SECURITY COUNCIL HOLDS FIRST-EVER DEBATE ON IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON PEACE, SECURITY, HEARING OVER 50 SPEAKERS

With scientists predicting that land and water resources will gradually become more scarce in the coming years, and that global warming may irreversibly alter the face of the planet, the United Nations Security Council today held its first-ever debate on the impact of climate change on security, as some delegates raised doubts over whether the Council was the proper forum to discuss the issue.

The day-long meeting, called by the United Kingdom, aimed to examine the relationship between energy, security and climate, and featured interventions from more than 50 delegations, representing imperilled island nations and industrialized greenhouse gas emitters alike.  While some speakers praised the initiative, there were reservations from developing countries, which saw climate change as a socio-economic development issue to be dealt with by the more widely representative General Assembly.  Many delegations also called for the United Nations to urgently consider convening a global summit on the issue.

read the full document on http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/sc9000.doc.htm

AS NATURE OF NEW THREATS EVOLVES, SECURITY COUNCIL, CENTRAL TO KEEPING PEACE, MUST ALSO KEEP PACE, SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS DURING COUNCIL DEBATE ON NEW CHALLENGES

Transnational crime, pandemics, and climate change were three defining challenges, and as the nature of such threats continued to evolve, the Security Council — so central to our ability to keep the peace — must also keep pace, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council today as it addressed new challenges to international peace and security and conflict prevention.

He said that although none of the three were new, they were increasingly transnational, increasingly acute, and had ever greater implications for human, State, regional and international security.  There was an increasing convergence between organized crime and terrorist groups.  Climate change had aggravated conflict over scarce land and could well trigger large-scale migration.  Rising sea levels put at risk the very survival of small island States.

No country and no region, no matter how powerful, would be able to address those threats alone, he said.  The complex and multilayered threats required multidisciplinary responses.  The United Nations was well-placed to promote an integrated mix of political, developmental and capacity-building responses.

read the full document on http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sc10457.doc.htm

SANSaC Roundtable Maldives - TV Report by MNBC One

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRgAP4UDJpc

Report by Maldives National Broadcasting Cooperation, MNBC

on 1st December 2011

“Regional Collaboration is Crucial to Key Developments in Security Risks Caused by Climate Change Affects,” Vice President

Vice President Dr. Waheed, Maldives

Male' - Maldives - Vice President Dr. Mohamed Waheed has said that regional collaboration is crucial to key developments in security risks related to adverse and unusual affects caused by climate change within the South Asian region. The Vice President made this statement while speaking at “Security Implications of Climate Change” held by South Asia Network for Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) at Trader’s Hotel, this morning.

During his speech, the Vice President stated that the adverse affects of climate change is a threat not only to the individual country, but contributively to the whole South Asian region. The Vice President further said that climate change continues to threaten the vulnerability of the Maldives and that regional cooperation was required for the survival of small island states. In particular, the Vice President emphasized on problematic areas of coastal area destruction and the limitation of fresh water and water resources faced by island nations.

Source: www.presidencymaldives.gov.mv  

Also, see official photo gallery

Roundtable in Male’ highlights implications of climate change for regional and national security, ahead of high level talks at CoP 17 in Durban

Session chaired by Mr Ahmed Shafeeq Moosa

Traders Hotel, Male', Maldives

Stories of the citizens from the disappearing islands of the Maldives, flood-affected communities in the Sundarbans of Bangladesh and the drought affected communities in the water scarce hills of Nepal, all in their own ways struggling to cope with the impacts of climate change, are increasingly permeating mainstream consciousness within those countries whose carbon intensive development over the past 100 years has been contributing to these situations. At the same time, international donors from these developed countries are creating new aid funds in an attempt to help the vulnerable cope with the impacts of climate change we are already feeling.

Members briefing the Maldivian Vice President 

With the next round of high level global climate change talks starting in Durban this week, the high profile issues for agreement are about reducing carbon emissions and – more importantly for the affected communities – how much money the developed countries, who have the main responsibility for global warming, will put on the negotiating table to help people in poorer countries cope with the consequences. But these are not the only important issues.

The delegates from Pakistan, the Maldivian Vice President

One issue that is barely acknowledged is the heightened risk of political instability and conflict related to climate change. Factors linking climate change to an increased potential for instability and conflict include water scarcity, accelerated land degradation, increased food insecurity, and indeed the management of the climate funds themselves. The meeting of the South Asian Network on Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) in Male’ on the 1st December brought together experts from the climate change and security community to initiate a much needed regional dialogue on these issues.

