are that it is well governed,

understands the risks it aces, can manage those risks and minimise its

vulnerability to them, and that it is prepared to respond to unpreventable

disasters. Being well governed, the society has clear policies and a strong

ramework o law and regulation, implemented by capable institutions. It

understands the risks it aces because it has the scientic capacities to do

so, and can manage them successully not only because o good plan-

ning, but because o public awareness as a result o good communications

and sharing o inormation. It can minimise its vulnerability because it

has made provision or social welare as well as physical protection, and

it is well organised with good early warning systems to be able to respond

quickly i a natural disaster should strike. Indeed, such a society may

experience extreme events such as hurricanes, storms and earthquakes,but its resilience means those events will not actually be disasters.

This depiction o a resilient society is abstract and idealised. It does

not describe an existing society – especially not one to be ound among

the 102 countries that ace the double-headed risk o climate change and

violent confict – but it sets objectives to aim or. What it makes clear is

that physical protection and preparation or quick response to extreme

events are the results o exploring problems and identiying possible

solutions, as well as deploying expert knowledge within an open process

o inormation-sharing and discussion. The closer it is possible to get to

an inclusive process with the participation o all aected groups, the

greater the degree o resilience that can be developed.

Simultaneously addressing peacebuilding needs and climate change

adaptation will involve considering how dierent sectors and actions are

connected. For example, building a new road will not only improve

transport inrastructure but may also encourage poor communities to

settle along the roadside as a means o enhancing their livelihoods

through road-side trading. I the road is cutting across a food plain,

those communities also will be increasing their level o vulnerability to

climate change. Making a dierence in one sector – such as hydropower

– without improvements in the provision o other basic services – such as

domestic water supply – can uel new grievances (see separate box).

Developing the resilience o communities so they can adapt successully

to climate change will include developing the capacity to understandthese linkages and to act on them.



47

The practicalities f adaptatin Adaptation to climate change is already taking place, but it is rarely done

in order to build resilience. To date, most adaptation eorts have been

initiated within a narrow rame o reerence, looking at cost and benet

in terms o narrow economic interests. This, in itsel, would not be a bad

thing i it were set within a context o social adaptation and building

resilience. When it is not, it risks being dysunctional.

The concrete measures o a successul process o adaptation will

emerge rom local initiatives and will take a dierent shape in dierent

contexts as they address dierent consequences o climate change. There

are some examples that can be cited to indicate the practical import o the argument:56

• In Mexico and Argentina, in response to increased fooding risks, a

number o adjustments have been made: planting dates have been

changed and new varieties o crop have been introduced, including

drought-resistant plants such as agave and aloe. There also have been

changes to overall management systems: stocks o the product have

been built up as an economic reserve; arms have diversied by

adding livestock operations and the plots used or crops and or

grazing have been separated so as to diversiy exposure; crop insur-

ance has been set up and local nancial pools established as analternative to commercial crop insurance.

UN Security Council meeting during the consideration o the report o the Secretary-General on

*the current humanitarian crisis in the Sudan(February 2008).

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe



The 994 genocide in Rwanda, one o the worst cases ogenocide in history which let approximately one mi llionpeople dead and over two mil lion displaced, was not ananarchistic outbreak o violence. It was a consequence oa colonial legacy and manipulated ethnicity. It was agenocide prepared by an elite with the intention omaintaining and strengthening their control over thecountry by eliminating an entire ethnic group and parts o

society.On o the many complex causes o the violent confict

may be explained in the lack o access to durable land.Rwanda is one o the most ertile countries in Arica. But itis also one o the most densely populated one. At thebeginning o the 990s, there was insucient arable land.The country had also ailed to create a modern sectorwith alternative ways o earning a living. The problemswere exacerbated by the act that land was inequitablydistributed and that the land use, especially cultivatingsteep hills and wetlands, caused environmental degrada-tion.

Lack o land and job opportunities contributed to asituation that power-hungry politicians could channel intothe ethnic hatred that grew into massacres during the960s and 70s, and then resulted in genocide in 994.

Today, there is peace, but climate change wi ll pose athreat against uture stabilit y – a challenge that demandsincreased attention.

Changing weather patters and rainall wil l have impact onproduction and livelihoods. Environmental degradationurther undermines the work or adaptation to climatechange. Collapsed ecosystems, polluted waters anddestructive orestry mean signicantly increased vulner-ability - or people, societies and regions.

