1. Climate change actions in conflict affected contexts
- Author:
- Helene Maria Kyed and Justine Chambers
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- Violent conflict and state oppression in Myanmar demonstrates the importance of placing conflict analysis and people-centred approaches at the centre of international programming on climate change and environmental protection. In 2021, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the impacts of the climate crisis will be particularly pronounced in poor and conflict-affected countries. Research also identifies climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ that, in combination with socio-political factors like poverty, state incapacity and inequality, can intensify violent conflict. However, gaps remain in how to address the increase in climate change vulnerabilities in contexts with violent conflict and state oppression. This is evident in Myanmar, where a historically repressive military regime is threatening to cause longer-term ‘climate collapse’. Since a military coup in February 2021, extractive activities and war economies are destroying the natural environment and placing communities at further risk of displacement, violent persecution and food shortages. These effects of conflict are reducing local people’s capacity to adapt to climate change and threatening civil society’s efforts to protect the environment. Under such conditions, climate change programming needs to place conflict analysis at its centre stage and substitute state-centric and purely technical approaches with people-centred ones, in alignment with the localisation of aid agenda.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Democratization, Environment, Natural Resources, and Peacebuilding
- Political Geography:
- Southeast Asia and Myanmar