 The fourth panel of the CSD Conference 2021, Climate Change and Conflict, Unequal Realities at the Forefront. My name is Gisem Yertsevin and I am a master's student in Conflict Security and Development in the War Studies Department. I also have a bachelor's degree in International Relations from the University of Geneva. My research interests lie in peacekeeping and peacebuilding as well as power sharing in post-conflict societies and of course the link between climate change and conflict. I have the pleasure to moderate this wonderful panel today in which we will discuss the link between climate change and conflict as well as inequality. This relationship has been highly debated among researchers and policy makers alike. At times it has led to an oversimplification of potential conflict causes by the media and others. The extent to which inequality of climate change impacts plays a role in exacerbating existing conflict or possibly lead to future conflicts will be a central topic of discussion today. And before I introduce the wonderful panelists that we have on board today, I would like to remind everyone that the session is being recorded and will be shared after the conference. You can interact with the conference through our social media by using the hashtag CSDC 2021. I'd like to ask the audience to think of questions to ask our panelists and you don't have to wait until the end but can ask them in the Q&A box as we go. The questions will be answered after the panelists' initial comments. Now our first panelist is Janani Vivekananda. Janani is the head of climate security and diplomacy at Adelphi where she leads research and programming on climate change, peacebuilding and security. With over 15 years of experience on these issues with a particular focus on South Asia and Africa, her interests lie in understanding the complexities of climate change and conflict related risks on a local level and feeding these into policy work. She is widely published as well as being a lead author of the 2015 flagship report, A New Climate for Peace and the co-author of the seminal 2007 study, A Climate of Conflict, The Links Between Climate Change, Peace and War. Our second speaker is Professor Jeff DeBelko who is Professor and Associate Dean in the Vojnavic School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University. He's a senior advisor to the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center where he was director until 2012. His current research focuses on environmental peacebuilding and the conflict potential of climate change mitigation and adaptation. He is a lead author of the Human Security Chapter in the IPCC's fifth assessment and is a member of the UN Environment Programs Expert Advisory Group on Environment, Conflict and Peacebuilding. He is also widely published and has co-edited the book Environmental Peacemaking and Green Planet Blues, Critical Perspectives on Global Environmental Politics. Our third panelist is Dr Aisha Siddiqui who's a lecturer at the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on disasters in post-colonial contexts in conflict affected areas. She has worked for the International Development Select Committee at the UK's Houses of Parliament. She published for the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and for various think tanks such as the Overseas Development Institute. Her book In the Wake of Disasters, Islamists, the State and the Social Contract in Pakistan was published in 2019. Most recently, she's examined flooding in Pakistan, typhoons in the Philippines, and floods and landslides in Colombia. Last but certainly not least, we have Catherine Mung on board. She is a policy specialist for climate and security risk with UNDP's Conflict Prevention and Climate Change Teams and UNDP's focal point for UN climate security mechanisms. She has served in various capacities with the UN on Climate Change, Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability at both headquarters and in the field. I'm very excited to hear all your thoughts on the central theme of inequality in relation to climate change and conflict in your initial remarks and before we open up to a discussion and answer questions from the audience. So without further ado, let's start with Dhanani. Thanks so much, Gizem. Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for having me. I'm really delighted to be part of this, such a great panel and this really great seminar. So in my seven minutes, I'd like to address the question of why it's so important that we understand inequality as a central theme of climate change and conflict. And based on this understanding, what we can actually do to better address inequality in our responses to climate security risks. So climate change impacts are felt by everyone, but they're not felt by everyone equally. These impacts, things like drought, more intense rainfall and storms, soil erosion, and the degradation of the marine environment, these kind of biophysical impacts can lead to human impacts, things like famine, loss of land, loss of livelihoods, and things like cultural gender norms and power dynamics between different identity groups, shape, how women, men, boys, and girls of different socioeconomic, religious, political backgrounds experience and can cope with these climate impacts in different ways. And we can see that based on these capacities, due in part to these cultural norms, the assets that different people, different groups have available, their social networks, the power dynamics that they're subject to, based on these, you can see that these, that climate impacts have disproportionate impacts on certain groups over others, specifically on the elderly, women and girls, the poor, vulnerable, and already marginalized populations. So there's growing evidence to support this, that poorer countries or indeed individuals are more negatively affected by climate change, either because they lack the resources to be able to adapt. For example, they can't afford household insurance or they just can't jump in a car and move as you might be able to if you had some assets, or because they tend to live in more fragile and climate vulnerable regions, more kind of structural causes, in these kind of places where additional warming can be detrimental to both their productivity and also to stability. Now this is happening in the context of global inequality, at least between countries actually decreasing over the past few decades, not counting COVID effects, I guess this is changing things somewhat. But if we look at the trend over the past few decades, global inequality is decreasing, particularly due to the rapid economic growth of places like India and China. But climate change is reversing that trend. And this is not just something that's happening only now or is protected for the future. There's evidence that this has been happening since the 1960s. So we're kind of, we're locked into something that we really need to proactively shift out of. So essentially, we have a situation where at individual community and national level, climate change compounds and is looking to lock in pre-existing inequalities. Now many of these contexts most affected by climate change are also already experiencing fragility and conflict. In part because of factors linked to inequality, things like political exclusion, marginalization, and inequitable power structures. To put it in numbers, over 70% of the most climate vulnerable countries are on the list of most fragile states. And these climate impacts that I've just set out through various pathways, including by compounding inequalities can increase the risks to peace and security, potentially exacerbating societal and state fragility and fueling conflict. People in these contexts that are thus facing this double vulnerability of climate change and conflict. Now this means that any efforts to address climate change and climate related security risks need to be based on a thorough understanding of how inequality, security, and climate risks come together, how they're inextricably linked. This means looking at or taking an intersectional approach, understanding how different people are affected differently. Gender is a part of this, but it's critical to understand gender in terms of kind of a broader meaningful intersectional approach, looking at not just women but men, women, boys, and girls, and in the context of various other markers such as age, religion, and background. Because simply having a gender lens as a narrow as women really does miss some of the complexity. In northern Nigeria, for example, norms of masculinity such as the male, perceived male need to protect family wealth, and the need for men to play or young men boys to pay a bride price in order to get married, thereby being able to progress from boyhood to manhood. These abilities are being stressed by climate impacts, compounding people's livelihood and security. This is intensifying into communal conflicts between different identity groups between farmers and pastoralists, et cetera, and motivating young