Since 994 Sweden and Rwanda have reachedagreement that co-operation should be targeted at:

• Promoting peaceul and democratic governance• Contributing to economic and social development

based on the sustainable use o natural resources

Sida, or example, supports the Institute o Research andDialogue or Peace (IRDP). This organisation has inter-viewed a large number o people rom dierent socialclasses and positions to help develop an understanding othe serious challenges and problems still acing Rwanda.

Sida is supporting dialogue about confict resolution atgrassroots level, through an NGO called La Benevolencija,which also broadcasts radio dramas on disputes, confictmanagement and ostering critical minds.

In addition, Sida also supports village reorestationand soil conservation by encouraging terracing, treeplanting and marketing o agricultural products.

Source: Sida, and Livelihood Conficts: Linking poverty andenvironment as causes o confict, Lei Ohlsson, Sida, 2000

• In Botswana, national government programmes have been set up to

re-create employment options ater drought. This has entailed work-

ing with local authorities and providing assistance to small subsistence

armers to increase crop production.

• In the Philippines, responses to rising sea levels and storm surges

include the introduction o participatory risk assessment; provision o

grants to strengthen coastal resilience and rehabilitation o inrastruc-

tures; construction o cyclone-resistant housing units; retrot o buildings to improved hazard standards; review o building codes;

and reorestation o mangroves.

• And in Bangladesh, where an already rising sea level means that salt

water intrusion is a major issue (see separate box), steps are being

taken at the national level, where climate change concerns have been

included in the National Water Management Plan and, at local levels,

or example, through the use o alternative crops – such as switching

rom rice production to arming prawns – and the use o low-technol-

ogy water lters.

Opportunities or coherent adaptation are greater in some sectors, suchas agriculture and orestry, buildings and urban inrastructure, but are

currently limited in others, such as energy and health. This is only due to

a lack o conceptual and empirical knowledge around these areas. There

is an evident need to address these research and knowledge gaps, while

taking immediate action on areas with stronger existing levels o knowl-

edge and understanding.

The dierence in adaptive capacity within and across societies is also

a critical issue to be acknowledged in policy and practice. Climate



A camp or rwandan reugees returning home rom Congo. The Rwanda

genocide in 1994 let approximately one million people dead and over two

million displaced as reugees. Many people fed to ne ighboring countries.

There have been other sign s o progress since the genocide. The government is

pursuing an active anti-poverty, pro-growth policy based on democracy and

popular participation. However, the democratic culture remains weak; or

instance, sel-censorship is still widely practised by the mass media.

Photo: Scanpix

49

Kiali

Kibungo

Butare

RWA N D A

50kmBURUND I

DEMOCRAT ICREP UBL ICO F C O NG O

UGAN DA

TAN ZAN IA

FACTS

Area: 26,8 km²Capital and number f inhabitants: Kigali 800,000 (estimate 2006)Number f inhabitants: 9,200,000 (2006)Frm f ernment: republic, unitary stateHead f state: President Paul KagameHead f ernment: Prime Minister Bernard MakuzagDP per capita: 260 USD (2006)Swedish deelpment cperatin: In light o the promising results,

Sweden's development cooperation with Rwanda has risen to aboutSKr 80 million per year. Sweden and Rwanda have reached agreementthat cooperation should be targeted at: promoting peaceul anddemocratic governance and contributing to economic andsocial development based on the sustainableuse o natural resources. Source: Sida

A F R I C A

change may not target the marginalised over the afuent, but the dier-

ential in capacity to adapt determines who suers and the extent o that

suering. Communities already acing multiple pressures, such as poor

access to economic and natural resources, will ace barriers to adapta-

tion. Addressing these barriers will itsel be a means o promoting

adaptation through bolstering capacity or the process o adaptation.



50

As the IPCC notes, ‘societies have a long record o adapting to the

impacts o climate through a range o practices…but climate change

poses novel risks oten outside the range o experience, such as impacts

related to drought, heatwaves, accelerated glacier retreat and hurricane

intensity.’57 In short, the uture will not be the same as the past. The

severity o impacts, both sudden shock and slow onset, will leave some

communities unable to adapt to or cope with the physical eects and

knock-on consequences o climate change. The most vulnerable commu-

nities with the weakest adaptive capacity are in ragile states.

