Think Change

How can we deal with the security impacts of the climate crisis?

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The Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace was signed last year at COP28 in Dubai. This recognised the unique challenge of addressing the climate emergency in areas affected by conflict and fragility, and called for “bolder, collective action” to support them.

But what does this look like in practice?

Despite being among the most vulnerable to climate change, conflict-affected countries receive just a fraction of the climate finance that is allocated to more stable regions.

As we build up to the UN Summit for the Future and COP29, this episode examines what can be done to address this critical conflict blind spot in climate action.

Guests assess the security impacts of the climate crisis, and the urgent need to scale up funding and support where it is most needed to avoid deepening instability.

Guests

  • Sara Pantuliano (host), Chief Executive, ODI
  • Hanna Serwaa Tetteh, UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Horn of Africa
  • Katarina Kertysova, Climate Security Officer, NATO
  • Rosita Najmi, Co-Founder, CIFAR and ODI Board Member

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0:00:11 - Sara Pantuliano 

Welcome to Think Change. I'm Sara Pantuliano. Last year, COP28 in Dubai saw the signing of the Climate Relief, recovery and Peace Declaration. The declaration formally addressed the particular challenge of addressing the climate emergency in areas affected by conflict and instability. It was signed by 91 countries, 43 organisations, including ODI, and it called for bolder, more collective action to bolster climate finance and adaptation efforts in conflict-affected areas. 

Well, we've not yet reached the halfway point of 2024, and Africa has already felt the brunt of this double whammy. Both East Africa and the Sahel have endured blistering heat waves. We've seen temperatures soaring to nearly 50 degrees Celsius in Mali and reaching 45 degrees in South Sudan. In the meantime, a decision by the US government on the 20th of April to withdraw over a thousand troops from Niger after the military junta revoked the security pact, has further increased instability in the region and while these events may seem disparate, they actually tell a broader story of vulnerability. It is chronic poverty and instability that are making people more vulnerable to climate change, but they're also making it harder for governments, for donors, for climate funds, to provide support. It is clear that we have an important conflict blind spot in climate action. So, as plans gear up for COP29 and for the Summit of the Future that the UN has called for in September, what changes do we need to see from climate funds and what are the key demands we need to take to COP29 and the Summit of the Future?  

With me to discuss this challenge, I have Hanna Serwaa Tetteh, special envoy of the UN Secretary General for the Horn of Africa, Katarina Kertysova from the Climate and Energy Security Section of NATO, and Rosita Najmi, Co-founder of CIFA, the Climate Innovation for Adaptation and Resilience Coalition, and a board member of ODI Global Advisory. Welcome to you all, Hanna, let me start with you. In September, the UN Summit of the Future will be hosted in New York to discuss a new agenda for peace. How can this new agenda for peace catalyse action on climate change?  

0:02:40 - Hanna Tetteh 

When the UN was thinking about the new agenda for peace. Essentially, we're looking at the risks to peace in the future, and some of them are already known, some of them because and the climate crisis being one of them, is something that perhaps many countries who have not got the same fragilities have not been thinking about as a driver of conflict. In the region which I cover, which is the Horn of Africa, it has five countries that are on the World Bank's fragility index as some of the most fragile countries in the world, and they are really at the forefront of the climate crisis. The Horn of Africa region, made up of Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, is 70% arid or semi-arid.  

In the course of the last five years, there are many parts of this region which have been subjected to droughts and now, on the contrary, because of the El Nino effect, there's been quite some devastating flooding and, given that, for many countries on the African continent, most of the populations are still reliant on agriculture to make a living, the challenge of being able to have access to land, access to water, be able to farm within their traditional farming areas and not being displaced as a result of these mass flooding incidents are things that the countries are going to have to grapple with in the future.  

So, putting climate on the new agenda for peace and making countries much more sensitive to the need to factor into their planning not just climate change by way of maintaining their nationally determined commitments as per Paris and its follow-ups, but looking right now at a whole of government and whole of environment approach to ensure that there is sustainability built into all aspects of government policy is going to be the new normal in order to prevent conflict and where we already have the situations where there is natural resource competition that could exacerbate conflict, to focus on the climate-related drivers of that conflict, to be able to create something that is more sustainable, that helps to build resilience, that helps communities to adapt, so that we see less of that in the future.  

