As the Loss and Damage Fund’s board meets this week, it is addressing key issues such as selecting a host country, how to disburse its financial resources, and lobbying for more funding from donors. However, the agenda currently doesn’t address the challenges communities in fragile contexts will face in accessing the fund. This oversight mirrors a recurring pattern in international climate talks, where the needs and realities of fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) often receive little to no attention. 

FCS, as defined by the World Bank, experience high levels of institutional and social fragility and violent conflict. These nations, which include Afghanistan, Mali and Niger to name a few, often face extreme climate hazards and struggle to cope due to weak institutions, poor governance, and ongoing conflict.  

Together, fragility and climate risks make these countries particularly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. Because of their vulnerability, fragile contexts are frequently deemed too risky for climate finance investments, as project partners find it challenging to operate and donors are concerned about their return on investment.   

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While the Paris Agreement prioritizes Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) for international climate finance, LDCs and SIDS with additional challenges like violent conflict and fragility face barriers, receiving significantly less financing than more stable regions.  

Mercy Corps’ analysis reveals that the 10 most fragile states received only $223 million in climate adaptation financing in 2021, less than 1% of total flows. Without prioritizing the unique needs of fragile contexts, the Loss and Damage Fund risks excluding these climate-vulnerable communities once again. 

Action needed from the start

There are no references to fragility or conflict in the COP decision that established the Loss and Damage Fund or the Governing Instrument, which sets the Fund’s rules and practices. Additionally, there is no mention of how fragile or conflict-affected places in more “stable” countries will receive financing through the Fund.  

Fragility and conflict can limit how communities and institutions across a particular country respond to climate impacts. For example, in Northern Kenya, where Mercy Corps implements several climate adaptation and food security programs, unpredictable rainfall affects water resources, creating pressure on pastoral livelihoods and leading to conflict over water and pasture. Relatively weak institutions at the local government and community level lack the capabilities and resources to plan and implement climate adaptation interventions.

If the Loss and Damage Fund does not address how to support both fragile states and contexts like Northern Kenya now, it will be hard to incorporate these considerations later.   

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Advocating for specific challenges in fragile contexts during the Fund’s initial setup is crucial, as evidenced by Mercy Corps’ experience with the multi-billion-dollar UN-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF). Although the GCF has made strides to consider communities affected by climate change, conflict, and fragility through its policies and programs, including endorsing the UAE’s Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery, and Peace at COP28 last year, it still struggles to effectively serve communities in fragile contexts.  

Prioritizing finance for those who need it most

At the second meeting of the Loss and Damage Fund’s board this week, its members should take the following steps to realize the Fund’s promise and ensure loss and damage financing reaches those who truly need it most: 

1. Designate a board member for fragile and conflict-affected situations: This idea, initially proposed by Afghanistan for the GCF, was never fully realized. Board Members play an important role in shaping the policies and procedures of the Loss and Damage Fund and in the future, approving projects. Additionally, an active observer from civil society can represent the views of FCS at Board meetings.
2. Develop a framework to identify “particularly vulnerable” countries: The Loss and Damage Fund board will need to determine which countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change and thus, eligible to receive financing. To ensure a comprehensive understanding of vulnerability, the LDF must include fragility metrics such as economic, political, social cohesion, and security dimensions in any forthcoming vulnerability framework. 
3. Develop and approve operational policies and frameworks for fragile contexts: To effectively utilize loss and damage finance, the Fund should adopt policies and tools that allow fragile contexts to flexibly respond to shocks and disrupt the climate-conflict cycle. Mercy Corps’ Assessment for Adaptation to Conflict and Climate Threats, for example, examines the dynamics between climate change and conflict, and identifies entry points and approaches to interrupt the cycle of fragility. In Mali and Niger, where we piloted this tool, program participants identified the rainy season – especially the beginning and the end – as the time when many of the land-based conflicts take place between farmers and herders. It is being used by the UK government to plan ways to resolve tensions and support women who are particularly vulnerable.   

The creation of the Loss and Damage Fund was a significant victory for nations that have contributed the least to climate change yet bear the brunt of its impacts. The board of the Loss and Damage Fund now has a critical opportunity to ensure inclusion and equity by guaranteeing that all communities, especially those in fragile and conflict-affected states, have access to the necessary funding to address loss and damage. It is imperative that no one is left behind in this global effort to combat the climate crisis.

The post The Loss and Damage Fund must not leave fragile states behind  appeared first on Climate Home News.

Experts say drought and severe water shortages have compounded instability and conflict in Afghanistan for decades and are worsening a humanitarian crisis precipitated by the withdrawal of US and allied troops.

