Climate and security: evidence, emerging risks, and a new agenda

Abstract

Attention to the linkages between climate change and security has been punctuated in the past decade by high-level political discourses and a wide array of diverse publications. Yet these linkages remain often portrayed in a catastrophic and deterministic framing that does not make for rational debate on the impacts of climate change on human security. This paper seeks to engage social sciences in assessing the causes and consequences of climate change on human security, so that these can be supported by plausible and testable theories and models, and not just policy rhetoric. In this paper we review the state of knowledge on security dimensions of climate change; set out the major conclusions from the series of studies in this special issue, and point to emerging issues in the agenda for sustained research in this area.

Using a novel climate–water conflict vulnerability index to capture double exposures in Lake Chad

“…Although the contested nature of the vulnerability concept is widely recognised, it cannot be assumed that there is broad consensus regarding what constitutes scientifically sound explanatory variables for climate and water conflict relations. In response to recent calls to uncover local dynamics of climate and environmental conflict interactions (Gemenne et al 2014;Böhmelt et al 2014), we present the CWCVI as a tool for exploring ordinary people's differentiated vulnerability and capacities to adapt to change. The tool resonates with livelihood perspectives and uses a normative framing consistent with the context, place and time-specific nature of both vulnerability and climate conflict analyses.…”

“…There is a livelihood security imperative to frame climate conflict research around vulnerability (Gemenne et al 2014). Yet applying a vulnerability lens to explain climate and water conflict link raises complex challenges.…”

“…The climate security research community now recognises that exposure to climate and conflict stresses presents a critical challenge for locations where natural resources are declining and livelihood losses are driving people into conflict-structured practices (Gemenne et al 2014;Scheffran et al 2014). Discourses in this domain are useful for stressing human security and climate vulnerability concerns (Detraz 2011).…”

“…Busby et al 2014;de Sherbinin 2014) where field-based data validation is essential. Our systematic, multi-method approach provides a methodological contribution in line with the demand to combine a diversity of approaches and methods to investigate the full complexity of climate conflict links in human-environment systems (Gemenne et al 2014). Our focus on a villagelevel assessment in Lake Chad contributes to a growing strand of vulnerability literature which seeks to enhance the rigour and utility of indicator-based vulnerability assessments.…”

The relevance of political ecology perspectives for smallholder Climate-Smart Agriculture: a review

“…The principal argument within the literature is that institutionalized power relations condition how different farming groups experience vulnerability and in structuring their capacity to adapt/mitigate using climate-smart options. Food insecurity and political relations is also underlined as a primary source of conflict (Gemenne et al 2014). We therefore need to think about power relations broadlyhow interests of different vulnerable smallholder farmers are represented, distributed within and across communities and who has the authority to promote climate-smart responses.…”