This report has shown that in ragile states the consequences o

climate change can interact with existing socio-political and economic

tensions, compounding the causal tensions underlying violent confict. In

46 states already aected by violent confict, the dual problem o climate

change and violent confict can lock the state into a downward spiral

where violent confict restricts the adaptive capacity and climate change

worsens the confict. In a urther 56 states, the consequences o climatechange could move them into political instability, creating a high risk o

violent confict urther on.

But the potential downward spiral can be transormed into a virtuous

circle. The solution to this double-headed problem is a unied one.

Essentially, this involves applying the established principles o confict-

sensitive development practices to climate change policies and practice.

At the very least, climate change need not increase the risk o violent

confict and, at best, addressing climate change in ragile states can

promote peace. By acting together to prevent violent confict, govern-

ments and institutions will be better placed to address the demands o

climate change adaptation. In ragile states, thereore, donor govern-

ments and institutions must do their best to ensure that climate change

strategies are confict-sensitive, and that peacebuilding and development

activities are climate-sensitive.

Far rom complementing one another, policies and strategies or devel-

opment, peacebuilding and climate change are oten disconnected and

divergent. This is always an error, because it means opportunities or

synergy are lost, and it can be dangerous when the dierent strands o poli-

cy undermine one another. The added dimensions o climate change to

the multi-dimensional context o poverty and ragile states mean that

decision-making must involve collaboration between the various donor

agencies and government departments with the relevant elds o expertise.

While there are some examples o joint action between national govern-ments and international donors,58 research or this report ound little

evidence o policies or projects that specically address climate change

4. Conclusions andrecommendations



5

within an existing development and peacebuilding ramework. This is

probably due to the general lack o capacity o government institutions to

engage with a relatively large number o donors – they oten seem to

spend their entire time in review meetings with dierent donors instead

o getting everybody together in one orum – as well as the limited scope

o project unding and the lack o inormation sharing between environ-

mental bodies, development actors and aected communities. Beyond

this, however, as argued above, such activities need to be developed andimplemented with local communities participating ully rom the outset.

Failure to integrate climate change considerations into development

and peacebuilding activities renders these activities, at best, short-term

and, at worst, harmul. Interventions that are not confict-sensitive can

exacerbate confict dynamics and worsen the situation which they intend

to assist.59 Lack o confict- and climate-sensitivity will slow down the

development potential o ragile states, which will, in turn, increase the

risk o violent confict.

The core message o this report is that confict-sensitive climate

change policies can actively promote peacebuilding, and that climate-

proo peacebuilding and development policies can be eective climate

change adaptation policies. To this end, it is imperative to recognise and

maximise the synergies between climate adaptation policies and peace-

building activities in achieving the shared goal o sustainable develop-

ment and peace.

This report is an attempt to identiy, describe and explain a major

problem, to indicate some paths that could be ollowed in order to nd

solutions and, by so doing, to emphasise the important place the double-

headed problem o climate change and violent confict should henceorth

occupy on the international political agenda. We have argued that a

harmonised approach – whereby peacebuilding activities and climate

adaptation strategies respond to the need to strengthen governance and

social resilience – provides the best solution to address the key risks o political instability, economic weakness, ood insecurity and demograph-

ic changes posed by climate change in ragile states.

National governments and international organisations are only now

starting to understand the social and political dimensions o the climate

change problem. The rst needs – which this report is a modest step

towards meeting – are to raise awareness o the problem, to increase

understanding o the ways in which the knock-on eects o climate

change can unold, and to generate a search or means o adaptation.

The concrete measures o adaptation, tailored or each locality, are not

sitting on a shel waiting to be picked up; they have to be worked out

through a process that brings together the necessary hard science and

local knowledge.

However, even as the process o raising awareness and developing

concrete measures slowly begins, the eects o climate change are un-

olding. There is thus an urgent need to act, yet an inadequate knowledge

basis on which to do so. In these circumstances, the best option is an

incremental approach. To begin with, in ragile states where climate

change will be an issue, development and peacebuilding strategies must

be adapted so that they are sensitive to the uture impacts o climate

change. This will reduce the chance o donor intervention hindering

adaptation options. Building on this, inormation sharing between

environmental, development and peacebuilding organisations could

promote understanding o the problem and lay the basis or mapping outadaptive strategies.



52

Here we oer 12 recommendations on the broad direction o interna-

tional policy. Except at the most generic level, we do not set out solutions

to the problem o climate change and confict, but rather ways in which

we believe those solutions can be identied.