men to join armed groups such as Boko Haram, which offer loans so that these kind of norms of masculinity can be met in the face of climate stresses. In Chad, another example, everyday violence against women and girls creates economic stress and really undermines households and communities, capacities to adapt to environmental change. The economic insecurity that people are facing exacerbated by climate change, since most people's livelihoods are tied to the natural environment, to rainfall, or natural resources such as land. This is making young girls more vulnerable to early marriage and young women more likely to enlist in also joining armed groups. It also drives male migration within and outside the region, which is also exposing young men to greater risk. So it's really important to understand the implications of these things in a really intersectional approach. And by not looking at the differential ways in which different people are affected differently, that is to say by not taking this intersectional approach to climate security analysis, we really run the risk of potentially entrenching pre-existing inequitable norms around gender and other ethno-religious markers. And I think this is something you might hear more about from my esteemed colleague, Jeff DeBalco in his input. So why is this so important? Well, because the goals of peace, climate action, and equality are not just interlinked, they're mutually reinforcing. Understanding gender in these broader intersectional dimensions of climate related security risks are not only key to avoiding the exacerbation of vulnerabilities and increasing the risks of violence, but also to identify new entry points for advancing equality, gender equality, improving climate resilience and also sustaining peace. So if that's what we need to do, what do we actually, how do we go about this? We need to take action, we need the steps and tools to be able to ensure that climate action is conflict and gender sensitive or is able to take this inclusive intersectional approach. And if we can do this, then we can support policymakers, development practitioners, and donors to ensure that their investments do no harm by existing reliance to climate, or to ensure that climate security risk responses have impact and that they're actually sustainable in the face of climate change. The first step towards this is an integrated climate security analysis approach, like applying a lens or an analytical approach that helps us understand all these interdimensional risks. It essentially means taking a 360 degree look at the issue. So climate impacts, they're not taking place in a vacuum, they occur against this backdrop of pre-existing dimensions of inequality of societal, political, economic stresses. And so we need an approach that helps us understand those and understand these power dynamics, gender dynamics and societal norms that are the kind of structural drivers of inequality and understand how these then interact with climates and insecurity. So this means two things. One, we have to really understand the broader context in which these climate risks play out, climate security risks play out. And the second is we need to understand this interaction between climate change and these contextual factors. And just to end, the three things we really need to note here is when we do this, when we try to operationalize this, it's important that this has to happen at the most local level possible by local experts within the communities we're looking at. We also need to analyze the interactions, not just overlay kind of inequality and climate and conflict on top of each other and see where they coincide. It makes nice maps, but it doesn't tell us anything about the whys and what we then need to do to respond or what communities can do to respond. We need to look at who is affected and how. And so move beyond the where and how many questions. And the third thing is we need to not just look at the past, we also need to be able to do this in a forward-looking way. And this is where we really need to be able to bring in climate impact data. We need to look at climate models and scenarios to help us see what the future looks like because climate impacts are happening so quickly that the future just isn't a good enough indicator of the past. So we need to better include kind of climate models to help us to help better inform policies and processes around inequality and peace and security programming. So it's clear that the impacts of climate change have a broad range of impacts on peace and security. It's also clear that these impacts fall across all different sectoral mandates. This means it's relevant not just for climate change actors, not just for peace and security actors. It's also something for development and humanitarian and foreign policy and defence actors. And I think there's scope for all of these sectors within their remits to do something towards enhancing kind of better acknowledgement of inequality within climate security, risk analysis and programming. And I think with better awareness and better analysis within each sector, we can hopefully move away from siloed thinking and also get moved towards this more kind of systematic approach to this integrated risk assessment approach. I'll leave it there and I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Thank you so much, Janani. That was a wonderful introduction to the topic and we'll move to Jeff next. Terrific. Well, it was indeed an excellent presentation as Janani's presentations always are. So it's a delight to be following her, although always a tough act to follow. But in many respects, I'll take a piece of what Janani raised and focus on a particular dimension that ties into quite directly the justice considerations that the organisers are to be applauded for having that heavy emphasis on inequality and justice. I can say as somebody's been at this topic for quite a while, whether it's climate security, broader environment security, that hasn't always been the case and that has been a neglected area, I think to the detriment obviously of the people who are on the losing side of that, but to the field of making the progress that we need to make. And so it's critically important that it's part of the discussion as it is. And in fact, I think maybe because I have been at it for a while on this topic, I'd like to remind myself and remind others that when we started in earnest after the Cold War ended in the early 90s, environment security really didn't have space for climate change as part of this climate and security discussion. It was seen as too long term, too diffuse, didn't raise, didn't kind of contribute directly to dynamics that raised the level of conflict that was the focus. So it was kind of pushed to the side. Part of the problem then and arguably now is that our definition of conflict was very narrow and in some cases continues to be narrow, focused on really important topics, but heavily still on the intentionality, the large, large organized forces engaging death at the end of a gun, lots of battle deaths on a traditional battlefield. And that I think comes with some of the biases of political science and international relations that has a lot of people focusing on this. That's where we have studied historically, but it really misses the much wider agenda that this demands, these topics demand. And kind of with that focus on the higher levels of violence, more organized types of violence, it really missed the larger human security considerations, the smaller sea conflict questions that weren't necessarily as organized, didn't necessarily have the big battle deaths, they're easy to count, sometimes could be hugely impactful with the killing of one, where we're now spending more time, I think wisely, understanding that environmental defenders and the targeted assassination of individuals is part of this discussion that has historically not been and is kind of on us for not having prioritized those folks who are often standing up to much more powerful actors. So this climate conflict peacebuilding is much more than that narrow construction, but that history I think is important to know where we need to go, where we've been and what we haven't done. But so 0607 climate really became the environment security discussion, sometimes maybe even the exclusion of some of those environment natural resource and conflict, I think we're, we need to walk and chew gum at the same time and understand that it's not just one or the other. In fact, they're inextricably linked when we bring climate change down to specific places. But I wanted to flag a piece of what Janani laid out, these backdraft dynamics that probably about 10 years ago, quite a number of folks started adding, I'd say, to the climate security discussion and saying, you know, this initial focus on what the climate dynamics are, yeah, the climate dynamics are and the immediate responses say displacement of people, that those kind of immediate knock on effects of those climate impacts, how they might factor into conflict, there