Afghanistan is in the grips of its second drought in four years. Since 1950, Afghanistan’s average annual temperature has increased by 1.8C, according to the climate security expert network. Heavy rainfall events have increased by between 10-25% over the past 30 years.

14 million people, around 35% of Afghanistan’s population, were already facing acute food insecurity before the Taliban takeover, according to the World Food Programme (WFP). Half of all Afghan children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition.

The UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan Ramiz Alakbarov told Reuters last week that Afghans are facing a double threat: conflict and drought. “You have a kind of combination effect of displacement caused by war and by military hostilities compounded with displacement caused by drought and by the difficult economic conditions,” Alakbarov said.

Oli Brown, associate fellow at Chatham House, told Climate Home News that food insecurity will increase in the next few months as snow makes roads in parts of the country completely impassable. “Unless you have a working system of governance to provide a safety net before the snow comes in, people will get stuck,” he said.

Afghans have found themselves caught in a vicious cycle of climate change and conflict for over 40 years. “One creates conditions for the other,” said Brown. Water and land scarcity have increased community-level conflict, poverty and instability, which in turn have driven environmental degradation and the depletion of resources.

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Climate change is expected to bring more frequent and intense extreme events, such as droughts and flash flooding, to the country in upcoming decades. More frequent droughts could boost the drug economy as opium poppies flourish in warm, dry climates.

Opium poppies are drought-resistant, easy to grow and transport, according to Brown. “Where wheat fails,  opium poppies often survive,” he said. 

“Increased opium revenues continue to fuel armed opposition groups and encourage corruption among government officials,” said Janani Vivekananda, a senior advisor on climate change and peacebuilding at thinktank Adelphi.

Afghanistan’s climate plan, submitted to the UN in 2015, outlines that all the country’s 34 provinces are highly vulnerable to climate impacts, including drought, heatwaves and glacial lake melts. Water stress is a major concern as 80% of the country’s population relies on rainfed agriculture for their livelihoods. 

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The climate plan said $2.5 billion was needed for watershed management and $4.5 billion for the restoration of irrigation systems by 2030. But investments in boosting water and climate resilience over the past decade have been insufficient, experts say.

Vivekananda said that this issue is likely to be “kicked into the long grass” as development aid is suspended and the immediate focus shifts to humanitarian aid. “It is incredibly critical that this is not seen as a long-term issue, but rather as a priority issue for stabilising the situation now,” she said. “It underlies any hope of addressing the longer term humanitarian needs of the Afghanistan population.”

Brown said international partners, including the US, did invest in building new irrigation channels, but that it is unclear how many of these were properly maintained. 

Improvements to irrigation systems in some cases increased poppy cultivation and opium production, according to a report by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR).

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President Joe Biden has decided to finish evacuating US troops from Afghanistan by 31 August, an administration official said on Tuesday.

In the past week since the Taliban took the capital Kabul, thousands of Afghans have fled the country, including government officials, journalists and translators for western forces. Thousands more are camped in Kabul airport hoping to get a seat on a plane.

As western powers lose their appetite for foreign intervention, a return to Taliban rule for the country looks all but inevitable. The hardline Islamist group, which enforces a strict version of sharia law, was removed from power by US-led forces in 2001.

Ensuring water access and protecting people from severe climate impacts is critical to the governance of Afghanistan, said Vivekananda. “Providing safe, predictable and regular water would be an opportunity for the Taliban to prove their legitimacy and show good governance.”

“It is the essential resource for agriculture, which is essential for the economy and provides the vast majority of livelihoods,” said Brown. “If the Taliban care about the Afghan people, they are going to have to care about water.”

The post Afghanistan at risk of hunger amid drought and Taliban takeover appeared first on Climate Home News.

The only way I can help save my country is through knowledge. Sudan is one of the driest, most fragile and desertified regions in sub-Saharan Africa which makes it highly vulnerable to severe climate change impacts.

Desertification is linked to conflict. The war in Darfur has been described as the “first climate war”. The root cause is the growing competition for water and land due to the creeping desert and severe droughts. Darfur’s conflict has killed over 300,000 people.

Sudan now has the largest population of internally displaced people in the world. Five million live in informal settlements, rural camps and urban slums. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) says this is the result of severe environmental degradation. According to scientists in the US, the heat could eventually make Sudan uninhabitable.