The roundtable was organised in collaboration with the President’s Office of the Government of the Maldives and International Alert (an international peacebuilding organisation). The event was supported by the British High Commission in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The roundtable in session

The dialogue was inaugurated by the Vice President of the Maldives, Dr. Mohamed Waheed, who will lead the Maldivian delegation to CoP 17 in Durban. SANSaC members from the Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies, the National Centre for Competence in Research in Nepal, the University of Karachi in Pakistan, the Observer Research Foundation in India and International Alert also spoke at the event. Mr. Ahmed Shafeeq Moosa, the President’s Envoy for Science and Technology, outlined the Maldivian Climate Change policy and advocacy outreach. Significantly, the event also marked the establishment of the SANSaC Secretariat in Male’, with the full support of the Maldivian Government.

At the conclusion of the event SANSaC members issued a statement outlining key issues for advocacy during the high level talks at CoP 17 in Durban.

SANSaC Male’ Statement on Climate Change and Security

The South Asia Network of Climate Change and Security, having met in Male’ on the 1st of December 2011 to discuss opportunities and challenges related to climate change and security in South Asia, offer the following views to the Parties and Governments of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Acknowledging the heightened risk of political instability and conflict related to climate change;

Noting that the factors linking climate change to an increased potential for instability and conflict include water scarcity, accelerated land degradation, increased food insecurity and the management of climate funds;

Believing that enhancing trust, cooperation and coordination amongst key South Asian stakeholders on climate change related security issues can also be a step towards greater trust and cooperation on other conflict issues;

The South Asia Network for Climate Change and Security therefore:

1. Calls on governments to facilitate ‘decentralised water diplomacy’ that involves a broader group of stakeholders at local level, and particularly across the region.

2. Calls on governments and international institutions to better understand the dynamics and diverse causal factors of climate related migration, to promote timely, peace positive governance of rural-urban and trans-boundary migration.

3. Calls on governments to take leadership on improving rural and urban food security, in particular to ensure climate sensitive food production, equitable distribution and sustainable consumption.

Members:
1. Major General Muniruzzaman, President, Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies.
2. Mr. Ahmed Shafeeq Moosa, President’s Envoy for Science and Technology, Government of the Maldives.
3. Dr. Bishnu Upreti, South Asia Regional Coordinator, National Centre for Competence in Research, Nepal.
4. Dr. Moazzam Ali Khan, Director, Institute of Environmental Studies, University of Karachi, Pakistan.
5. Ms. Lydia Powell, Head, Centre for Resources Management, Observer Research Foundation, India.
6. Mr. Johann Rebert, Country Representative, International Alert, Sri Lanka.
7. Dr. Markus Mayer, South Asia Regional Programme Manager, International Alert.

Climate, Governance and Resilience Roundtable - September 2010

Shangri-La Hotel, Kathmandu, Nepal, 3 September 2010

International Alert along with the Delegation of the European Union to Nepal hosted a dialogue on climate change, security and governance. The meeting brought together national and regional experts from Nepal and from the South Asia Network on Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) to discuss processes to tackle the dual challenge of climate change and security at regional and national levels. This meeting, part of an ongoing process to foster critical debate on addressing the climate and security risks, was the third to take place in Nepal since 2007, and the fifth in the South Asia region.

Issues Discussed:

Accepting that international processes on climate change may not be sufficient to drive progress in the South Asia region, participants explored how inter-linked issues of climate change, governance and resilience can be addressed within existing national and regional processes, the opportunities, and possible pitfalls specific to South Asia. Climate change is not a new, discrete issue. It is an overlay on existing governance and human security challenges. The challenge is to understand what this means for development. The discussion explored these issues and raised some of the main challenges to effective responses to climate change in fragile contexts:

One major challenge in this area is the lack of empirical evidence to shed light on the interactions between climate change and security at the local level. Presentations were shared by Major General Muniruzzaman from the Bangladesh Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Dr Anirban Ganguly from The Energy and Resources Institute, India, Kiran Mahajan from Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR), Nepal, and Neera Padhan Shestha from ICIMOD. These presentations[1] highlighted the nature of some of the knock-on consequences of climate impacts and climate responses at a sub-national level, and flagged some of the possible trans-boundary aspects of these risks. Given the lack of donor financial support and attention to this area of research, empirical evidence and thus understanding is thin and there is little that goes beyond assumptions, hypotheses and the posing of relevant questions. Increased research, information sharing, and dialogue on this issue is thus an urgent priority.

