In conjunction with New York Climate Week, the focus for this month’s round-up is environmental peacebuilding and climate security. When one considers the scale of violence, harm, and exploitation embedded in the systems that have produced climate change and the very real damage that climate change is already inflicting on communities worldwide, coupled with climate-denial rhetoric and policies at all levels of the Trump Administration, it becomes clear just how urgent and monumental the response must be. The climate justice movement—especially its nonviolent grassroots organizing—offers a meaningful alternative to militarized security by centering the needs of the communities made most vulnerable by the climate crisis and ensuring that the renewable energy transition happens equitably, rather than by using military force to react to the insecurity climate change creates.
What We’re Reading
For each of the articles mentioned below, we include the central research question and the authors’ main findings:
Krampe, F., O’Driscoll, D., Johnson, M., Simangan, D., Hegazi, F., & de Coning, C. (2024). Climate change and peacebuilding: Sub-themes of an emerging research agenda. International Affairs, 100(3), 1111-1130. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae057
Where are the gaps in existing research on climate change and peacebuilding, and what should be the focus of an emerging research and policy agenda in this area?
- Since climate change now fundamentally affects peacebuilding, research on the relationship between climate change and peacebuilding is critical to the study of peacebuilding overall.
- Research gaps exist in the following areas:
- Strategies for “effectively integrat[ing] climate change into peacebuilding work”;
- Empirical studies of “the impact of climate change [and related policy responses] on peacebuilding efforts,” whether negative or positive;
- The broader “relationship between climate change, conflict and peace,” beyond climate change’s role as a “driver of conflict or threat multiplier” to include how it can even create opportunities for peacebuilding; and
- The ways climate change adaptation can have potentially negative effects for security and peacebuilding.
- In response to these research gaps, the authors propose that research (and to some extent policy) focus on the following four sub-themes:
- The evolution of discourse and norms related to climate change in key international security and peacebuilding institutions;
- The impacts of climate change on the effectiveness of peace operations (along with ways to address these impacts) and the impacts of peace operations on the environment;
- The effects of climate change at the local level, as well as how local conflict resolution and peacebuilding practices address these effects and can be further supported;
- Power relations between the varied local/global actors involved in and affected by climate change and peacebuilding efforts; and
- The incorporation of non-western and “local knowledge and norms on peace and nature into efforts that combine peacebuilding and climate action” and the potential for these to fundamentally shape or even transform both peacebuilding and climate mitigation/adaptation practices.
Caballero-Anthony, M. (2024). Climate security in Southeast Asia: Navigating concepts, approaches and practices. Third World Quarterly, 45(14), 2047–2064. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2024.2370353
Why have ASEAN nations been hesitant to adopt the language of “climate security,” and what are the implications of this on regional approaches and policies toward climate-related challenges?
- Globally, climate change concerns have been increasingly securitized, but the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) avoids a “climate security” framing—with its focus on conflict and potential militarized responses—and instead employs a “comprehensive security” framing, which focuses more on development, environment, food, and health.
- ASEAN’s apprehension over the securitization of climate change is driven by concerns over the risk of militarizing climate response(s), opening the possibility of external intervention (thereby threatening the sovereignty of each member nation-state), and amplifying geopolitical competition instead of fostering cooperation.
- ASEAN’s framing of climate change, in the context of “comprehensive security,” views it as a “soft” developmental and humanitarian issue, rather than as a “hard” security threat.
- ASEAN’s aversion to adopting the language of “climate security” may hinder conflict prevention measures and anticipatory planning, as well as limit a sense of urgency about addressing climate change challenges, resulting in the region being more vulnerable to climate-driven instability.
FitzGerald, G. (2025). Why not to blow up a pipeline: Intersectional reflections on environmental (non)violence.” Peace & Change 50(2): 95-113. https://doi.org/10.1111/pech.12711
This article offers a critical response to the 2021 book How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm, arguing that:
- Violence against infrastructure often harms vulnerable communities. Such actions lead to environmental damage (e.g., spills or toxic releases) that disproportionately affect marginalized groups living near polluting sites.
- The climate fight is inseparable from broader social justice. The climate crisis intersects with race, class, gender, colonialism, and incarceration. Ignoring these connections risks deepening harm to those already most impacted.
- Violent tactics can fracture movements. Escalation may weaken alliances and expose marginalized activists to greater repression. Building inclusive, intersectional coalitions offers a safer and more effective path to lasting change.
- Intersectionality strengthens strategy. Applying an intersectional lens and recognizing “environmental violence” helps movements identify who is most affected, avoid harmful tactics, and craft responses that address multiple layers of injustice.
Conca, K., & Dabelko, G. D. (2024). The international (in)security order and the climate-conflict-security nexus. Environment and Security, 2(4), 501-524. https://doi.org/10.1177/27538796241287358
“How [do] some of the specific features and workings of the current international (in)security order affect the climate-conflict-security nexus[?]”
- Three aspects of the international security order “work through” climate change to increase the risk of violent conflict, including:
- “The multi-dimensional role of war and war preparation as drivers of the climate problem.”
- “The widespread use of violence to suppress climate activism.”
- “The failure of climate-policy mechanisms to account for the conflict risk they may create or exacerbate.”