Twele recmmendatins fr addressin climate chane in

fraile states

1. Me the issue f cnflict and climate chane hiher up the

internatinal plitical aenda

It is now time to place the human, social consequences o climate change

ront and centre. This means speculating on the basis o projections and

can seem abstract and hard to pin down. It is, however, necessary i we

are to understand what is unolding and how we should react. The Stern

Review60 made a start by exploring social and economic consequences.

The UK government, which sponsored the Stern Review, went a step

urther by arranging a debate on climate change and security at the UN

Security Council. Further initiatives are now needed to gain agreementthat the social consequences are important and can be addressed, to

move the issue orward through international institutions such as the UN

and EU, to develop international guidelines or adaptation, and to make

available adequate unding.

2. Research the indirect lcal cnsequences f climate chane

This report represents a rst step at exploring the chain o eects be-

tween climate change and violent confict, at gauging the scale o the

problem, and at identiying remedial measures. But the knock-on eects

o climate change will be dierent in each place, not only because the

physical eects are dierent, and the other key eatures o the natural

environment are dierent, but also because the social structure andeconomic base are dierent. The consequences o climate change in

Kathmandu will be dierent rom the consequences in rural Nepal, let

alone in Bangladesh, the Nile Delta, or Peru. The generic analysis in this

report thereore needs to be ollowed by urther exercises going into the

detail o how these eects play out in regions, countries and localities,

and dening the necessary measures or adaptation.

3. Deelp and spread research cmpetence

It is an urgent priority to get this research under way and, at the same

time, it is necessary to ensure that long-term competence to undertake

such research exists in those regions and countries that are likely to beaected. This indicates the need or a major programme o long-term

capacity building in both the natural and social sciences. It is a big

challenge, but there are simply too many risks involved in not taking it

on. Without developing local competence, it is all too likely that the hard

science on climate change will be seen as a oreign invention, while the

social science assessment o risks will be treated as political intererence.

Equally, in both social and natural science, distance does not generate

precision about consequences; the best place or the research to be under-

taken is in situ. University and research networks already exist worldwide

and need to be mobilised and strengthened in order both to develop and

spread competence on these interlocking issues.



5

4. Impre knwlede and enerate plicy thruh dialue

This report has argued three points about dialogue:

a) That the best way to garner inormation includes drawing on local

knowledge and the best way to achieve that is through dialogue;

b) That the best way to develop policy is by putting local interest and

scientic research into dialogue with each other;

c) That dialogue around climate change can be a means o peacebuild-

ing and that cooperation on adaptation to climate change can be a

joint task to emerge out o a peacebuilding dialogue.

International cooperation needs to ocus on providing the nancial

resources, training and enabling environment or multiple levels o

dialogue to be pursued by local communities, national governments and

regional organisations In this nascent eld, cross-border inormation

sharing and lessons learned will provide examples o good and bad

practice.

5. Priritise adaptatin er mitiatin in fraile states

This report has shown that in ragile states, adaptation to climate changeis the most pressing need. The majority o ragile states have subsistence

economies and thus very low carbon emissions. While countries that lead

the way in producing carbon emissions should lead the way in reducing

them, there is little that can be done and little that will be achieved at a

global level by pursuing mitigation strategies such as Clean Development

Mechanism projects in ragile states, unless such projects also increase

adaptive capacity. With limited international unds and capacity avail-

able among donors and national governments to address climate change,

priority in ragile states should be given to understanding and addressing

the consequences o the consequences o climate change, to prevent the

even greater international problem o climate-related violent confict.

6. Deelp the riht institutinal cntext: d ernance fr climate

chane

The research competence, local participation and multiple levels o

dialogue outlined above will lead nowhere unless they eed into the right

institutional context – political parties, leaders and government depart-

ments that can both understand and absorb the hard and social science,

as well as appreciate the validity o local perspectives and knowledge.

Developing competence on climate change issues, including adaptation,

needs to be seen henceorth as an integral part o good governance in all

the states acing the combined risk o climate change impact and violent

confict or instability. Good governance is an increasingly important part

o development cooperation, which means that donor governments have

every possibility to act on this.

7. Prepare t manae miratin

Some o the most serious problems and perhaps greatest ears raised by

climate change concern migration. Most studies o the social conse-

quences o climate change identiy large-scale migration as a likely

outcome and responses to migration could generate confict. Research

identiying likely migration fows would help identiy both migrant and

host communities where dialogue should be opened pre-emptively, to

anticipate problems, identiy possible benets and prepare to manage theprocess.