It’s not solely climate change but poor governance responses to climate change which can be destabilising: In the wake of the devastating floods in Pakistan and also closer to home in Nepal, community tensions have been rising. These individual events cannot definitively be attributed to man-made climate change. But to see how climate change will play out in people’s daily lives, we needn't only look to the science. Instead, we must also look to the efficacy of local dispute resolution mechanisms, the enabling environment for andolans (people’s movements) and existing dimensions of livelihood insecurity. These are amongst the background factors which must be understood to see what happens when natural phenomena interact with unjust economic systems and weak governance structures. For example, in the Nepali Terai, local dissatisfaction towards the government’s responses to floods has been mobilized by competing political parties and manipulated by criminal gangs. The destabilising factor is not the floods per se, but the marginalisation and political economy which develops around flood responses.

Climate change funding and policy can do harm: We know from over forty years of development, that ill-conceived interventions in vulnerable communities can do harm. Therefore with the uncertainties in current climate change predictions, poorly planned and un-joined up approaches could not only set back development progress, but also could in some cases increase political tensions and the risk of violent conflict. By inadvertently reducing the resilience of some communities in an attempt to address another critical challenge faced by others, climate response efforts could in and of themselves pose a threat to peace. For example, efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption through increased biofuel consumption has been linked to reduced food production, the hike in food prices in 2007 and 2008, and numerous violent clashes around the world. Similar challenges will arise when handling conflicting interests like the promotion of renewable energy through hydropower versus forest preservation and the rights of forest communities in India. Sufficient understanding of the knock-on consequences of any course of action is required to ensure these paths do not fuel violence or instability.

Whilst inappropriate responses to can increase the risk of conflict, positive responses to climate change can promote peace and cooperation. In Khabre, Nepal, in the absence of government assistance, endemic water scarcity was addressed through positive community management. Accepting that individual responses would not suffice, the local community coordinated a collective response by getting together to dig new wells for community use according to a community managed rota. Anecdotal evidence from the Terai also points to responses to climate change promoting tolerance and cooperation across a political manufactured ethnic divide. Growing tensions between Madhesi (people from the plains) and ‘Pahari’ (hill people) communities (which was being fuelled by political parties in the lead up to the 2008 elections) abated following the 2008 floods. The Madhesis felt that it was the financial assistance from the Pahari community from across Nepal rather than the Madhesi political party representatives - whom the Madhesi’s of the Terai had just elected into government – that helped them cope with the flood impacts. Positive responses to climate change have the potential to build social cohesion, peace and resilience. Where the government plays a positive role, this provides an opportunity to rebuild a potentially weak social contract between citizens and the state.

As well as knowledge gaps around these issues, there is also weak institutional capacity to address them in the relevant institutions. Science may not be able to tell us exactly what to do, but in the meantime, institutions need to be able to adapt and be flexible to variability and uncertainty. Social exclusion, weak governance and the ability of elite groups to capture resources intended for supporting adaptation to climate change are also significant obstacles to peaceful responses to climate risks. Many issues such as migration and river management cross state borders and cannot be dealt with at the state level alone. Yet South Asia lacks strong political leadership at a regional level to ensure effective use of resources and integrated approaches. These issues need to be met with appropriate institutional capacity – within donors, implementating agencies and local and national government, along with enhanced scope and capacity for regional analysis of trans-boundary issues and cross-border sharing of knowledge and experiences.

Conclusion:

Climate change will not affect communities in a political and economic vacuum. Policy responses need to look beyond the specific environmental impacts, to also address the broader context of failures of governance. The challenge then is to identify the gaps and weak points in key institutions, mechanisms and processes responsible within fragile states and explore how to reform, reinforce or create them such that they can deal with changes in a peaceful manner, in spite of climate variability.

The discussion raised some important questions for further thought:

- How does climate change, variability and uncertainty affect governance and security at all levels?

- How do we ensure climate adaptation policies and financing mechanisms do no harm in fragile contexts?

- How can we avoid climate financing becoming a new resource for elite capture?

- How can we maximise the potential for climate responses to build social cohesion and peace?

