Policy Briefs on Climate Change and Conflict

This Policy Brief reviews the literature on climate change and human mobility, with reference to Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). The issue of migration triggered or driven by climate change has become the focus of a massive increase in research and publications over the last decade or so. Initially it was an issue that was framed in negative terms but recently, much more nuanced understandings of the links between climate change and human population mobility have emerged. This review will briefly outline the types of environmentally influenced migration, discuss the various ‘theories’ on climate change and mobility, review the importance of land in relation to mobility in PICTs before examining historical and contemporary cases of climate change mobility. It is followed by Part II which examines existing and possible future origins and destinations of climate change associated mobility as well as the issue of immobility.

This Policy Brief aims to fill existing research gaps and discuss the temporal and thematic evolution of confidence levels in WGII's climate security reporting. Since AR4, the IPCC has been assigning a level of scientific uncertainty to each substantive statement in its reports. Using a novel application of natural language processing, this study was able to assess IPCC confidence levels in climate security literature over time and across topics. The study finds that more scholarship does not automatically lead to more robust evidence and that while the IPCC has a strong bias toward reporting findings with medium to high confidence levels, the under-representation of low confidence findings is somewhat problematic. The Policy Brief concludes with recommendations for researchers and practitioners.

Part II of this two-part study explores the ways in which a combination of ontological security and the spatial turn with a genuinely Pacific approach can contribute to theoretically explaining and practically addressing the challenges of climate change-induced mobility to peace and security in the Pacific region. The focus will be on the fundamental land/people connection and on its implications for ontological (in)security in the face of relocation and displacement. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn and recommendations for further research, policy and practice will be given.

In Part I of this two-part study, the concept of ontological security is presented and linked to the spatial turn in peace and conflict studies. The spatial turn and the concept of ontological security allow the framing of issues of peace, conflict and security as fundamentally em-placed, as inextricably connected to place/space/scale, offering a promising entry point to the understanding of the challenges to peace and security which come with climate change-induced human mobility. However, both ontological security and the spatial turn are fundamentally Western academic concepts; therefore, it is argued that it is necessary to combine these concepts with the genuinely Pacific approach of relationality if they are to be made useful for the understanding of the climate change – mobility – peace/conflict nexus in a Pacific socio-cultural context.

This Policy Brief explores the nexus between climate change and security in the South Pacific and explores some key climate change-related trigger points that are driving security concerns in the Pacific. The combined effects of these trigger points are likely to drive displacement and forced migration away from Pacific Island countries. Regional security is further heightened by tensions between the US and China and their interests in protecting or exploiting fisheries resources in the region. Current regional organisations do not appear well placed to create an effective dialogue to resolve these climate change-related tensions, due to inherent biases. This Policy Brief explores the option of new collaborative arrangements between the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Pacific Small Island Development States (PSIDS) as a means of creating a higher political authority to consider the threats posed by climate change and the opportunities to address these threats.