Climate Fragility: Addressing Barriers to Practice

There is broad, international agreement across development and humanitarian organizations that climate change poses real threats to peace and human development goals globally. This consensus has translated to good progress in dialogue, diplomacy, and policy on the subject, but on-the-ground climate security programming is still relatively limited. New America's Resource Security program engaged with the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps to look at climate peace and security practices, and particularly existing assessments and analysis that could support and expand field work on climate fragility risks in fragile and conflict affected contexts.

Evaluating more than 20 decision support tools, Mercy Corps found there were limited tools available for climate security practitioners. The authors rated existing approaches against six variables they identified through programming best practices and expert consultations. Though there were some stand-out cases, few of the existing tools were developed with field-based practitioners in mind, which means barriers to adoption, including cost and timescale.

Based on this review, as well as building from evidence in their report Climate Change and Conflict, Lessons from Emerging Practice, Mercy Corps puts forward in this paper a set of recommendations, which, if acted upon, could expand the evidence base and lead to effective projects to address fragility in communities that are already facing the devastating impacts of climate change.

Increase the space for innovation and piloting new approaches: Donors should be encouraged to scale up funding of pilot programs with proxy success indicators, until a larger evidence base is built or causal impact chains are more clearly defined.

Support inclusive technical discussions on the evolving understanding of climate security: Donors, governments, and NGOs should bring experts from around the globe, notably from countries facing the brunt of the impacts of climate change, into regular forums to share best practices and allow for cross-context collaboration.

Ensure meaningful integration of gender in assessments and approaches to address climate security: Respond to the unique experiences of traditionally marginalized groups to create opportunities for women and youth as decision makers and economic actors, to build broader sustainable peace.

Promote context specific assessments used to inform national, regional efforts: Solutions to address the non-traditional risk of climate change must balance tailored, localized solutions with national or broader climate change efforts and peace dialogues to support meaningful change.