was a lot of attention there. But there wasn't a lot of attention, if any, being paid to how, when we do respond to climate through mitigation through adaptation, how those actions could themselves create new conflicts or factor into existing lines of tension. And so these backdraft dynamics were ones that in some ways then and still now, you could classify as in part a deductive argument where the evidence base is not where you'd like it to be, in part because we haven't been very serious about responding to climate change, right? We haven't been tremendously aggressive on mitigating climate or certainly the kind of delayed response and adapting to it. And so in that respect, we have some areas of this kind of set of questions that where we do have some evidence and others where it's again, back to why it's important to pay attention to our history of environment conservation, natural resource management, peace and conflict, that we have some analogous histories that weren't driven first and foremost under a climate frame, but are some of the same dynamics that show us that these can be done well or they can be done poorly. And if they're done poorly, then they can lead to conflict context and certainly a question of justice. So with the hope of helping our practitioners from the top down and the bottom up, so to speak, going into these big, big changes that come with a transition away from carbon, go in with our eyes open and understand that there will be winners and losers. It won't just all be winners if and when we make this transition, but we need to do it in ways that reduces conflict that it could potentially create. And in part, we do that by maximizing the justice and making that a just transition as well as a peaceful transition. A few examples in a kind of our opening set of interventions, it's very encouraging that the price of solar is going down, but it requires lots of land. These aren't empty places that the solar is going to and is occupying. And we know again from analogous, there's plenty of history is replete with conflict over land and competing uses for it. So why should we think that that will be immune to some of those dynamics? Again, it's very promising. It's a direction so we need to move in terms of renewable energy, but let's do it understanding that these are challenges. Solar, wind, EVs, they all still have plenty of mineral inputs, dirty mineral inputs that have a host of justice issues surrounding their extraction and processing. So we need to again know that those inputs, just like the fossil fuel based economy has all sorts of those point of extraction, environmental and social injustices and really damaging situations. So too will we in this green transition. Biofuels, we do have evidence where do have some cases where trying to do right by diversifying transportation fuel sources and moving on to renewables has a heavy cost in the kind of alternative use of that land for food, for the kind of land tenure, deforestation, particularly of kind of rich tropical forests and such. So these are ones again where these unintended effects of trying to do right by climate have to be part of this discussion because if they don't, we've seen that they'll be problematic in ways that really are central to questions of conflict and justice. Hydro power, large infrastructure displaces millions of people, important kind of alternative to the end of the gun in terms of why these things are still important. And it may be as we've seen some of the most prominent environmental defenders who have been killed by the end of the gun have been protesting large water infrastructure projects. And so that's something that we again want to make these transitions away from fossil fuels, but have to understand that on the mitigation side, there are all sorts of sorts of issues. I would add one more on the mitigation side that the red plus schemes, I mean, tremendously powerful tool payment for ecosystem services, putting value on forests as sequestration. At the same time, it's about changing access to resources and money. So it can be done well, and it can be done poorly. And the governance variable there is the one to really and participation and kind of taking a justice lens on how those can make sure all are benefiting from that approach and not just differentially. On the adaptation, adaptation for whom a lot of the conversation about just transition, I think this fits well within that wealthy can adapt, but at the expense of the poor in many instances. And we need to understand this as part of our climate and security discussion. I would even say dynamics like land grabbing could be perceived as a rational adaptation or maladaptation to dynamics associated with climate change if you're water poor but wealthy. And in that sense, a really pernicious form of maladaptation because it's rife with local injustice in terms of whose land for producing food for whom. So flagging these kinds of examples where again, where some cases we have evidence in some cases, it's more of a deductive argument. But we're doing that not to make it more difficult to make a transition. And it's certainly been something I've been asked when I kind of raised these unwelcome considerations, not trying to make it harder to make the necessary transitions around climate, but raising these questions about the potential pitfalls of doing it so that we can minimize the conflict and try to maximize the justice in navigating it. And so I think it's really important to be clear about the necessity of making these changes. But they're ones that are really big and transformative changes. And so understanding them in this conflict and justice is critically important for those who are coming at it from the conflict and peace building side and those coming at it from the climate and natural resources and conservation side. So in all of these, a focus on justice needs to be front and center. It hasn't historically. And so it's very positive that we're talking about it so centrally today. Thank you very much, Professor Diff for providing these fascinating insights on backdrop effects, which in my opinion are, you know, way talked about not much at all. And I think even in terms of when we talk about inequalities of clamp change adaptation, I think these secondary effects that you're focusing on, they are often forgotten or not even, it's not even an afterthought. It's not even a thought at all, which surely we'll talk about some more in the Q&A. I'll see you next up. Hi, can you hear me all right? So thank you very much for having me on this panel to be here. I think it's really important for me to kind of situate my research within the disciplinary and the academic context within which I work. So I'm a geographer and I do ethnographic research in communities that have been affected by hazard-based disasters, like you mentioned like floods, typhoons, landslides, etc. And in these communities where I'm working, people are also often living with underlying issues of insecurity, which could include political conflict or militancy. And through framework and engaging with people on the ground, I try and understand the ways in which extreme weather events and hazards are impacting issues around security and conflict. And I think that hopefully this background provides somewhat of an understanding of my more critical perspective on this topic. So what my research has shown is that in the kind of extreme weather events and hazards that I've been studying, they do sometimes result in conflict, but not necessarily in the ways we think most obvious and most evident. In the last decade or so that I've been engaged with this issue, I've seen some kind of conflict, but that's primarily because of the policies that have been implemented to build resilience in communities to human-induced climate change. So vulnerable communities in the blue parts of the world that I've been looking at are being told that extreme weather events related to climate change are going to make the farm more dangerous. And for this reason, they're being evicted from their homes in cities like Karachi and Pakistan, so that city authorities can implement better flood risk planning. And indigenous communities in rural Columbia are being displaced so that large can make even renewable energy. And these and they are resisting the state and the institutions and whoever else. Because basically, people are telling them that they are being dispossessed now so that climate change doesn't dispossess them in the future and that obviously to them makes no sense. In my work, what I haven't seen so far is the kind of local level or regional level fighting between different groups over more water or more food that often gets kind of talked about. So in my perspective, where and how we need to reorientate this discussion or this narrative is that firstly, we need to get a far better and a far deeper understanding of what makes people more vulnerable or more susceptible to extreme weather events. And this is often, as we've heard other speakers of the panel say, this is