- The authors outline several direct and indirect effects of war and the preparation for war on the climate:
- Routine global military activities (meaning, non-warfighting) account for 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, “roughly equivalent to that of global aviation and shipping combined.” On top of that, active war rapidly increases greenhouse gas production.
- Preparation for war acts as a “security subsidy for fossil fuels,” meaning that “a significant slice of global defense spending is geared towards keeping fossil-fuel supply lines open for the world economy, a subsidy that helps carbon-based fuels remain price competitive.”
- War makes the green transition more complicated as observed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its effect on European energy markets.
- War is a threat multiplier of “climate-related human insecurity,” for example, communities in conflict-affected areas often face the highest levels of food insecurity and displacement.
- War results in environmental destruction, and countries weaponize the environment in warfare.
- War disrupts global cooperative efforts to address climate change and environmental protection.
- The military plays an active role in climate governance when considering its environmental footprint, asserting itself in climate policy, and responding to climate-related disasters and providing humanitarian relief.
- “Violence against environmental defenders and nature” is “a system property that becomes a part of a causal mechanism that directly worsens climate outcomes and increases climate-related conflict risks.”
- Low-level and incremental violence against environmental defenders and nature falls below common thresholds in the study of political violence, but this violence has a powerful effect by silencing sustainability or environmental justice efforts.
- There is “unexamined faith that climate mitigation and adaptation are tools for conflict reduction” when, in fact “changing access to and use of [natural] resources creates winners and losers,” creating potential for increased risk of conflict. New research shows increased conflict risk emerging from questions of land use, forests, mining, and adaptation measures.
Informing Practice
The language of security often finds its way into discussions about climate change. On the one hand, this makes sense, as framing something as a security issue can create a sense of urgency around addressing it. On the other hand, given the widespread militarization of security (Caballero-Anthony), framing climate change as a security issue can bring with it the whole slate of problems that accompany military “solutions.” Militarized responses to climate change—and particularly to the security dimensions of climate change—risk not only contributing to the violent escalation of conflict worldwide and thereby inflicting irreparable harm on human lives and communities but also reinforcing colonial hierarchies that privilege Western perspectives and top-down expertise. In addition, not only is the military the wrong tool for addressing the security concerns posed by climate change; it also contributes to climate change. As an example, the United States military—in its maintenance, preparation, and conduct of war and warlike endeavors—is the world’s largest institutional consumer of energy (inclusive of fossil fuels) and carbon-emission polluter on the planet. Yet, despite this, the U.S. military is often heralded for its efforts in acknowledging the reality of climate change and its effect on national security. Just as we need to decouple security from militarism and violence—both of which, in reality, further insecurity and inhumanity—we also need to decouple responses to climate change from the very logic (capitalism, sustained by militarism and colonial hierarchies) that created the crisis to begin with.
The climate justice movement provides a stark alternative to a securitized and militarized response to climate change-induced forms of insecurity. As climate activist Greta Thunberg has asserted, upon recognizing the impacts of militarism and capitalism on the environment, “If we pretend to care about the environment, if we pretend to care about the climate and our children’s future, without seeing and acknowledging and fighting against the suffering of all marginalized people today, then that is an extremely racist approach to justice that excludes the majority of the world’s population.” In addition, the deliberate targeting of climate defenders and Indigenous populations (Conca) all over the world, from Brazil to Indonesia, by governments that cooperate with extractive for-profit industries, further exemplifies the importance of having a human-centered approach to security—one that is rooted in justice and human dignity rather than in state and corporate greed. In the case of the U.S. (as the heart of the global capitalist Empire), under the Trump administration, it is even more challenging to meaningfully address climate change and its myriad intersections with peace and security as climate change denial is now official policy. The interests of fossil fuel companies and defense contractors far supersede the needs of everyday Americans and, beyond that, all forms of life on the planet.
The Global North—through its centuries of settler and colonial projects that targeted the Global South, extracting labor and resources from their lands—continues to sustain present day legacies and systems of injustice and domination. This very extraction, and its continuation through means of unequal exchange, if not outright war and plundering, continues to mutilate the environment and pollute the earth. This reality also explains why countries in the Global South are more averse to and cautious about adopting climate-related policies that come from Global North voices (Caballero-Anthony), as the history of interference and rights violations of Global South peoples is well ingrained within their collective memory. If the aim of the climate justice movement is to protect the environment and vulnerable peoples, then any disconnect between climate justice movements and broader social justice efforts would risk reaffirming the insidious present-day hierarchies and status-quo of domination and injustice (FitzGerald).
Why should environmental peacebuilders embrace climate justice over a militarized climate security approach?
- It focuses on human-centered security and dignity over national (and corporate) interests.
- It respects the inherent nature of the environment being intersectional, and how different communities are being affected and how best to support them, on their terms and based on their needs.
- It centers Indigenous, non-Western knowledge and practice related to both climate change and peace, which can provide an alternative approach to relationships between the human and natural worlds than those that created the climate crisis.
- It takes into consideration how language and actions are perceived and seeks to avoid reaffirming present day hierarchies of power—focusing on giving agency to the people that are most impacted by climate change.
Organizations:
The Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy: https://www.palclimateinstitute.org/
Environmental Peacebuilding Association: https://www.environmentalpeacebuilding.org/
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