“If Trump really wanted to fight terrorism he would have signed an order to limit climate change”

The only escape from these deadly impacts lies in the power of our youth. We need to change the country’s whole system. We need a government equipped to handle these challenges. The key to making real changes comes from a strong education and Sudan – being a developing country – lacks many of the necessary resources. This is why many Sudanese people plan to do their studies abroad. Studying in the US is/was something I always dreamed of.

Many others have had seen opportunities cut off. One economic and social studies student in Sudan, who preferred not to be named, travelled to the US in 2016 on an exchange programme funded by the US state department.

“I spent 6 weeks studying social entrepreneurship and touring the US to meet with American entrepreneurs. I established a network with entrepreneurs who are willing to expand their business through working with me in implementing development projects in Sudan. The recent executive order made by Trump is standing in my way. This ban is not just blocking the Sudanese nation from entering the US it is also blocking many opportunities that the youth could bring to shape the future of Sudan,” says the student.

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Esra Ali, a Sudanese graduate student at Jackson State University, came to the US in July 2016 on an F-1 student visa. Now she is trapped and isolated from her family and friends.

“My mother was planning to visit me during the summer and due to what is happening she won’t be able to come,” says Ali.

“I have arrived to this country legally with one intention which is to improve my future and the future of my country. As many might know Africa doesn’t have many resources – especially education and women rights. Thus me coming here was a dream come true. But it is only the beginning [of my degree] and I keep asking myself is it worth it to stay here without seeing my family and friends all this period?”

Young Sudanese people are facing obstacles and losing opportunities, apparently because of their religion, and they are now looking for alternatives and starting all over again. Sure, there are other countries. But the US has the best education system in the world.

“I think if our youth get the proper education this may increase their chances. That proper education can be found in the US but now with this ban their lives got much harder without the ability to dream or even live the American dream,” says Ali.

Esra Ali, a Sudanese graduate student at Jackson State University, has been left with a choice: stay in the US alone until she finishes her degree or return to Sudan and be with her family. (Photo: Esra Ali)

If you look at the executive order signed by Trump, you will actually be confused because the order says that terrorists will use any means possible to enter the US due to the deteriorating conditions caused by “war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest”. What does not make sense is that all those problems are linked to climate change.

If Trump really wanted to fight terrorism he would have signed an order to limit climate change rather than creating this heart-breaking moral catastrophe. The young victims of internal displacement due to war, environmental hazards and other reason are people who lost everything they had, by slamming the door in the face of those people, Trump is making them an easy prey to be brainwashed and enlisted for a “radical” cause.

Climate impacts fuelling South Sudan war says minister

Trump is clearly ignoring the fact that climate change kills and affects more people worldwide than terrorism; it devastates human health, food security and water safety. Extreme weather events destabilise regions and that can make climate change one of the factors that actually drives terrorism.

This “Muslim Ban” is not limiting terrorism, it is crushing Sudanese people’s hopes and dreams for a brighter future. This ban is lowering Sudan’s few options to escape climate change and its severe impacts, it is threatening the lives of millions who are already living under hard circumstances and looking for a way to a better life.

The post Trump’s ban: ‘I want to study in US to save my country from climate change’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

He was surveying the aftermath of the second deadliest episode for the US Navy after Pearl Harbor. In an egregious failure of weather forecasting, Task Force 38 sailed into the heart of a typhoon in 1944, losing three ships and 790 lives.

David Titley, rear admiral turned academic at Penn State University, invokes that memory in a call for climate change preparations in today’s military.

Speaking at Columbia University during Climate Week NYC, Titley does not need to convince the students that global warming is real, human-caused and a threat.

The security establishment, too, is steadily getting to grips with the potentially destabilising effects of sea level rise and weird weather – only last week, the National Intelligence Council published a briefing on the topic.

NEW: @WhiteHouse issues order to all agencies to consider #climate "in the development of national security doctrine, policies, and plans"

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) September 21, 2016

Based on that briefing, President Barack Obama ordered around 20 federal agencies to consider the impacts of climate change in national security policy.

Could this be the framing of the climate threat that finally engages sceptical Republicans?

Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who now campaigns for “free-enterprise solutions to climate change”, thinks it has merit.

“The conversation with climate change started in a particularly bad place. The godless scientist got together with the blue-helmeted UN people and came up with a cap and tax system that would have rewarded Wall St insiders and traders. There’s nothing in that paragraph yet that’s attractive to conservatives,” he tells Climate Home.

The post Will Obama’s climate security play engage Republicans? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Many of those fleeing drought and famine in Somalia last year took refuge in camps across the border in Ethiopia (© UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)

Climate Change should be considered as a security threat, parliamentarians from the African Union have urged.