0:05:14 - Sara Pantuliano 

Obviously, the new agenda for peace also calls for these joint regional hubs that can bring together climate peace. You know security concerns and the UN has recently established the first of these hubs on climate peace and security for the whole of Africa, as you say is one of the worst affected regions. What role do you think this hub can play in accelerating progress on climate security and peace on this agenda in the region?  

0:05:43 - Hanna Tetteh 

Well, when the hub was established? It was established in response to the recognition by the member states in this region that this was an important issue for them. So what drove the creation of the hub was first the establishment of the climate security mechanism by IGAD member states. There had been flooding, severe flooding, in South Sudan, in unity states, that had displaced huge numbers of people. There had been flooding in Somalia as well. There had been drought in northeastern Kenya, Somalia, southern Somalia, parts of southeastern Ethiopia, in the area called the Mandera Triangle, and then there had been other climate-related challenges within the Karamoja region.  

So essentially, all over the region, the different member states were seeing that this is a ticking time bomb and they've got to find a way of dealing with it. And because the issues are not constrained within the borders of a particular country, it was better to have a regional approach. So, in creating the climate security mechanism, the idea was to build on the existing early warning indicators that the region already has and to use that to be more forward-leaning in our planning, again in trying to ensure that there's greater adaptation and resilience building so that we have less of a challenge. So, the issue of the hub was established by the UN and it is embedded in the UN Environment Programme offices in Nairobi and works closely with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, with the IGAD Climate Prediction and Analysis Center, called IGPAC, to try to help member states now to think about. So what are the things we can do, what are the concrete actions?  

And, with the UN system, how we make sure that member states' priorities are built into the country cooperation frameworks so we have, within those frameworks, programs that help to respond to what we see as the risks that are very clearly in front of us, so that we have an active collaboration between the UN agencies, funds and programs, un country teams that are working directly with member states and, of course, the regional economic community as well, IGAD, so that this is truly a partnership that is across states, across institutions, and is responsive to states' needs.  

So, for instance, one of the things that we are going to be looking at later this year is working with the World Bank and also with our colleagues in OCHA to see how we can address the issues of water management in an area where water is very much a significant challenge for agriculture, for pastoral communities and for the sustaining people's livelihoods. And that's not the only intervention that we intend to work on, but the important thing, as I said, is that we're bringing the different parts of the UN together to work with member states, to focus on specific challenges and to draw attention to those areas, so that we can target resources to help to solve some of those problems.  

0:09:08 - Sara Pantuliano 

Thanks, Hanna. Really interesting to hear not just of the UN coming together, but with IGAD, you know, with the regional intergovernmental organisation. I've always felt I've worked for a long time in that region that it was a missed opportunity not to have all these entities work more closely together. So yeah, I really look forward to seeing how the hub can make progress on this agenda. But I want to talk also about another intergovernmental body that recently marked its 75th anniversary, and that's NATO. Obviously, it is a really important intergovernmental security alliance and is trying to adapt to deal with the climate emergency as well. There was a recent press statement where the NATO security secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that climate change matters for security and therefore it matters for NATO. Katarina, can you tell us how the alliance is factoring in climate change in its work?  

