Policy Briefs on Climate Change and Conflict

This paper draws from the experiences of a multi-stakeholder planned relocation measure in Narikoso village, Fiji, to enhance understandings around the nature and scope of challenges in relocation processes for adaptation. Key learnings are drawn from the Narikoso case study with implications for policy and practice. This brief makes strategic and operational recommendations in areas of: promoting participatory processes; building on existing capacities and improving coordination; strengthening the inclusion of socio-cultural dynamics; improving monitoring, evaluation and learning; and securing and managing finance.

This policy brief draws on an analysis of the interlinkages of climate change and conflict in Lake Chad to make recommendations for the implementation of responses to this crisis and in other climate-affected fragile contexts beyond the Lake Chad region. The assessment of Lake Chad shows that the impacts of increasing variability and decreasing predictability in rainfall are decreasing social cohesion, leaving communities less able to cope with conflict and this, in turn, is eroding people’s resilience to climate change. Responses to such crises, where climate change and security interlink, need to take the interactions of climate change and conflict into account and be climate- and conflict-sensitive. Climate and conflict informed programming and interventions are vital to ensure responses remain effective and sustainable, and do no harm in the face of a changing climate.

Decision makers and practitioners have expressed a strong interest in the security implications of climate change since the mid-2000s. In response to this, researchers have produced an impressive literature on climate change and violent conflict. This literature and the resulting discourse are strongly shaped by quantitative research, that is, by statistical studies of a large number of cases. This policy brief identifies eight limitations of quantitative climate-conflict research, outlines the resulting knowledge gaps, and suggests ways to address them.

While migration as an adaptation strategy appears to be a possible solution for Pacific communities vulnerable to the effects of climate change, without proper planning and preparation, and the involvement and consent of people, it could also potentially lead to forced displacement. This paper reflects on the relocation of the Gilbertese from the Southern Gilbert Islands to Phoenix Islands, and eventually to the Solomon Islands in the 1960s. The planning of the relocation, especially from the Phoenix Islands to the Solomon Islands, and the experiences of the people, provide important lessons that can be used to inform future climate change induced migration and displacement in the Pacific Islands.

This policy brief explores the role of the military in responding to natural disasters. It first draws a linkage between disasters and security broadly, then examines the ways in which military and defence resources might be mobilised in response to these disasters. It looks at the important role of perceptions of the military’s role in responding to natural disasters—their own and those of others—and concludes with an assessment of how different countries have navigated this issue and carved out a specific role for the military in responding to natural disasters. The policy brief refers to two case studies, the bushfires in Australia in 2019-20 and floods in Myanmar in 2015, and concludes with policy recommendations.