Climate Change and Security: Towards a Greener Peace

Five-day capacity-building course

There is a growing understanding in the international community that environmental change, while not necessarily as immediate as other threats, is no less essential to global security in the long-term, both as a challenge and as an emerging tool for peace. Climate change acts as a “threat multiplier” with the potential to exacerbate a wide range of existing and often interacting conflict drivers. At the same time, climate change cooperation can be treated and applied as a peace-making instrument. 

To help governments counter the threat that climate change poses to security and build capacities to use climate change cooperation in peace-making and peacebuilding, international actors need to be equipped with knowledge, analytical skills, and awareness of this dual role that climate change plays in the global security narrative. This course will allow participants to have a clear view of the climate change regime, the global security framework, and the ways in which they interact, acquire tools to incorporate climate change mitigation and adaptation into national governments’ strategic planning, and learn to use international cooperation on climate change for lasting peace and stability.

How you will benefit:

Throughout the five-day course, participants will:

• Analyse the effect of climate change, including the rising incidence and severity of extreme weather events, as a threat multiplier, and its current and potential impact on national and global security;
• Discover the inner workings of the climate change regime under UNFCCC, the emissions trading system, and its role in mitigating global economic disruption;
• Recognise the international security agenda and the regime of use of force, its institutional framework and legal regulation;
• Examine the future trajectory of environmental degradation and its potential correlation with migration flows, environmental displacement and heightened security issues;
• Evaluate the relationships between security and environmental institutions in the interest of creating stronger collaborative networks;
• Learn how to use cooperation over climate change mitigation and adaptation, involving new approaches based on technology and innovation, in peacemaking and peacebuilding, and the basic principles of climate diplomacy.

Topics to be covered include:

• Changing the perceptions of security: governance and law
• Climate change and displacement: migration, climate change adaptation and “trapped communities”
• Drafting disaster prevention strategies
• Climate change as a risk to global economy
• Climate change and conflict: solving the equation