a fairly kind of shared and complex set of factors. So for example, we know that local, regional, even national governments really like relocating people and they often do it quite forcefully because these people are supposedly living in areas that are considered high risk or high hazard or whatever. And while this may seem like a fairly kind of straightforward solution to this main problem of extreme weather event, but actually social researchers far more accomplished and better than me at this work have shown that such interventions are really quite problematic because instead of reducing people's vulnerability and increasing their resilience, when you remove people from the social networks and the kinship networks that they are part of, this actually drastically reduces their vulnerability and their ability to be able to go with extreme hazards or extreme climate events. And the second thing that we really need to do much better is we need to get a much better understanding of the way in which a climate or a weather related disaster is not really an event. It's a far kind of longer term social process and it's rooted within this history of colonial exploitation, post-colonial state building and neoliberal expansion. Because when you see the story of vulnerability of indigenous people, for example, it doesn't really begin with the most recent environmental or climate related hazard, but it goes back quite a few hundred years, say to the European imperial expansion and the implementation of alien land management policies so that they can better control these autonomous areas. And so within that kind of historically rooted temporal understanding, climate stops being or rather not climate, but people who are resisting that kind of exploitation, they stop being just insurgents or just rebels or whatever and they become just one more form of resistance to this kind of wider forms of exploitation and expansion taking place in these regions. So there are very evident ways where when you begin to root this, the climate event within that broader history, actually you see that very direct link between climate and conflict breaks. It's a much much history of social processes and exploitation. And the last point that I want to make because I think it's really such an important one is that of course there is a policy bias towards having this as a very urgent, very simplistic and often even alarmist account of climate directly linked to conflict in these kinds of ways. And of course we can understand why there is that kind of bias because it enables a certain kind of securitization to take place and for a particular kinds of interventions to be implemented. But I see my job as a social researcher as one that challenges that narrative and that kind of picks apart some of the complexities that we don't really do justice to when we try and go those kinds of things. Thank you so much Ayesha for providing this historical background and this reinsertion of climate change and climate change resilience into the wider historical and social context. I think that's very important to understand the link between these inequalities and climate change and conflict. Now last but not least, Catherine please. Thanks so much Kizama and a big thank you to the organizers for putting together this session. It's a pleasure to have the chance to share some insights and a perspective from the UN and UNDP in particular and also share the panel with Janani, Jeff and Ayesha as well. I think there's been a lot of discussion recently on the triple threat of climate change, natural loss and pollution and as the other speakers have already mentioned just now as well we are obviously not just talking about matters of environmental nature and I think the emphasis here on equality is important particularly with the compounding effects on equality and then of these phenomena themselves but then also how we respond to them. If we look at the work for example of the intergovernmental panel, intergovernmental science and policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services, the 2018 report showed that land degradation is intimately linked and undermining the well-being of two-fifths of humanity, that land degradation is responsible for about 10% of anthropogenic GHG emissions and has the potential to reduce crop yields by up to 50% in some regions by 2050 and we can imagine here and try to better understand the kind of impacts looking forward as Janani said on livelihoods, on human mobility and also underlying drivers of fragility and conflict and the same report also emphasises the benefits of land restoration here and being kind of 10 times what we would invest, what the cost would be when comparing nine different biomes. So I think this is probably the main focus of my intervention here as well to stress the importance of conflict sensitive and peace positive climate action and the gaps that are there in terms of the research in how we go about this and how these concepts are operationalised and myself coming from the climate change field having got to mitigation adaptation but also more broadly on environmental sustainability. Over the years we have endeavoured to climate-proof every sector, agriculture, urban planning, transport and so forth and the peace and security sector really somewhat of the final frontier if you like, it is a blind spot for us, there isn't guidance out there on how to climate-proof prevention and sustaining peace but in recent years we have seen an increased understanding as other speakers have mentioned already that climate change is a matter for peace and security actors. The Security Council has been an important reference point for us in terms of its resolutions and mandates within the UN system relating to various different contexts including late Chad Basin, Mali, Somalia and Afro among others as well. We also have other reference points in terms of the work of the EU and the African Union Commission in addition to all the incredible research and literature that is out there and the tremendous contributions of experts such as Jeff and Aisha and Janani among others as well. I'd just like to take the opportunity to say a couple of words about the work that we're doing in this space as a UN and then some thoughts on the topic as well and as mentioned just now that within the UN system there has lacked a kind of systematic approach to addressing climate-related security risks and the creation of the climate security mechanism in 2018 I think has been somewhat of a step in the right direction to help better institutionalise analysis and response to climate-related security risks and in this regard UNDP is working with DPPA, UNEP and more than 20 other UN partners under the community of practice that we have established to ensure that policy is being informed as Janani mentioned at the beginning as well by integrating analysis and assessment and to try to never to consolidate the evidence base of management and response strategies and promote early warning for enhanced response. As a climate security mechanism we are working on different tracks so DPPA leads in terms of political analysis and it's rolling kind of backstopping the work of the special political missions and peace operations. UNEP I think brings to bear its expertise in environmental data and analytics and UNDP and its presence on the ground as the largest implementer of both climate action prevention and peace building. Two and a half years on now we are implementing pilots in various different locations in nine locations in three regions so Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and also the Arab states and this includes support to three special political missions so the Office of the Special Envoy of the Horn of Africa, the UN Office of Central Africa as well and the UN Office of West Africa and Sahel. We're also providing support to global self-actors to regional entities including the League of Arab States and the Liptapal Gorm Authority to help them develop their own vision and strategies and action plans to address climate related security risks and at the same time trying to add a lens on climate security to local level peace building and stabilization efforts in two countries in Somalia and Sudan respectively. In terms of the framing questions for today's session and the discourse on climate security I think it's clear as has been mentioned in this session already that we are talking about issues which are questions fundamentally of political existential and human security and that we do need to address climate change as a matter of international peace and security to be able to address inequality too as well so I have five points to make in this regard and I'll jump into them quickly with the time constraints that we have today and the first point I would like to make which kind of picks up on Jeff's point as well as the focus so far that has been of the research agenda on causality and climate change in terms of its impacts on peace and security whereas I think we understand in terms of the broad-based