Responses to these questions are critical to promote understanding of the complex inter-linkages between climate change and security implications and to address these links through appropriate policy response in South Asia.

The starting point is the strong and urgent need for support to promote:

Localised research at the sub-national level in the region,

Dialogue and capacity building to strengthen the knowledge and capacities of national governments and responsible institutions in the region,

Improved knowledge sharing across borders around current best practice and lessons learned.

Security and Resilience Roundtable, Kathmandu, 3^rd September 2010: Participant’s list

Name	Organisation
Ajaya Dixit	Director, ISET-Nepal
Anil Pokrel	Consultant, ADB
Anirban Ganguly	SANSaC Representative: Heads of Forestry and Biodiversity Area under the Climate Change Division in TERI
Batu Krishna Upreti,	Joint Secretary, Climate Change Management Division, Ministry of Environment
Berend de Groot	Director Programme Operations, ICIMOD
Bhasker Kafle	International Alert
Chandini Thapa	International Alert
Deependra Joshi	Equal Access, Country Director
Giap Dang	Cooperation Head, EU Delegation to Nepal
Janani Vivekananda	International Alert
Jaypal Shrestha	Regional Environmental Affairs Specialist, Embassy of the United States of America
Kiran Maharjan	SANSaC Representative: Swiss National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR)
Laura Seraydarian	ISET
Major General Muniruzzaman	SANSaC Representative: Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies
Marcus Moench	Director, ISET
Neera Shrestha Pradhan	Hazard and Community Adaptation Specialist, ICIMOD
Purushottam Ghimire	Joint Secretary, Country Director – NAPA, Ministry of Environment
Ranjan Shrestha	EU Delegation to Nepal
Rebecca Crozier	Country Manager, International Alert
Sadhana Ghimire Bhetuwal	International Alert
Simon Lucas	Climate Change and Inclusive Growth Adviser, DFID Nepal
Sylvia Lee	The World Bank Nepal Country Office
Vijay Khadgi	Network Officer, ICIMOD

Climate and Security Roundtable: Summary of Discussion

Delhi 6th August 2010, 13.00 – 15.00

Chair: Fergus Auld, UK Cross-Government Climate Change and Energy Unit, India

 International Alert convened a roundtable meeting, kindly hosted by the British High Commission in New Delhi, with the generous support of the EU, to generate a critical discussion on the inter-linkages between climate change and conflict in South Asia and to identify the institutional and governance level knowledge and capacity gaps to promote effective responses to these risks.

The meeting was an opportunity to take forward discussion in India on the relationship between climate change, resilience and security. Bringing together institutional representatives and civil society experts, the discussion addressed the complexities of responding to climate change in conflict-affected contexts in South Asia and the institutional responses to dealing with such risks. In particular, the group explored:

Where human (and indeed state) security should fit into the climate change policy discussion?
What the link between climate change and violent conflict means for development policy?
The specific issues to be addressed in fragile communities.
4.       The best ways to move the debate with not only the necessary sense of urgency but also awareness of the depth and breadth of the issues and the appropriate policy responses.

Background:

As more people become aware of and motivated by the links between climate change, conflict, peace and security, both the possibility of and the necessity for clarity about these links increases. Regardless of the scarcity of data, the climate change and security dialogue is moving ahead and shaping thinking and policy as it goes. Alongside this is concern from some quarters about the so-called ‘securitisation’ of climate change. A pragmatic response to this means ensuring the climate change and security dialogue is as informed as it can be by appropriate actors keying into the dialogue to embed sustainable development and peacebuilding priorities into the core of the debate.

Key issues discussed:

·         What is the value of the climate change and security discourse? Is it a distraction from adaptation and mitigation priorities?

There are three particular risks in the climate change and security nexus:

i)         Just as security fears can mobilise people and change, sensationalist scenarios demobilise, especially when they turn out not to justified by the evidence.

ii)       Treating conflict and security issues as if they will produce direct threats from one country against another, or even one group against another, which is the language of military security will distort the debate and the policy response; at worst, the response will be inappropriate and wasteful.

iii)      Basing the argument on an over-simplified linkage could generate policies that miss their targets in other ways and simply lead to confusion and uncertainty about what the problem is and why anyone should care.