54

8. Ensure Natinal Adaptatin Plans f Actin are cnflict-sensitie

National Adaptation Plans o Action are a useul starting point. How-

ever, in the context o ragile states, the value o NAPAs will be realised

only i they take account o a state’s socio-political and economic context

and confict dynamics. To this eect, they should be joined up to existing

national strategies on poverty and confict resolution.

9. Climate-prf peacebuildin and deelpmentLikewise, peacebuilding needs to refect the need or adaptation to

climate change. Through the UN Peacebuilding Commission, two

countries (Burundi and Sierra Leone) now have peacebuilding strategies;

more are expected to ollow. A joint mission by western donor govern-

ments developed a common ramework or supporting the Comprehen-

sive Peace Agreement in Sudan in January 2005. The Poverty Reduction

Strategic Plan or the Democratic Republic o Congo, agreed between

the DRC government and the World Bank, is intended to give a compre-

hensive sense o the country’s needs as it attempts to recover rom dec-

ades o dictatorship culminating in years o anarchy and civil war. These

are a ew examples o how countries trying to make their way out o

violent confict increasingly work along lines laid out in a strategic plan

or set o guidelines. All such plans can and should have the added com-

ponent o adaptation to climate change, should explicitly link it to

peacebuilding and development, and should make explicit how activities

on these three inter-connected strands strengthen one another.

10. Enae the priate sectr

The private sector has a role that could be crucial in driving orward

adaptation, but care will be needed to ensure that the economic opportu-

nities that adaptation oers are not taken up in a way that is ultimately

sel-deeating. Governments and inter-governmental bodies should:

a) Work with major multinational companies to develop guidelines orsupporting adaptation to climate change in the poor and unstable

countries where they have operations.

b) Help national and local companies identiy ways in which their

ordinary commercial operations can support adaptation by changing,

as appropriate, production, products and distribution.

11. Link tether internatinal framewrks f actin

There are several dierent internationally agreed rameworks that

address aspects o the interlinked issues o climate change, peacebuilding

and development, or example the OECD-DAC guidelines on develop-

ment in ragile states, NAPAs and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers at

national level, the European Commission, the disaster risk reduction

rameworks such as Hyogo and the ISDR, the Global Environmental

Facility and its various unding mechanisms. A concerted eort is needed

in a variety o dierent international ora to ensure that these dierent

rameworks are coherent with one another and mutually supportive.

12. Prmte reinal cperatin n adaptatin

The ramework o international cooperation on climate ocuses on

mitigation and is largely a global agenda, through the UNFCCC and the

Conerences o Parties. The EU is probably the only regional body with

a developed climate policy. Other regional bodies such as the AricanUnion and the Organisation o American States, and sub-regional ones



55

such as the Economic Organisation o West Arican States, the Associa-

tion o South East Asian Nations, and the South Asian Association or

Regional Cooperation, all have potential key roles in raising awareness,

developing policies, generating consensus and mobilising resources to

support adaptation.



56

Sweden is committed to support climate change adapta-

tion and environmental protection in development

cooperation. The Government is strengthening its

commitment to ensuring that development assistance is

climate-proo. Environmental development assistancegives priority to issues that are closely linked to climate

change. Particular attention is paid to our areas:

• Adaptatin t climate chane.

• Enery.

• Enirnment and safety.

• Water

Sweden will maintain and ur ther develop cooperation

with a number o states that are in confict or post-

confict situations.

The work Sida does on such critical issues as climate

change, energy, clean water, biological diversity, organic

arming and natural disasters is wide-ranging. Almost

sixty percent o Sida’s development cooperation unds

are allocated to activities that have the environment as a

principal or signicant objective.

A rise in global average temperature raises sea level,

causes longer droughts and exacerbates the risk o hurri-

canes, fooding and conficts.

Since 988, Sida has had a special environmental

mission to ensure that all projects supported must be

well-planned rom an environmental perspective. Sida’senvironmental mission was urther developed in 200

ollowing a parliamentary decision adopting Sweden’s

Global Development Policy (PGU). This document, which

aspires to help towards just and sustainable develop-

ment around the world, comprised eight key policy

points or combating poverty, one o which is the sustain-

able use o natural resources and care o the environ-

ment.

Other important bases or the Swedish development

cooperation are the Millennium Goals and international

conventions, such as the Climate Convention, theMontreal Protocol (on substances that deplete the ozone

layer), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the

Stockholm Convention (on restricting the use o certain

chemicals), and the conventions on environmentally

hazardous waste.

