Security dimensions of climate change adaptation

Climate change threatens core dimensions of human security, including economic stability and food production. More contested impacts of climate change entail diverse security risks, ranging from geopolitical tensions between countries to local armed conflict. Due to the potentially wide-spread and multifaceted impacts of climate change on security matters, political concern along with scientific and security interests in the topic have been rising the last decades. This has resulted in a maturing body of academic literature, feeding into a limited number of decision-making processes by intergovernmental institutions, including the UN Security Council. Although the exact magnitudes of climate-security relations are debated and future uncertainties are high, agreement exists that climate change impacts can contribute to conflict risks via different mechanisms (figure 1) in regions with low socio-economic development, high dependency on the natural environment, limited governance and adaptation capacities, and historical grievances. Efforts to adapt to climate change come with its own security challenges, since power balances can shift, creating or reinforcing existing tensions within and between countries. Although these dynamics are increasingly acknowledged by intergovernmental and military organisations, also in some National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs), there are currently no designated international legal governance mechanisms which address the risks that can come with climate adaptation. The relation between climate adaptation and conflict is two-directional, since on the one hand, the outbreak of armed conflict can set back progress in climate adaptation and mitigation efforts. On the other hand, climate adaptation could increasingly play a role in conflict prevention and peacebuilding efforts, since conflict and climate vulnerability often overlap. Strengthened cooperation between the climate adaptation and security communities in these conflict-prone regions are therefore be an important future step.