consensus that climate change is important and the imperative is already there in terms of the risk multiplier effects that it has on peace and security but often in the debate and in the research we neglect to better understand the contribution of climate action to peace, stability and security and that the technical solutions to adaptation but also access to energy offered by climate change can often be easier entry points for building peace and mending social fabric and I think a lot more needs to be done in terms of the metrics to try to understand these co-benefits and this really does require I should only mention just now a kind of practice orientation focus on the grassroots because if we can work out what's working what we are doing in terms of climate change adaptation and mitigation that isn't it's not only not causing conflict but also contributing to peace we can do it better we can do it systematically and we can encourage learning and we can do it by design and not ad hoc and I think there's a growing body of work out there on peace positive adaptation and mitigation that is kind of interesting for us again as field actors and working with some of the communities most affected by the dual burden of climate and conflict and to my second point adaptation comes up frequently in the research that does address such issues but access to energy is often neglected as well and we think about renewable energy solutions and the opportunities they present to diversify and reduce competition for livelihoods and coping strategies including areas receiving IDPs and refugees you know I would say that this decentralized access to energy and conflict affected adverse and fragile contexts that renewables afford really is a lifeline that makes all kinds of other supports possible including access to clean water, light, warmth, sustenance as well as basic and emergency services and if we're choosing renewables if we're choosing clean technologies and reconstruction efforts we strengthen resilience and we avoid more costly efforts to come back and retrofit at a later stage I mean obviously as Jeff mentioned just now you know we can't talk about energy as well without talking about and addressing just transition at the same time quickly to my third point the reverse linkage I think is often overlooked and important to addressing inequality as well climate impacts on drives of conflict in insecurity conflict in insecurity also impacts on climate and the countries which are grappling with violent and armed conflict they will possess reduced capacity for institutional capacity and resources to elaborate and implement climate policies including national determined contributions and national adaptation plans and the same could be said for COVID but conflict is different in that it also leads to the physical distraction of strategic assets so renewable energy facilities but also other kinds of energy installations and tourism related infrastructure and productive capacities thereby impairing green growth and resilient recovery conflict at the same time also implies the need to protect water points agriculture and key infrastructure I think this is something that really comes across in terms of UNDP's study and typology of climate-related security risks in the first round 186 national determined contributions under the Paris Agreement so my fourth point a lot of work on climate security somehow still focuses on on the UN and regional entities and I think there's a missed opportunity in terms of the focus on global climate governance not only the international negotiations themselves which are really complex but the kind of entry points that global climate governance creates the amount of data that is generated through these processes the finance that is tied to them and again this is a question of access as well as well inequality and the broad momentum around the climate change agenda which we can see from various movements including the extension rebellion of late can be and the youth movement overall can be an incredible driving force that we can harness here in terms of action in addressing climate-related security risks and when we're talking about equality and inequality of access the question of climate finance is also important here as as Janani mentioned at the beginning if you're looking at countries that are most affected by climate ICRC for example that's amazing that the 20 countries most affected by climate 12 of those also suffer conflict and if you cross-reference against other data out there and we still have to do that because a lot of the data kind of on climate finance in conflict affected and fragile states is still somewhat anecdotal but if you look for example at the work of the Zurich flood resilience alliance it shows that countries most vulnerable to climate change receive on average about $20 per person per year in climate in climate finance so we are seeing higher intersectional risks and specific populations often affected by conflicts and insecurity which are underserved and a need to ensure better access to climate finance and to better understand the contribution of climate finance to sustaining peace and also mainstream considerations of peace and security into climate which is something that we're kind of also working on at the moment as UNDP and together with CSM so just thanks so much again for the invitation and I'll stop here and head over back to you Gism. Thank you very much Catherine for your fascinating points. I think all of the interventions link very well together and we've all talked about issues of structural inequalities and how they need to be addressed so I have a first question before we kick off the Q&A to all our panelists and my question would be so also often those who are shaping climate action as well as mitigation policies they are the ones perpetuating these structural inequalities which might or might not contribute to conflict as well so how can we convince governments and these multilateral organizations to attune their responses to these differential impacts on the people who are suffering from climate change. Anyone can go first? Dhanani maybe you want to go first? Sorry Gism could you just repeat the start of the question my sound just cut out for a second. Yes no I just said that those who are shaping climate action and mitigation policies they're often the ones who are perpetuating these inequalities and how can we make sure from the bottom up to convince those governments and multilateral organizations to attune their responses to these differential impacts. Thanks it's a great question I am afraid I'm quite cynical I think at the kind of climate negotiations level it's a very complicated dance and the pushing on these equity climate justice loss and damage issues is seen as really really distracting and kind of an obstacle to get others on board on the kind of on the border kind of mitigation commitments and climate finance so it's not going to happen through good will at the at the policy level it's going to happen because it makes business sense it's going to happen because you know big investment companies can see that it's no longer sustainable to invest you know pension funds in in fossil fuel based companies anymore and then it's up to kind of when the the market forces push us this way I think then it's up to the policy and research community and the kind of the development community the practitioner community to then add the nuance to ensure that the way when we get to the agreements the way in which they're implemented and the way that the then nuanced is then taking account of these kind of these differential risks ensuring that there's no backdrops that they're taking account of the unintended consequences that side of things it's it's it's kind of it's depressing but I it's just anybody that's in the negotiations sees it's really not about you know our children's children's future it's about you know it's it's just kind of what cards are on the table and what can you do to ensure that China and India don't pull out of the negotiations what do you do to keep Russia in the game so I think it's a it's very complicated dance maybe others can be a bit more optimistic would anyone else like to yeah Jeff you want to go well I would just I'll take up Johnny's challenge to be more optimistic I certainly could subscribe to her perspective because I think it's sound analysis but I think some of the things that are happening are the way toward addressing the problem it's not going to be quick easy or always successful but certainly I think there's opportunity in the alignment of great interest and energy behind climate justice as well as social justice racial justice identity these kind of intersecting issues that sometimes are seen together sometimes are seen at odds but increasingly I think are productively brought together around kind of power and access and winners and losers and voice in the system and voice and governance structures that that it's it is very much an uphill climate as John and he said but that there are