Yet the discourse exists and will continue to move in some cases with more policy leverage than the adaptation or ‘common but differential responsibility’ for mitigation discourse. As such, the three risks above notwithstanding, engaging in the security discourse is a vehicle for getting critical development and governance concerns to the policy table.

·         What is the nature of the causal link between climate change and security?

Policy cannot and should not be based on a straightforward cause-and-effect relationship between climate change and violent conflict or political instability. There is a lack of research findings on the topic and what there is does not offer robust conclusions. And there are good reasons for this: namely that causality is always complex. Armed conflicts not only have several different causes but several different types of causes. These are often conflated, blurring the differences between background or root causes, the immediate trigger, the role of the external actors etc. The fact is that simple cause-and-effect is rarely if ever enough to explain the origins of a conflict.

Given this lack of clear causal link, the sparse research literature on climate change and security contains some that declares that no link can be proven. But the fact that no link can be proven is not the same as saying none exists. A real limitation of studies so far is that they work by reflection on the past – whereas the key point to understand about climate change is that the future will be different from the past.

Perhaps the largest security risk of climate change is the most preventable one. That is the risk that climate change policy itself will be the most destabilising factor in fragile communities. The reasons are three-fold:

i)         New financing mechanism on climate change strive towards ‘national ownership’, but where the state government is an actor in the conflict and is party to structural exclusion and marginalisation, this essentially provides an additional ‘point resource’ for elite capture and for the perpetuation of existing systems of exclusion and inequity.

ii)       Lack of adequate consideration of the knock-on consequences on interventions to address climate change can have inadvertent negative consequences which could stoke instability. The rapid switch from food to fuel crops in the ill-informed bio-fuels experiment which lead to global riots in 2008 is a case in point. There are many more trip wires of unintended consequences in the path low carbon development which need to be understood from a conflict sensitivity perspective, particularly around REDD and hydro.

iii)      Any action involves a trade-off and creates new winners and losers. A shift in priority to narrow and technical adaptation or mitigation responses will entail others issues – perhaps basic services such as health or education – being pushed down the agenda. In already fragile communities where governance is weak and basic service delivery is poor, such a shift could rupture an already weak social contract between citizens and the state.

·         How to address the lack of empirical evidence?

The evidence base for climate and security interlinkages is necessarily weak; there has been too little time since the effects of climate change began to receive adequate attention for research data to have accumulated of the kind needed for large-scale quantitative studies that can reliably depict trends. Further, the state of knowledge in the natural sciences does not let us attribute specific events such as flood or drought to climate change, nor does it offer any policy relevant predictions of impacts at the regional level. As such, there is a case for turning instead to case studies. While limited in their generalisability, developing a broad geographic spread of case study evidence which drill deep down to understand community level perhaps offers the best solution to the knowledge gap in the interim.

Conclusions:

There was strong consensus that the solution to the risk of climate change policy itself becoming a security threat is linking dialogues. This entails much more local level research into climate change and security links and risk transmission pathways (such as rural-urban migration, food insecurity, service delivery failure), addressing governance capacity constraints to ‘joined-up’ programming, and advocacy to move the debate beyond concerns that the security dialogue will hijack the climate change dialogue, and instead to bring the dialogues together.

Next steps:

Interested parties are to remain part of an ongoing dialogue process in India, and also to link into the regional climate change and security dialogue. Specific aims of this dialogue process would be to bring development and human security concerns, lessons and good practice to the heart of the climate change and security debate. Alert is happy to facilitate the dialogue. ORF have offered to host the next meeting. In the meantime, all participants are welcome to share resources through the South Asia Network on Security and Climate Change web-space (www.sansac.org).



List of participants:

1.       Ranu Sinha, Operations Analyst, Water Resource Management, World Bank
2.       Samir Saran, Senior Fellow and Vice President, Observer Research Foundation
3.       Rob Donkers, Environment Minister Counsellor, EU delegation India

4.       Mansie Kumar, EU Delegation India

5.       Uttam Sinha, IDSA

6.       Gitanjali Nandan, First Secretary, Australian High Commission

7.       L Vijayanathan, Senior Adviser, Environment, Climate and Energy, Norwegian Embassy

8.       Karolina Hedström, Regional Crisis Response Planner - South Asia, EU India

9.       Deepti Mahajan, Research Associate, Resources and Global Security,Teri

10.   Fergus Auld, First Secretary Climate Change and Energy, DfID India/British High Commission

11.   Clare Shakya, Senior Regional Climate Change and Water Adviser - Asia, DfID India

12.   Janani Vivekananda, Climate Change and Security Adviser, International Alert

Climate Funding: Creating a Climate for Conflict? Insights from Nepal

by Janani Vivekananda 

During a recent field trip to mid-monsoon Nepal, stories of floods affecting vulnerable communities across the country dominated the daily headlines. At the same time, international donors are pouring in funds in an attempt to help the vulnerable cope with the impacts of climate change we are already feeling. Last week, the Adaptation Fund, a fund set up by the UN to help poor countries cope with the impact of climate change, has became operational. But are these funds helping – or are they contributing to the problem?