Speaking at an Inter-Parliamentary Dialogue on Climate Change and Peace and Security in Ethiopia this week, the members from 14 countries called for issues affecting the environment to be included in national security policies.

“Climate change may not directly cause violence, but it interacts with and exacerbates existing problems,” said Debay Tadesse, from the Institute for Security Studies in Ethiopia.

This is witnessed as climate-induced refugees move into other regions suffering from climate, economic and social strains.

“Social tensions and the potential for violence could increase where the arrival of a climate-displaced population causes competition,” Tadesse told the audience. “As the African population continues to rise and the demand for resources continues to grow, there is significant potential for conflicts over natural resources.”

“Conflicts arise when people of a different ethnic group move quickly into areas suffering from limited resources. This can compound social pressures and transfer conflict from one location to another.”

A report by the UK’s foresight group last year warned that climate-induced migration had been underestimated and threatened to leave millions migrating into vulnerable areas, and millions more trapped.

The aim of the African conference was to encourage MPs to recognise climate change as both an environmental and security challenge.

While the focus of the meeting was to look at the problems facing Africa, it is an issue which will spread many countries across the world as climate change worsens.

In Durban, William Lacy-Swing, Director General of the International Organisation on Migration (IOM) used the example of the evacuation and repatriation of migrant workers in the Libya conflict last year, and the pressures felt in Europe by such a move.

“There is such a thing as donor capacity and donor fatigue so I think we have to widen the circle of those who are willing to assist,” he said.

The IOM says 42 million people were displaced in 2010 from what it calls climate induced migration – and Lacy-Swing warned with that number set to increase, more attention needs to paid to the subject.

“I was in Copenhagen and I was in Cancun last year and I am here today. It was in Cancun that large scale population displacement was actually mentioned after all these years of talking about climate change and its effects. What is more significant about climate change then people?

“I think we have to do a better job of recognising that the most fundamental problem is that people are going to be displaced in massive numbers.”

Last month, in an article for RTCC, Jeffery Mazo, IISS Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy, looked at the role climate change may have had in the Arab Spring, which spread across the North Africa and the Middle East last year.

He also said while climate change does not directly cause conflicts like these, it is a threat multiplier – although many other pathways not including climate change could have led to the same outcome, climate change increased the likelihood of that outcome.

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The post Climate change should be considered as security threat says African Union appeared first on Climate Home News.

(Pic: RamyRaouff/Flickr)

By Dr Jeffrey Mazo

Was climate change one of the causes of the wave of popular protests and uprisings that has swept the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East since January 2011?

At first blush, the question might seem absurd. Surely the myriad long- and short-term social, economic, political and religious drivers of anger and dissent are the obvious culprits. How could climate change have had any – let alone a significant or meaningful – impact on the Arab spring?

But in fact, the recent events offer a textbook example of what analysts mean when they talk of complex causality and the role of climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’.

The INUS model of causality – ‘insufficient but necessary to the unnecessary but sufficient’ provides the framework. The wave of protests, feeding on one another, might have broken at any time over the last few decades.

Why did it happen now? Any number of different concatenations of events and circumstances could have been sufficient to set it off; none would have been necessary, because any of the others could also have sufficed.

Bread and protests

Within the particular ‘sufficient but unnecessary’ chain of events that did lead to today’s revolutions, climate change played an insufficient but necessary role. One of the proximate factors behind the unrest was a spike in global food crises (see the recent IISS Strategic Comment, ‘Bread and Protests‘), which in turn was due in part to the extreme weather throughout the globe over the past year.

This was not enough to trigger regime change – we have seen food price spikes and food riots before – but it was a necessary part of this particular mix.

With the usual caveat that individual events can never be definitively attributed to climate change, this severe weather is exactly what the science predicts will occur with increasing frequency as the world warms.

Climate change and its impact on weather are of course insufficient on their own to ’cause’ conflict, let alone on the scale now occurring in the Arab world. But it has been a threat multiplier, as suggested in numerous reports and policy documents (including last year’s US Quadrennial Defense Review), in the sense that it was a necessary component of any number of possible scenarios, each of them sufficient to have led to the sort of unrest we are witnessing.

Although many other possible pathways not involving climate change could have led to the same end, by increasing the number of sufficient paths, climate change increased the likelihood of that outcome – it multiplied the threat.

Regardless of the merits of democratisation, whether through reform or, in some cases, removal of despots by coercion or force, the resulting instability is still a problem for nations with interests in the region.

Climate change and security policy

This also illustrates the difficulty of translating the concept of climate change as a threat multiplier into concrete policy advice.