there's potential for momentum if we can harness that energy in ways that are cognizant of those realities in terms of negotiations and and the kind of the both tactics and strategy that John and he pointed out about and at the same time come with the legitimacy that comes with the voice and justice perspective and so that is the increased activity of young people that's increased activity of indigenous peoples that's you know in in so many places these are the frontline debates and finding a way to bring those into this discussion I think can will be viewed as complicating and distracting and delaying necessary change but just like the backdraft argument if you don't kind of if you don't have everyone in on the takeoffs they're not going to be there for the landings it's not going to work right so ultimately part of what the costs of not including those voices need to be made more clear and more obvious to those making those decisions who historically have marginalized them and been able to kind of tolerate the tolerate the the blowback or treat them as externalities that they don't have to take consideration of and if I could also jump in I think that I'm going to add that I'm a cynic from a slightly different perspective because I don't see a solution to what the kinds of structured issues that we're talking about come from within the market based system so I think there there is there are definitely moves to kind of challenge the way that we look at things like distribution of resources I saw in the in the Q&A box there was a question on deep growth and I and I know that that there are all these different movements that are that are looking to challenge the way we understand our relationship to the environment and trying to come up with more sensible ways of of marketizing that putting a more accurate and more correct value on on on different resources including carbon I just I just don't see that the the way to address structural inequality as coming from system that was responsible for producing the structure of inequality I think I could quickly add add try to add to this as well and obviously we are talking about systemic change here as well and we understand that these are processes that take that take that take time large bureaucracies and complex processes but you know I would say over the over the years you know I think we've seen the creation of the indigenous peoples platform under the UNFCCC again the kind of mobilization of the different groups under the kind of the the band of climate justice for I think it's important if we're looking at kind of mainstreaming of gender into climate change there's been incredible process on that incredible progress on that front over the years as well the international negotiations setting up our complex to maneuver we have seen I guess progress coming from outside the negotiations has had an impact on the negotiations as well if you consider for example the ocean the oceans or and red were not originally part of the international negotiations and that this came came about through the momentum that was created at the the regional dialogues as well I think if you're looking at kind of access to climate finance now you know we see many actors for example safe the children which are accredited entities and now have access to financing from the green climate fund among amongst others as well again there's a lot of I think a lot more that needs to be done in terms of kind of data and analytics and specifically looking for example at the access of conflict affected and fragile states to climate finance and how to how to close those gaps so I think there's definitely more that we can do in terms of the evidence base in this regard as well and we do need to take note again it's mentioned just now of what what is working on the ground as well obviously it doesn't get as much attention as to some instances as opposed to kind of what is not and I think that that definitely does merit for examination if I can hear one thing that is very common I think that it's the bottom up approach that needs to be advertised more and I guess there's one question in the q&a box that Leonardo posed and he says linking bottom up and top down approaches to climate action and legitimate ways that reduce conflict by contributing to a just transition has been a key theme throughout the talk which do you think are the biggest governance challenges in achieving this how to incrementally or radically transform governance systems towards conflict sensitive climate action both in terms of doing no harm and actually contributing to development and peace building now any of you can go I can I can jump in yeah it's it's the ideal I mean of course we need things to be locally informed and bottom up but we also need the the national frameworks and things to be kind of led with national national policies and national level resourcing things like agricultural policy does not make sense to be done at a bottom up community level way because it then needs to be coherence between different regions so that you know one community is not deforestation because they've got a community led forestry program and then it puts their downstream neighbors are furious because that's causing a siltation of their rivers and you know soil erosion so you do need the national as well as the local coming together a huge challenge governance challenge is in many countries in many fragile countries there's really no concept of the state people don't even identify in as you know belonging to a particular country in in the way Lake Chad region for example in northeastern Nigeria or in the Difa region of Nishia people don't they don't they don't talk about being from a particular country they hardly know that they are Nigerian or they're from Nishia they would know their community but they have absolutely no connection with their national government they have no national identity they the the national government or or government governance has has been invisible to them or it's only manifested through kind of through negative channels like the security sector coming in in their efforts to kind of stabilize like terrorist activity for example often in a very detrimental way to them so so sometimes so and a lot of this vulnerability is experienced in places where the state is just not not there this peripheralization of communities is a really kind of fundamental part of why people are vulnerable because there's no state provision of basic services and and there's kind of social safe safety nets that are part of local resilience so one approach I think is and it's highly problematic is you know more decentralized approaches to governance we're seeing this happen in in a lot of regions but it's also it's it's not the silver bullet I'm sitting in in a decentralized government governed essentially governed state of Germany and it was just seeing how the the COVID vaccination rollout is going not very well is because it's it's decentralized and these decisions are made at federal level and or not a federal level state level and it's it's a it's a complete mess so it's not the solution but I think that it is part of it so that you know you're taking decision making and and financial resource allocation decisions away from the national government so it can be more locally informed the other challenge is that a lot of the climate financing in particular and also just broader development and peacebuilding financing but especially the climate financing it has it's it locks in national level like your NDCs are national level you there are some efforts to have local adaptation plans etc but really everything's at the national level the financing is is really it's impossible for local actors or even kind of municipalities to access climate finance so I think that's that's something that needs to be looked at as we see kind of increasingly effective local climate action if we look at the US for example when you couldn't do anything at the national level you could see state level action really charging ahead I think the climate finance architecture needs to kind of catch up and enable the disbursement of resources at a sub-state level over thanks to Janani's point as well we are also looking at again climate finance in conflict affecting a virtual state so that when she said I think that's kind of there is a gap there and a lot of that work is anecdotal so we do hope to be able to contribute to that as well and I think trans-boundary climate-related securities are difficult to get to through the kind of typical country office configuration and modalities that that we have as well and that kind of brings about the importance of working with regional actors and sub-regional actors as well and that I think that's why we're targeting and trying to partner with such entities on the ground to be able to to get to these kind of negative externalities to be able to address them and try to think about adaptation in trans-boundary regional context too and if I can just add that we're talking a lot about kind of states and their