0:10:06 - Katarina Kertysova 

So the statement you have mentioned climate change matters for our security, therefore it matters for NATO, is very much rooted in the understanding that climate change is more than an environmental or economic challenge. When it comes to NATO, NATO is a multinational political military alliance, so the prism through which we look at and assess the risks that come with a changing climate is defined by our core mandate, and that is to ensure collective defence of 32 allies against all threats from all directions. So, we have a job to do, and climate change is making that essential work harder. There's no part of national security that doesn't, in one way or another, intersect with a changing climate. Every single threat we are dealing with right now on the ground is going to be multiplied because of the effects of a changing climate, and anything that affects our security is our business, and we will be in the room for it. To offer a few examples, perhaps when it comes to the way we deter and defend, climate change influence how our armed forces operate, what equipment they operate, but it also places strain on our infrastructure and our resilience and enablement. But it also impacts the behaviour of some of our adversaries and competitors on the global stage, which is something we have to factor into our planning and thinking. Beyond deterrence and defence, we also have a crisis management core task, and climate change impacts where we do crisis management and how we do it, but also the tools that are required and the frequency and type of deployments. As natural disasters multiply and intensify, armed forces are increasingly called upon to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and to assist civilian responders, which affects their availability for more traditional tasks like training, trainings and other deployments, and this is at the time when we need to be strengthening our deterrence vis-a-vis Russia. And finally, we have a core task of cooperative security.  

NATO has a network of over 40 partners across the globe and, as we have heard, some of our partners are more vulnerable to a changing climate, some are less able to cope, which can directly affect Euro-Atlantic security. So NATO, you can say, is a relative newcomer to this field, to this debate. It wasn't really until 2021 that heads of states and governments decided it was a high time for action. In our guiding strategic concept, we have pledged for NATO to become the leading international organisation when it comes to understanding and adapting to the impact of climate change on security, and we have a climate change and security action plan, which was approved in 2021, which very much defines the role we want to carve out for ourselves, and we define it along four pillars of effort, and that is, first and foremost, awareness, so helping member states better understand how climate change impacts their security and how their armed forces operate.  

Secondly, adapting to the impacts of climate change. Thirdly, mitigating military carbon footprint. And finally, enhancing our outreach and engagement with other organisations that are active in the climate security space, as well as partner countries, industry and academia. So we, in everything that we do, understand that NATO is not the first responder to every challenge presented by climate change. We have a unique role, we play unique sets of tools and skills that we want to bring to the table to make a valuable contribution. But in everything that we do, we do understand that our strength will always be the military dimension and military effectiveness will always be primary.  

0:14:32 - Sara Pantuliano 

Thanks, Katarina. It's really interesting hearing from you and Hanna. Clearly, the the pressure of the climate crisis and its security dimensions is something that is requiring everyone, you know, to come together governments, different intergovernmental bodies, armed forces, obviously, the corporate sector. You know, the private sector holds as a big and important role to play and Rosita, you've worked at the forefront of the climate agenda for several companies. You've been a leader in in this space. How much emphasis do you think the corporate sector places on the security aspects of the climate emergency?  

0:15:12 - Rosita Najmi 

I'll point out two signs of progress and kind of hope that keep me motivated and then we'll offer kind of three ideas of where there could be more effort and collaboration, particularly with contributions led by the private sector. So the two signs of progress that I've seen as it relates to looking at the security aspect, one is as it relates to the climate refugees, those that are forcibly displaced. I do think the private sector is aware, tracking and thinking about how to mitigate employees, customers, their supply chain that are being displaced and directly impacted, and thinking about what is their role as the employer, as a major stakeholder in that economy, in that community. So I've seen signs of this, whether it's from the humanitarian response perspective. Most of it's kind of reactive, but I am seeing glimmers of hope in terms of being participatory and I hope we get to discussing a little bit more about participatory later. The second is around investments that the private sector has been making on supporting and being a part of the ecosystem around digital public infrastructure, and I think there's a number of ways to advance security in terms of the end impact of fostering good governance and having political stability, in terms of being able to reduce transaction costs, corruption, increase the transparency as it relates to the delivery of social protection payments via digital public infrastructure. So those are signs of hope and progress where I've been motivated and pleased with the private sector kind of doing their part, there's three areas where I think they can do more.  

One is around women. The second is how the private sector uses its voice, its brand, its reputation. And then the third is around how the private sector uses its voice, its brand, its reputation. And then the third is around how the private sector uses its intellectual capital, particularly its data. We all know that both women have both an opportunity to make unique contributions and be a solution, but we also know that they are unevenly impacted, and I think that the private sector could play a role in that.  