The ollowing examples will provide an idea o the

variety and geographical range o Sida’s work.

Education programmes: Every year, Sida nances a

large number o courses or people rom its partner

countries. One-third o these courses deal with the

sustainable use o natural resources and environmental

protection. The participants are oten experts active in

elds that are o strategic importance to sustainable

development.

Disaster preentin: At least a quarter o a million

people are aected each year by natural disasters suchas severe storms, drought and foods. As the climate

changes, extreme weather conditions are becoming

more common and it is always the poorest that are hit

the hardest. Sida works to strengthen its partners’ ability

to prevent natural disasters and mi tigate the conse-

quences or poor people.

Clean enery – a iable alternatie: Today’s energy

consumption is causing a dramatic increase in the level

o atmospheric greenhouse gases, despite the act that

much o the world’s population contribute only marginally

to emissions. Sida supports its partner countries’ eorts

to develop clean energy sources and to instruct people

in methods o saving energy.

Ariculture – supprtin life: In many o Sida’s

partner countries, poor people are dependent on

arming. Sida supports eorts to develop new cultivation

methods and to encourage organic arming.

Clean water – a matter f life and death: Access to

clean drinking water is essential to people’s lives. Sida

contributes on several ronts to the development andimprovement o methods or making the best use o

available water resources.

Bilical diersity: Over 2,000 species o animals

and plants are on the brink o extinction around the

world. Sida contributes through the Swedish International

Biodiversity Programme (Swedbio) to eorts to

strengthen and protect the world’s natural resources and

ecosystem services, such as air and water.

Marine initiatie: The depletion o sh stocks isthreatening to cause the malnourishment o 400 million

people in the poorest countries o Arica and Asia. Sida’s

marine initiative promotes sustainable ecological and

economical use o the sea and coastal waters.

Trade and enirnment: Sida works to develop a

better understanding o the complex relationships

between trade and the environment amongst representa-

tives o countries and companies in both the northern

and southern hemispheres. It hopes to achieve this by

supporting research, dialogue, seminars and inormation

campaigns. (Sida)

SIDA, ENvIRoNMENT AND CLIMATE CHANgE



57

A: States facin a hih risk f armed cnflict as aknck-n cnsequence f climate chane

. Aghanistan

2. Algeria

. Angola4. Bangladesh

5. Bolivia

6. Bosnia & Herzegovina

7. Burma

8. Burundi

9. Central Arican Republic

0. Chad

. Colombia

2. Congo

. Côte d’Ivoire

4. Dem. Rep. Congo

5. Djibouti

6. Eritrea

7. Ethiopia

8. Ghana

9. Guinea

20. Guinea Bissau

2. Haiti

22. India

2. Indonesia

24. Iran

25. Iraq

26. Israel & Occupied Territories

27. Jordan

28. Lebanon29. Liberia

0. Nepal

. Nigeria

2. Pakistan

. Peru

4. Philippines

5. Rwanda

6. Senegal

7. Sierra Leone

8. Solomon Islands

9. Somalia

40. Somaliland

4. Sri Lanka

42. Sudan

4. Syria

44. Uganda

45. Uzbekistan

46. Zimbabwe

B: States facin a hih risk f pliticalinstability as a knck-n cnsequence fclimate chane

. Albania

2. Armenia

. Azerbaijan

4. Belarus

5. Brazil

6. Cambodia

7. Cameroon

8. Comoros

9. Cuba

0. Dominican Republic

. Ecuador

2. Egypt

. El Salvador

4. Equatorial Guinea

5. Fiji6. Gambia

7. Georgia

8. Guatemala

9. Guyana

20. Honduras

2. Jamaica

22. Kazakhstan

2. Kenya

24. Kiribati

25. Kyrgyzstan

26. Laos

27. Libya28. Macedonia

29. Maldives

0. Mali

. Mauri tania

2. Mexico

. Moldova

4. Montenegro

5. Morocco

6. Niger

7. North Korea

8. Papua New Guinea

9. Russia

40. Saudi Arabia

4. Serbia (Kosovo)

42. South Arica

4. Taiwan

44. Tajikistan

45. Thailand

46. Timor-Leste

47. Togo

48. Tonga

49. Trinidad and Tobago

50. Turkey

5. Turkmenistan

52. Ukraine5. Vanuatu

54. Venezuela

55. Western Sahara

56. Yemen

List f states at risk



58

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59

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September, 2007

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on Climate Change, Privatisation and Power, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 2006.