ability whether at a national or regional level to manage some of these situations I think that it is important to highlight that not all states are the same and so there is a real need to see some of the pitfalls of implementing a relatively kind of universalized model on something like managing particular impacts around climate change because we know that even within the global south where a lot of these interventions are being implemented the ability and the understanding the way that people interact with the state that all of these are quite different and culturally, socially, politically. The other thing that I really did want to say was that the question asked something about conflict-sensitive planning and I think it's really also important not to kind of I'm not trying to like split hairs here but it is important to not think of this as either conflict-sensitive climate planning or climate-sensitive conflict planning. I think in some ways the point is to try and come up with that more kind of holistic vision where we're trying to address a number of these structural inequalities through a more kind of multi-tiered way and not just as a checkbox exercise where yes you know this is being done in a sensitive way and this is being checked as meeting the sensitivity requirements. Thank you Aisha. There was the question about degrowth which you mentioned before and Stephen is asking, degrowth is said to be one way to address to the climate emergency however it would be difficult to implement a broad degrowth movement without entrenching existing inequalities. Is it necessary for western countries to abandon current expectations of growth to effectively tackle climate change if you just want to go ahead with that Aisha? Sure. So I think that the question really needs to be like what kind of growth are we are we aiming for? Is it going to be this kind of fossil fuel driven you know increase in GDPs and a particular model of growth that we know has resulted in the kind of situation that we are in now or is this the moment where we can kind of take a step back and try and reimagine what some kind of well-being and prosperity could look like and I don't think that necessarily moving forward to address some of these issues is necessarily going to result in structural inequalities worsening. It's just a question of everything that we've been talking about looking at it in a in a much more measured and nuanced way and seeing where are the vulnerabilities that can be addressed and where are the vulnerabilities that are only going to get worse? Thank you very much. Would anyone like to add a comment to this question? Or we may go ahead with a question by Claudia who says that considering that climate change more specifically global warming has rather likely exacerbated global economic inequality encompassing 25% rise in population weighted between country inequality over the past half century and that combined with historical disparities in energy consumption poses a question of what could be done to alleviate the effects or shift the status quo of accumulated robust and substantial declines in economic output in poor, hotter countries. Give you a second to read through that question again. Jeff, would you like to go ahead? Well, I would say I think if I'm understanding the question correctly it certainly taps into that the previous comments about energy as a neglected realm of the conversation. But as a point of entry, you know, global inequality. Yeah, I mean, this gets to the kind of fundamental injustice from a historical perspective from a current perspective. There was another question that kind of asked about that the kind of headline or the top level understanding of a problem caused in the global north felt most acutely by the global south and that is certainly true. And then also additionally, especially now and going forward, a more complex story that has all sorts of ways to also tease it apart and critically important, right? So wealthy high consumers across all countries versus those who are poor and not contributing as much, not consuming as much, and so that kind of state to state is one way. Wealth of high consumers, low consumers is another. And I do think that this is one of the ways that there's a recognition and word spoken and money promised. But as Janani says, still kind of almost seen at times as a cost of doing business to get these other big picture agreements made in terms of that kind of common but differentiated responsibilities. How does that translate into actually addressing this to these declines and these differentials for poorer population? So, you know, it's, you know, that's kind of one of the biggest questions and gets to why we're including justice in this discussion. It's not a short, easy or clear answer to the question. Yeah, and Gism, I could just add to that as well. I think, you know, from a mitigation perspective, from a perspective of kind of clean technologies, it's very important to kind of remember and to emphasise also that the business case and you can see a lot of, there's a lot of work out there on that already as well, which shows us very clearly that a lot of the technical solutions that we need are already technically feasible, are commercially available, not just high tech but low tech solutions. I already kind of spoke to a financier just now and I think that's a critical piece there as well in terms of addressing inequalities. And then also incentives, changing incentives, policy incentives as well, subsidies for fossil fuel based systems and so forth. And as is the topic of today's discussion, again, the kind of governance and modalities, how we go about that. And I think that's still in some ways work in progress. It's something that we're working on now as well. There's been, you know, from UNDP side, there's been a lot of work that has been done in terms of do no harm and conflict sensitivity but definitely a lot more that we hope to be able to do moving forward. Thank you, Catherine. Janani, would you like to add something? Perfect. Okay, there's one more question by Chloe who asks, I was wondering if you could touch upon whether there's a risk as highlighted by scholars critical of seeing climate change and the environment through security lenses to de-politicize issues related to conflict and environment and neglect responsibility of bad governments by putting forward the role of climate change instead. Is this a concern that comes into consideration in your work? I immediately thought of a couple of examples if it's all right I'll start on this on this question. This has actually come up in the case of the relationship between drought and the Syrian civil war that the Bashar al-Assad regime has considerably kind of used the whole climate change was the key feature and this was the reason why there's been a significant degree of loss of various food related items and very, very actively undermining the road of the authoritarian regime and the structural issues there. Similarly, that was one thing that came to mind and the second thing that came to mind is I was talking about evictions earlier and this is something that in kind of big urban cities in the global south, I've seen again and again that where land grab whether it's kind of an organized mafia or whether it's a slick corporation wants to come in and take over land that belongs to either indigenous people or informal settlers or people who have kind of tenuous land rights. The narrative that is often used is this is for flood risk planning or this is for disaster risk planning and so it really kind of plays into the hands of those who have other ulterior motives to use climate change as the smoke screen through which then those agendas can be fulfilled. May I jump in? I definitely agree with Asia on this latter point with the smoke screen that it can be used by national governments to try and get themselves off the hook, also be used manipulatively by national governments like the government of Rwanda to really just move people out of very valuable land using the guise of climate change or maybe disaster risk reduction, even accessing international financing to do this and then resettling those people and then using the land that they've been able to reclaim to go cash crops because you know the subsistence farmers that were living on those high risk areas were not really bringing much to the national economy so there is certainly that risk but I don't think that's really a question of using the security lens and applying it to climate change. I think this is a risk of climate change being hijacked and used by entrepreneurial governments who want to use it for nefarious ends or other actors be it kind of sub-state or mafia. There is a very broad discussion, a very active discussion around the kind of securitisation of climate change and I have to say I don't really understand the concept, I don't see it come up outside of academia. Nobody that I'm engaged with in policy work or on the operational side be it NATO policy planners, US defence department, stabilisation