With less than two months to go until the next global summit on climate change in Mexico, the issues for agreement are about reducing carbon emissions and – more importantly for poor countries - how much money the developed countries, who have the main responsibility for global warming, will put on the negotiating table to help people in poorer countries cope with the consequences. But these are not the only important issues.

One issue that is barely acknowledged is the heightened risk of political instability and conflict related to climate change. Factors linking climate change to an increased potential for instability and conflict include water scarcity, accelerated land degradation, decreased food production, and indeed the management of the climate funds themselves.

The risk will be greatest where governance is weak. Nobody will dispute that this is the case in Nepal. 

‘A Climate of Conflict’, a report by International Alert, estimates that just under three billion people live in 56 conflict-affected countries, where climate change could increase the risk of political instability. Nepal is one of the 56 at risk.

Climate policy makers, however, are largely silent on the matter. International Alert’s latest research finds that new funds, already coming into the country’s coffers with more still in the pipeline, could make the situation worse if they don’t take account of the complex linkages between environmental change, security and governance.

What should inform climate responses?
Responses to climate change have to respond to the political and social realities of fragile contexts such as Nepal or they will not work.

Climate change is not only a climate issue. Climate change will affect political stability, development, government, equity, trade and the national economy. And these issues all affect the ability of people and the governments to respond constructively to the challenges climate change generates. The problems are interlinked, so the responses must be too.

At a meeting of the South Asia Network on Security and Climate Change (SANSaC) co-hosted by International Alert and the EU on 3^rd September, SANSaC recommended that in post-conflict situations like Nepal, adaptation strategies should address the broader dimensions of community resilience.

Resilience is multi-dimensional. Adaptation strategies should be defined not only by the nature of the natural hazard that is faced, but also on the basis of understanding the systems of governance and power. This must involve a deep understanding of the local context, and avoid pitting groups against each other. They must also address broader risks to resilience such as security. For example, a new Government of Nepal pilot project to address energy security and reduce deforestation through promotion of biogas plants is being rolled out in nine districts. The switch to biogas aims to curb deforestation for fuel wood thereby decreasing risks of soil erosion and landslides. But the pilot implementation was halted in three districts - Saptari, Udayapur and Siraha - due to the security situation in those places. Such decisions leave these communities doubly vulnerable: to the lack of sustainable energy sources, and to pre-exisitng insecurity.

Who are the ‘most vulnerable’? Donors often speak about targeting the ‘poorest and most marginalised’ but base their programming on a generalised conception of who these people are. Speak to people in the villages and they’ll tell you. ‘A poor person is a poor person, regardless of whether he is Brahmin or Janjati. Ethnicity is a political construct. The local context is socially and culturally complex. It is social and cultural factors that determine economic activity – not ethnicity’ a local from Sunsari explained. ‘It’s not so simple that because you are a Brahmin you have all the resources and rights, and because you are a janjati you don’t’. Local organisations must understand the local reality and they must make central governments and international actors aware of this complex reality.

A further problem already giving rise to local community level grievances is a culture of dependence on funds. ‘Everyone’s happy to get funds from donors but when they run out of donor funding, they come back to local government’ stated a local municipality employee in Dhankuta. This dependence on donor assistance usurps local authorities’ roles and responsibilities and undermines the social contract between communities and local government. This relationship between government and the governed is already fraught and may not be able to take the strain of well intended but ill-advised interventions.

Likewise, peace and reconstruction efforts need to be climate-proofed by paying attention to the availability of resources for livelihoods such as agriculture or returning ex-combatants or people displaced by conflict. These could be under pressure because of climate change. For example, possible future plans to reintegrate ex-combatants from cantonments into villages where they may hope to make a living from agriculture could cause and face future problems. Farmers struggling with changing rainfall patterns and only getting one harvest per year rather than two are seeing their rice yields falling. The prospect arises of returned fighters becoming resentful unemployed farmers, and thus potential recruits, with their combat experience, in instability.