And CGAP at the World Bank has a working paper that they put out to the broader community that's looking at that intersection of women, climate resilience and thinking about kind of what's unique about the woman's experience in terms of greater exposure, greater vulnerability and having fewer tools and strategies. And then, on the voice and reputational capital of the private sector, I think there could be more done, whether it's direct advocacy from a policy, regulatory perspective, but even simply in marketing from a social and cause marketing perspective. And then, finally, data for good. I think there's a big opportunity there. BFA Global recently did an analysis that was really eye-opening for me. That was looking at data and data platforms and, as it relates to the industry from which I come, of financial services, there are very and basically no data sets that are directly looking at financial inclusion plus adaptation, plus climate and vulnerable populations. So I think there's big opportunities there to kind of look at the intersectional story when you combine different data sets.  

0:18:23 - Sara Pantuliano 

We know that 14 of the world's least developed countries group are affected by conflict, and also we know from all the research that ODI has done that, despite these countries being amongst the most vulnerable to climate change, they only receive a fraction of the climate finance that is allocated to more stable regions. So, what can we do to make sure that these countries are adequately supported to tackle the climate crisis?  

0:18:51 - Rosita Najmi 

I think we need, as a development community, to reimagine both the sources and the blending of money for climate, and the one word that I would offer the community to guide us is intersectional. And that's going to be really uncomfortable and awkward at the beginning, and that's because of how our budgets at our institutions are organised. There are budgets either allocated towards specific outcomes, whether it's a specific SDG or a specific region. However, with climate, both because of its urgency and because of its complexity, we don't have time or the luxury to have projects that are specifically focused on SDG 5 here on gender equality, SDG 8, on economic growth and decent work, and then you know SDG 16 on peace, justice and security. And so, what that requires us to do is to think about designing our interventions in a way that requires co-funding from these different budget envelopes within our institutions, and there's all sorts of institutional friction that's there that needs to be overcome internally. But then also, as we think about how do we find new sources of funding, because we know a lot of the existing resources have come down, whether it's government budgets or beyond. I think changing our mindset and removing the shackles of the siloed approach of budget sources will also help us reimagine. Oh, maybe there's a new source of funding that could be pursued, if we don’t limit. 

There is an opportunity for companies and institutions to think about how they can be a solution, and so that's why I brought together three different communities. One was the climate action community, with leading organisations like the World Resources Institute and the UN Race to Resilience. Then we looked at the FinTech, financial, digital, financial inclusion community, brought in leading organisations there, and then we also brought in the key kind of global development institutions and we formed this alliance which you mentioned is the Climate Innovations for Adaptation and Resilience Alliance, CFAR, and initially it had a really simple goal, which was to think about how does the role of technology, particularly digital finance, what is its potential to support equitable climate action and how can we create kind of some first use cases, some frameworks and just recommendations for action so that this collective action can happen more quickly and more efficiently?  

0:21:28 - Sara Pantuliano 

Finance, of course, is really critical, but in areas affected by conflict, we will need to go beyond you know finance and think how we can help build institutions and responses that can allow for the use of climate finance. We talked about the new summit for the future, but obviously ahead of us there is also COP 29. We have this climate relief, recovery and peace declaration, which calls for this bolder collective action, but what is that going to look like in practice, Hanna?  

0:22:03 - Hanna Tetteh 

Well I think, first and foremost, it's important that when we are using these initiatives to develop new tools, including new financing tools, we should not be doing double counting, because then we're deluding ourselves that we are actually investing in solving the problem, when we are not. And so it is my hope that, as we get again, hopefully, more contributors to the Resilience and Recovery Fund, that they're not just taking money that they've put somewhere, let's say, for women, youth, peace and security, and, because they can develop a climate angle to it, say that we'll also tag some of that money for loss and for dealing with loss and damage and recovery, and then we'll see how we can maybe fund a little project somewhere that can take care of a hamlet of about 200 people and then advertise it as an innovative solution. We've got to be thinking at scale. And so, it is my hope that as we get into COP29, because of the urgency of the situation, we will be looking for solutions at scale, because if we don't find solutions at scale, we are going to deal with mass displacements. Mass displacements is going to mean mass migration. Mass migration is going to mean much more social dislocation in countries that will be the receiving countries of this mass migration and more economic and social disruption, so it will then have this snowball effect of creating more fragility even where we do not currently have fragility.  

