The effects of climate change compound the risk of conflict and insecurity. Despite global UN-instituted and multilateral agreements and UN sustainable development goals on climate, global action against climate change remains negligible.
According to the Ecological Threat Report of 2022, seven of eight countries with the worst risk score are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Environmental degradation and natural resource scarcity lead to competition over resources between groups, thereby aggravating existing conflicts or triggering new ones. The UN Chronicle has acknowledged that climate change is the greatest threat to global security, citing its effects on the security agenda.
These include forced displacement due to flooding, disease or famine, food insecurity and water shortages resulting from drought and crop failure, culminating in mass humanitarian crises and the risk of war.
In this regard, climate change disrupts not just national security but the collective security of a world progressively intertwined and interdependent.
In Africa, terrorist groups leverage the adverse effects of climate change to advance their legitimacy, recruit more members and promote their activities, particularly in areas with limited or no government presence.
Al Shabaab in Somalia offers economic support and relief aid to communities. In Mali, besides giving relief, Katiba Macina presents itself as a resource dispute mediator in the raging farmers-herders conflict over land, water and pasture.
Sixty million people fled their homes due to conflict and climate-related factors on the continent in 2021. These factors included tropical storms (south), El Nino, locust invasions (horn), cyclones (south), floods, earthquakes, drought and famine, among others.
In 2015, the cost of flooding in Nigeria was placed at $543 million, earthquakes in Algeria cost $991 million, wind in Madagascar cost $195 million and the drought cost in Ethiopia could not even be estimated.
Rotary International, one of the largest service organisations in the world with more than 1.2 million members spread over the globe, has pulled its weight in addressing climate change and peace. ‘Environment’ is one of the seven pillars of Rotary’s work.
However, this is also seen as a cross-cutting in the other six pillars: peace, disease prevention, economic development, maternal health, primary education, water, sanitation and hygiene. Rotary’s scholars and peace fellows produce intellectual yet practical approaches to addressing this crisis.
Following the 80 solutions in the 2017 Drawdown research by Paul Hawken’s most comprehensive plan to address global warming, Rotary clubs across the world champion climate action.
These include training farmers in organic farming techniques in Taiwan, constructing food storage while training people in safe food handling and processing in Colombia, reforesting about 125 acres with native species grown from wild seed in Madagascar, skilling birth attendants to provide family planning counselling in Ethiopia and implementing digital tree planting projects which track, monitor and manage the tree’s progress in Kenya, among others.
Rotarians can develop projects to alleviate the effects of climate change, use their connections to change policy and personally embrace good practices for a better environment.
In acknowledging the cross-border effects of climate change and their impact on global stability, countries should enhance inter-sectoral collaboration and financial support for climate adaptation and resilience.
Communities, particularly women, should be included in this call. Peace practitioners should factor climate change into conflict analyses and peacebuilding efforts. Inversely, conflict sensitivity should be applied to climate action.
Rotary Peace Fellow and an awardee of the 2023 Presidential Trailblazer Award in Women, Peace and Security