More broadly, direct access to large-scale adaptation funding combined with low capacity and high corruption within government will limit the ability effective use. It is highly likely that funds will be diverted into the hands and pockets of one faction or another in the political elite. With public awareness of these funds coming in, people’s expectations for support - for example compensation for flood victims - are rising, and where they are not met, we are likely to see an increase in protests and political instability. In Nepal’s Koshi basin, recent experience shows that community protests are easily hijacked by political and criminal gangs who promote violence for their own ends. Misuse of funds may thus be the primary factor exacerbating instability. 

If responses to climate change take account of the broad dimensions of what makes people resilient – not just drought-resistant crops and embankments to protect them from floods - but also the interlinked factors of livelihoods options, good infrastructure, social inclusion and effective governance, there’s a good chance that responses to climate change could yield a double dividend: increasing resilience to both climate change and conflict.

Failure to take account of the linkages however could result in the billions of dollars of funding for adaptation actually becoming part of the problem.

______________________

Janani Vivekananda is a senior advisor on climate change and security at international peacebuilding organisation International Alert.

South Asia Network For Security And Climate Change - SANSaC

SANSaC Meeting in Dhaka, March 2010

‘Climate change is already adding to the burdens that developing countries have to face. Its impact is hardest on the poorest and most vulnerable members of society…Their vulnerability is shaped not only by the persistence of poverty, the lack of good infrastructure, the difficulty of getting a foothold in the world market, and thus the intractability of underdevelopment, but also by the fragility of state institutions, the instability of political arrangements, and the effects of recent armed conflict or threat of looming violence. In many, as climate change interacts with other features of their social, economic and political landscape, there is a high risk of political instability and violent conflict’.
[Extract from ‘Climate Change, Conflict and Fragility’, International Alert, 2009] 

Security implications of climate change are a very real but relatively unexplored issue worldwide and in the region. An expert roundtable meeting on the 28^th/29^th March 2010 brought together experts of Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to have regional exchanges on climate security in South Asia. The roundtable was organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS), the Regional Center for Security Studies (RCSS) and Peace-building and Development Institute (PDI) based in Sri Lanka, and International Alert, a UK based NGO. This event created significant space for a critical discussion on the interlinkages between climate change and conflict in South Asia.

Water issues, large scale movements of climate refugees, including cross border migration, loss of people’s livelihood and food security, and an increase in urban-rural tensions over resource utilization were identified as the major conflict issues in South Asia. Two states, the Maldives and Bangladesh, are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of the phenomenon. There is therefore a measure of urgency that requires concerted action as fast as possible. This need to be addressed with unified approaches, which means

1)       stronger regional understanding of potential social and conflict impacts of climate change, and

2)       regional cooperation to build up the resilience of state institutions and civil society.

The network identified the following key issues to be addressed:

•      Regional approach – emphasising regional approaches for addressing climate-related conflicts in South Asia through establishing platforms for exchange, sharing and concerted action. There is also a need for better multi-lateral cooperation in managing water resources (e.g. trans-boundary river systems)


•      Define/refine policy responses – All responses must reflect the expressed needs of the people, involve them in consultation, take account of power distribution and social order, and avoid pitting groups against each other. At the same time they must be integrated with overall development strategies.


•      Shift climate change investment priorities – more research to address knowledge gaps and better understand conflict related challenges of climate change impact in South Asia and peacebuilding related opportunities in adaptation strategies. Explore also private sector support.


•      Devise a responsive institutional framework – with appropriate human capacity and institutional collaboration, integrating and going beyond sectoral approaches.


•      State responses – more than adaptation, there is a need to strengthen capacities for resilience to cope with climate change induced crisis situation. Development needs have to be climate proof but similarly climate change needs have to be addressed in a conflict sensitive manner


•      Improve communication – ensure information flow to citizens and key sectoral stakeholders. An improvement in sharing and learning across sectors and between states will improve efficiency, but also conflict sensitivity, of climate change response policies and programs. Steps must be taken to strengthen social capacity to understand and manage climate and conflict risks. This means communicating the knowledge available on the issue in an open and honest manner to enable understanding and response.

Collaborators & Supporters

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