And so, I think that for COP29, with every single COP over the last three, four years, we've been talking about the urgency of a response. It really is urgent. It's not something we can deal with a decade later. It is something that has to be dealt with now. And so, for me, for COP29, it's urgency and its scale, and its prioritizing solutions that can have significant impact in rolling back the impact of climate change, especially in the countries that are most vulnerable, many of which are on the African continent.  

0:24:13 - Sara Pantuliano 

I couldn't agree more with you. Rosita? 

0:24:17 - Rosita Najmi 

I'm going to vote for anticipatory action. I think that all of us could help think about how we make anticipatory action and preparedness more sexy, and the reason is very clear. The FAO has told us that there's going to be a time seven cost savings if we invest, and everyone knows even more lives that would be saved. And so when I think of bolder collective action, it's going to be thinking about how do we overcome the barriers of the political leader, who generally is not going to get rewarded for being prepared. They're often judged on how they respond to a crisis and, you know, have plans for recovery and resilience later. And then, similarly, the corporation, the private sector. You don't get the front page headline for helping a community be prepared or helping your supply chain be prepared with anticipatory action, and so I think there needs to be just a shift whether it's the media, civil society, citizens in terms of rewarding, encouraging, giving, showing that willingness to pay, even from a customer perspective, for these types of investments to be made. You know the Better Than Cash Alliance, which is housed by the UN. They had developed in collaboration and endorsed by the governments of Ethiopia, Philippines, Ghana, as well as a number of organisations, including the World Food Program and Mercy Corps.  

Three calls to action in terms of how we can contribute to more anticipatory action that will have results on both equity and efficacy from a resilience and adaptation outcomes perspective. One is around digital payments and digital infrastructure. The second is around closing the digital divide. And the third is around the role of women, youth and indigenous people. We've seen countries engage in the nationally determined contributions under the 2015 Paris Agreement.  

The adoption of the national plans, though, is very uneven, and digital payments are even more rarely mentioned in these plans, despite the potential that they have to reduce corruption, increase efficiency, and I think that's a miss that we need to address. The second is around the digital divide. The number that I hope all of us remember is 259 fewer women 259 million fewer women have access to the internet, so how can they make decisions about their households, their farms that they're managing, if they don't have access to this early and timely information? And finally, women, youth and indigenous people just must be at the centre of adaptation planning, especially when it comes to decisions around social protection design and delivery, especially in those fragile and climate-vulnerable areas, and so I hope that this year, in the lead-up to COP and during COP. We figure out a way how to make anticipatory action sexy and the best choice that stakeholders can make.  

0:27:25 - Sara Pantuliano 

Thanks, Rosita. Katarina, what's your hope for really bold collective actions at COP29?  

0:27:33 - Katarina Kertysova 

When it comes to NATO's participation, we do not have a UNFCCC observer status and in the past we have been able to participate through sponsoring nations and the host, but over the past three years we have established a more consistent participation, which we hope to continue, and we've been very happy to see a broader set of climate security issues climbing the agenda at the COP, those that warrant more attention and the fact that relevant nations and organisations got together to issue that declaration was a very promising development and we really hope and look forward to seeing the further integration of climate security issues onto the agenda.  

0:28:17 - Sara Pantuliano 

Thank you so much, Hanna, Katerina and Rosita. I think you've made very clear to our listeners how important, critical, urgent, as Hanna said very eloquently the agenda is. But really urgent, you know, we’ve heard about these urgencies as you said, Hanna, many times, but it really is time to act and act to scale, because the impact is being felt so deeply by so many countries, particularly the most vulnerable countries, especially in parts of Africa, and that will just lead to, you know, further instabilities and deeper challenges if we don't address them quickly, both through finance allocations and beyond. Well, I hope you all enjoyed the episode. If you did, please do like, subscribe and rate it, It helps us a lot and we hope you'll join us again next time. Thank you.  

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