40 Davies, Nick. ‘Abuse and incompetence in ght against global warming,’ The Guardian, 2

June, 2007. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/02/energy.

business; John Vida. ‘Guilt- ree sins o emission,’ The Guardian, February, 2005.

Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2005/eb/0/emissionstrading.

environment; www.cdmwatch.org



60

4 ‘The World Bank and the Carbon Market,’ CDM Watch, April 2005. Available at: www.

cdmwatch.org

42 CDM Watch Website: www.cdmwatch.org. Accessed on 2 July, 2007.




2007, Chapter 7: Assessment o adaptation practices, options, constraints and

capacity.

44 Our analysis o Nepal draws strongly on the research o Dr Fiona Rotberg o the Silk Road

Studies Institu te at Uppsala University. She generously contributed to our understanding

with her current research and we are very grateul or her contribution. While we have

beneted rom this assistance, our conclusions and any errors o interpretation are our

own responsibility and any ault should not be laid at the door o Dr Rotberg.

45 CIA Factbook 2007. Available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-

actbook/geos/np.html. Accessed on 6 August, 2007.

46 Gregson, Jonathan. Blood Against the Snows, Fourth Estate: London, 2003.47 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation,



2007.

48 Shrestha, A. B. ‘Climate Change in Nepal,’ in drat proceedings o the Consultative

Workshop on Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options in Nepal ’s Hydropower Sec-

tor with a Focus on Hydrological Regime Changes Including Glacial Lake OutburstFlooding, Department o Hydrology and Meteorology and Asian Disaster Preparedness

Centre: Kathmandu, 200.

49 OECD DAC. Harmonising Donor Practices or Eective Aid Delivery, OECD: Paris, 200.

50 World Bank Nepal website: http://web.worldbank.org /np. Accessed on 6 June, 2007.

5 Human Development Report 2006. Available online at: http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/

statist ics/countries/data_sheets/cty_ds_NPL.html. Accessed on 22 October, 2007.

52 ICIMOD. Climatic and Hydrological Atlas o Nepal, International Centre or Integrated

Mountain Development: Kathmandu, 996; UNEP. Nepal: State o the Environment, Uni ted

Nations Environment Programme: Nairobi, 200; Liu, X. and B. Chen. ‘Climate Warming in

the Tibetan Pla teau during Recent Decades,’ International Journal o Climatology, 20,

2002, pp729-742.

5 OECD DAC. ‘Development and Climate Change in Nepal: Focus on Water Resources and

Hydropower,’ 200. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/ 6/5/9742202.pd

54 OECD DAC. ’Development and Climate Change in Nepal: Focus on Water Resources and

Hydropower,’ 200. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/6/5/9742202.pd

55 Adapted rom Twigg, John. ‘Characteristics o a Disaster-resilient Communit y,’ 2007.

56 Examples taken rom: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2007:

Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerabili ty. Contribution o Working Group II to the Fourth

Assessment Report o the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 2007, Chapter 7: Assessment o adaptat ion practices,

options, constraints and capacity.




2007, Chapter 7.

58 For example, the EU is currently preparing a communication on the building o a Global

Climate Change Alliance between the EU and vulnerable developing countries.59 Dueld, Mark. ‘Aid policy and post-modern confict: A critical review,’ Occasional Paper,

9, University o Birmingham: Birmingham, 998; Dueld, Mark. Global Governance and

the New Wars: the Merging o Development and Securit y, Zed Books: London and New

York, 200; Leader, Nicholas and Joanne Macrae. Shiting Sands: The theory and practice

o coherence between political and humanitarian responses to complex emergencies,

ODI: London, 2000; OECD DAC. Harmonising Donor Practices or E ective Aid Delivery,

OECD: Paris, 200; Pottier, Johan. ‘Why aid agencies need better understanding o the

communities they assist: The experience o ood aid in Rwandan reugee camps,’

Disasters, 20, 996, pp24-7.

60 Stern, Nicholas et al. The Economics o Climate Change (The Stern Review). Cambridge

University Press: Cambridge, 2007. Available at: ht tp://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/

independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cm



Halving poverty by 2015 is one of the greatest

challenges of our time, requiring cooperation

and sustainability. The partner countries are

responsible for their own development.

Sida provides resources and develops knowledge

and expertise, making the world a richer place.

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