forces on the ground in Mali, nobody is actually on the security side of this is looking to either respond to climate change, to use military resources to kind of encroach into climate change resilience and adaptation measures, yes many of them are trying to address the impacts that climate change will have on their assets and their bases etc but I mean everybody on the security side just talks about where stretched, we don't have the capacity to say if you look at the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, they're actually tasked with trying to look at climate related security risks and they're not able to and they haven't been doing anything on this for a couple of years since they've been mandated to do this because they are just overstretched so I think yes there are these kind of hard security implications of climate change in terms of the increased risk that it's posing to already strained relations, states, citizen relations and intercommunal relations but I think there's a broad acceptance that this is about understanding this in human security terms and that these risks need soft security solutions that really lie firmly in the development and diplomatic realms. There is a role that the security sector can play around decarbonizing, reducing its carbon footprint and also ensuring that its interventions do no harm to climate resilience and increasing inequality but I don't really see any evidence, I think there was a study by ODI a few years ago to see whether any climate finance had been spent on anything remotely military, I don't think there was a single dollar spent on anything that could be seen as securitized climate aid and so I think it's not so much about the fear of securitization of climate change, I think it's about promoting the climatization of security policies that we could and should be talking about. Can I just respond directly to something if that's all right? I don't think that when we necessarily, I think there's a lot that Janani has referred to where I would agree but I would also kind of make a partial and qualified disagreement which is that I don't necessarily think that when we talk about the securitization of a discourse that we necessarily mean kind of military and guns. Securitization as a concept just means that it then becomes easier to intervene in a particular area through this very kind of technocratic way and whereas, yes, militarily it might be harder to make that link, securitization of the climate change discourse as an example has made migration quite a kind of hot subject, the climate refugees or climate migrants might come and kind of try and coach borders and create this kind of situation that needs very active management by particular climate policies. So I know for example, some years ago what was then the foreign office but it's now the foreign and Commonwealth Development Office was really concerned that the largest a population of Bangladesh living outside of Bangladesh is in the UK. So if large parts of Bangladesh were to be under water would that mean that the UK would face an exodus of refugees and asylum claims from Bangladesh and this was very actively kind of being studied and examined to see what were the best policy responses to do that. So I just want to say that securitization doesn't necessarily have to be around the kind of military front but there are a range of ways in which then the state can put up these policies and these hard borders. I could quickly add to that as well if that's okay because I think, yeah, first of all I would agree with Janani here as well and when we see kind of increased attention to climate change impacts on peace and security by actors in these sectors as well. So we are talking again about the mainstream of climate change into peace and security and that's the kind of border trend in conflict affected and fragile contexts in kind of highly securitized contexts as well. Colleagues of mine on the ground frequently talk about the challenge of being able to prioritize and ensure that environment and climate change are prioritized in these contexts given the urgent humanitarian and emergency needs of today as well. So I think there is the challenge there as well and then also what I think of like my recent discussions for example with on our work in Somalia it's not possible to be able to implement on the ground without close coordination and the support of security actors as well. So the kind of there is better coordination that is needed there to be able to deliver on climate change adaptation and access to energy and so forth and I think the instrumentalization of climate change, instrumentalization of other agendas. I think if I work on for example on PVE being another agenda that is often faces the challenge of instrumentalization and securitization these are obviously important needs to be addressed in terms of kind of good governance and corruption and so forth as well. Time for one more on this because it's a three very interesting interventions to an interesting question and this may be a heavily kind of US perspective informed but I think one additional consideration and way that at least in the US context it has been interesting and in some cases fruitful for engaging with traditional security institutions is in some ways in the political context that for those security actors a risk approach where there's a lot of priority and a lot of money spent towards a low probability or unknown probability high negative outcomes is perfectly that's the way you do business and so as much as on the climate side where there's been resistance to take real change until we see the absolute manifestations of all the problems that are promised by the scientists then it's like no wait wait wait it's a it's kind of a cause for delay and in in that way the kind of analogous situation if you wait around for perfectly certain information right if you need the perfect IPCC that answers all the questions which we know will never happen right then bad things happen and so in that sense that kind of making normal a risk approach that means that we have to spend money and do things differently even when all the pieces of the puzzle aren't in place I think that's a valuable perspective that that can be shared by at least in some contexts an institution that's that's doing it and so you know we're not asking for special treatment this is what we're doing already second I think there is again aligning with a different set of interests and objectives but there's a greater willingness to see things that we need in that governance and climate response as being prudent which is flexibility resilience that goes with say smaller grids and different ways to generate energy and renewable as being a source of resilience that in some again maybe a US context if it's good enough for the military given their mission to diversify their energy sources and see renewables as something that makes them stronger not weaker or distracting or more expensive then why not the local communities in and around that military base right so that kind of demonstration effect of that this is actually something that can these steps can make us more resilient in ways that help us across a range of challenges and kind of integrates climate as opposed to puts it in a separate box by a separate set of actors that is only the climate folks that need to pay attention to it but understands that it affects all of us and and it's a responsibility of all of us to respond and so that kind of risk analysis and gaming and scenario as well as that kind of demonstration that this is not penalty but can actually be empowerment to achieve a wider set of objectives in terms of some of the things we're talking about with a needed transition can be can be powerful again in certain political contexts thank you so much Jeff I'm afraid we're running out of time and this has been a fascinating discussion thank you so much for for for your interventions all four of our panelists if I can quickly sum up I guess one thing that that came out to me as most important here in this discussion is that we need to situate questions of resilience and mitigation within within questions of power privilege and control and and that will have the kind of transformative impact that can address these structural inequalities and social social conflict before they become violent and when climate action or when the climate question is integrated within other political and social dimensions and and they're made to understand that there is a big benefit actually of integrating integrating climate not just as a yeah not not just in the silo but that everyone benefits from from from these considerations I guess we will all be better off and in in addressing these inequalities thank you to the audience for submitting these very interesting questions that are stimulating this discussion and please log on again at 3 30 for our last panel mitigating the inequality conflict nexus what is the way forward thank you very much thank you bye yeah thanks so much everyone conversation