The very complexity and multiplicity of possible paths, of which climate change is but a small part, makes prediction impossible. Any role of climate change in particular events can only be discerned after the fact. Nor can its increased contribution to threats be quantified.

The resources that states outside the region might need to draw on, whether for evacuation of nationals caught in the crossfire, military intervention, humanitarian assistance or political and diplomatic capital – time and attention at the expense of other interests – is not negligible.

If climate change does increase the probability that events such as those we are seeing in the Middle East and North Africa will happen elsewhere in the world, the call on such resources and capabilities will also increase, and planning priorities and the mix of necessary capabilities may change.

This – and not in the identification of particular instability hot-spots – is where projections of climate change can meaningfully inform defence and security policy.

By Dr Jeffrey Mazo, IISS Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy; Managing Editor, Survival. This article originally appeared in IISS Voices and an in-depth version was published in the April-May 2011 edition of Survival.

The post Did global warming trigger the Arab Spring? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the late Kim Jong-il. (Source: Russian Presidential Press Office)

Propaganda from North Korea is frequently mocked in the West. But in between stories about on “the warmongers” and “fascist crackdown”, the state-run news agency KCNA, has also run several pieces on the threat of climate change.

In 2002, KCNA said that: “The repeated natural disasters that hit the DPRK (North Korea) are attributable to the abnormal weather caused by global warming. The speed of warming in Korea at present is three times the average speed of global warming.” They didn’t clarify that last claim but did call for concerted action from all to combat the threat. It even ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2005.

News of the death of Kim Jong-il was met with predictable televised hysteria on KCNA and equally inevitable media speculation on regional instability in the West. Attention will turn to guesses on how his successor, Kim Jong-un might lead the country through its numerous challenges, including that alarming rate of climate change.

The first hope its 25 million citizens might have for their new leader, may well be concerned with food rather than the nuclear programme or the latest spat with the South. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) the country has ordered only 325,000 tons of the 739,000 tons of imported cereals that is required to feed its population.

“This productivity gap represents a potential for the North to increase its farm output and eliminate chronic food shortages by adopting appropriate technology, inputs and measures,” says Kisan Gunjal, FAO economist and co-leader of its mission in North Korea.

Domestic production, though estimated to rise 8.5% this year, faces many challenges. Increased extreme weather events including typhoons and torrential rains have increased as ocean temperatures have risen.

Severe winters and mountainous terrain limit the area of land suitable for agriculture, and the length of the growing season.

From a food security perspective, North Korea has been in trouble throughout Kim Jong-il’s reign. A period of alternating droughts and severe flooding and the collapse of the Soviet Union left the country vulnerable and without its key trading partner to rely on. Three years of famine followed, which the country has barely escaped from since.

To maximise its agricultural output state-run farms have adopted intense farming practices. Despite this, similar land in South Korea produces 40% more food.

Climate change has already been linked to conflict in other parts of the world with pressure on grazing land in parts of Kenya cited often. So how great is the threat of climate change triggering upheaval in North Korea?

“Overall climate change is a driver of insecurity globally,” says Dr Jeffrey Mazo, managing editor of the journal Survival and Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Earlier this year the IISS published a piece looking at the effect of record food prices on the Arab Spring. While acknowledging that these prices were largely the result of climate change, they would not in isolation have been enough to trigger the series of revolutions.

Instead, climate change’s role was as a threat multiplier, an often used phrase (particularly by the US military’s research into climate change) put into practice.

“The existing food stress and political upheaval in North Korea are enough on their own to drive insecurity. The increase in the chance of a bad winter does not represent a tipping point in North Korea in the same way that climate change could prove a game changer in more stable countries such as Indonesia,” says Mazo.

Hungry and angry

While foreign eyes are watching the country’s international relationships, it is this domestic shortfall that could trigger greater insecurity.

Aside from the fact that hungry citizens are not happy citizens, accepting foreign aid flies in the face of the nation’s Juche ideology, which is anchored on the notion of the country’s ability to be entirely self-sufficient.

China currently provides 45% of North Korea’s food supply as state aid. As the adverse effects of climate change continue to drive global food prices up, relying on the charity of others could prove a risky strategy.

This weekend, prior to news of Kim Jong-il’s death, the US was expected to announce a huge food-based aid package for North Korea as part of the six-party international talks designed to dismantle the Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.

Those loyal to the Juche system after Kim Jong-il’s death, might just about be able to accept help from China to stave off famine, but assistance from the States might be too hard to swallow.

Contact the author of this story @rtcc_john or jp@rtcc.org

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