Climate and conflict

Dr Robert Falkner

Welcome, everyone in this room and welcome, everyone online, to this Chatham House members’ event on Climate and Conflict and Security. My name is Robert Faulkner. I’m the Research Director of the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, but I’ve also been spending a lot of time doing work on the environment here at Chatham House.

It’s a great pleasure for me to Chair this event tonight. As you may know, this members’ event is being recorded, so it’s on the record and, if you remember, then you should be able to access a recording at a later point. You, the audience, will have a chance to put questions to our panellists this evening. If you are in the room, then please just raise your hand, stay seated, a microphone will come to you. And if you’re online, I think I will be able to see your questions coming through, then please use the Q&A function and put the questions to me and I will then call on you to read out your question. And keep it brief, as always, and keep it to the point and finish with a question mark. I think that’s the general guidance that we like to see in these kind of events.

Last organisational point, there will be a drinks reception after this event, straight at the end, at 7 o’clock and for that, please follow us up to the library on the ground floor, which is when you came in, somewhere on the – on your right. I think there’s another event happening, just ignore that. We have our own space for that.

Good, so, we are going to discuss climate and security. I think it’s fair to say the global landscape on security is changing rapidly. Everyone has been fixated by the horrific events that have been happening in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion has not just caused huge human suffering in Ukraine, but has also upset the European Security Order. Beyond that, however, we have seen a long-term trend that is now playing out in many parts of the world.

Climate change is producing ecological stresses that are translating into social and political upheaval that is undermining stable and less stable political orders, is causing migration flows, is disrupting food flows and trade and is causing human suffering, on an ever larger scale.

Climate change, in that sense, poses a new risk to global security, but one that we have now gained a better understanding of, and so, in this event today, we’re going to take a closer look at how climate and security are linked and the occasion for this, the very happy occasion for this event, is the recent launch of SIPRI’s new report on Environment of Peace, which I understand has just come out two weeks ago, and we are going to take that as our launching pad for this discussion. But before we do that, we’ll hear a brief video about the report.

Let me just briefly introduce our panellists, in the order in which they will speak, and then, I will shut up and lead over into the opening statements. First up will be the Director of SIPRI, Dan Smith, who has come from Stockholm for this event. Dan has a long record of research on international peace and security. He has focused on climate change and insecurity, peace and security issues in the Middle East. He has a longstanding record of working on peacebuilding issues, including several years that he spent on the UN Peacebuilding Fund Advisory Group, two of which he served as the Chair of that group. He was a part-time Professor of Peace and Conflict at the University of Manchester and is the Author of endless numbers of publications in this field, far too many for me to mention any of this. Dan, you will kick off in just a moment, after the video presentation.

I will then call on our panellist who is on the screen, and I think you will be able to see. Adenike Titilope is the Founder of ILeadClimate Action Initiative. Adenike is a self-described “eco-feminist, eco-reporter and climate justice leader.” She founded this initiative in order to advocate for a restoration of Lake Chad, which is intended to strengthen the livelihoods of those that are affected by the gradual disappearing of Lake Chad. She has a longstanding interest in peace, security and equality in Africa. She is a former spokesperson for Care International in the UK, on climate and gender. She was a Nigerian Youth Delegate at COP25 and COP26 and she’s the recipient of the Ambassador of Conscience Award by Amnesty International in Nigeria, among many other awards that she has won for her activism and work.

And last, but not least, is Glada Lahn, the Senior Research Fellow here in the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House. Glada has joined Chatham House in 2004, I just reminded myself.

Glada Lahn

Yeah.

Dr Robert Falkner

So, we have overlap for quite some time here in the programme. Glada has produced many important reports, in a wide range of areas that relate to this topic. She’s worked on petroleum sector governance, Asian foreign resource investment, access to energy in developing countries and sustainable tradi – transitions in the fossil fuel sector. Her current project, ‘Cascades’, which she’s conducting with a number of European Union partners, is on access – on assessing the transboundary risks of climate impacts and making recommendations on actions in this area.

So, without much further ado, let me stop here and let me now invite you all to listen to a short presentation on the SIPRI report.

Video Presentation

Insecurity and conflict are on the rise. Human activity is putting the natural environment under more stress than ever before. It is an increasingly toxic mix. The number of armed conflicts around the world has doubled in just ten years, so has the number of people displaced from their homes. Spending on arms is increasing, global hunger is growing. At the same time, environmental crises are adding new risks to security. Drought leads to failed crops, floods force people from their homes, ocean ecosystems die. The twin security and environmental crises are creating new complex risks and compromising our prospects of achieving and maintaining peace. The result, a new era of risk. Unless we take action, the situation will only get worse.

There is a way forward. It is possible to build the foundations of a new security and it begins by acknowledging that we need to tackle the twin crises together. We must address the root causes of the environmental crisis, cutting carbon emissions quickly, reducing pollution, restoring forests, protecting nature. However, solutions meant to address environmental issues can have unintended negative impacts on peace and security.

We must enable a green transition that is both just and peaceful, with policies that avoid sparking new opposition or conflicts. Governments need to switch spending from things that fuel the twin crises, such as building their armed forces and fossil fuel subsidies, to activities that restore the environment and build peace. Environmental integrity and peace are inextricably linked. By addressing them together, we ensure that measures aimed at solving one problem don’t make the other worse. Ideally, they would create positive synergies.

The Environment of Peace Report explores options for building peace in this new era of risk, based on principles of urgency, fairness and far-sightedness. It makes recommendations that everyone can use, from the United Nations, to governments, from financial institutions to civil society. The need is urgent, and time is running out. Find out how we can build an environment of peace.

Dr Robert Falkner

Great, thank you for that. Dan, could you please start us off? I’ll give our panellists about five minutes for opening statements, and then we’ll hear from the other two.

Dan Smith

So, five minutes, thank you very much, Robert, and thank you to Chatham House for organising this event and everybody for coming. Five minutes is a great challenge and I mean, it’s a great one because it demands that you boil it down. So, the environmental crisis is having an impact on our wellbeing and there is evidence for that, there has been evidence of that growing over the past three decades. I would say that over the last 1½ decades it has become steadily unmistakable. It’s only if you close one eye that you fail to see it.

It has that impact in a number of different ways and this is what sometimes complicates the discussion. But as the film was pointing out, whether it’s through a sudden shock, such as an extreme weather event, like flooding, or it is more through slow onset problems, such as drought, there’s an impact upon people, and in this whole picture, people are the problem, basically. There’s no such thing as an environmental – a purely environmental issue and it’s always to do with the relationship between the natural environment and us, both our impact upon it and its effect upon us.

When we’re thinking about its effect upon us, as a consequence of what we have done, the most important, sort of, intervening variable is governance. So, if the government response to the drought, or the flood, or the sea level surge, or whatever it may be, is a positive one, creative, inclusive, brings people in, you know, yeah, people suffer a bit, but there’s no really serious problem. If it’s poor, if it’s oppressive, if it’s under-funded, if it’s aggressive, if it blames the people, then there’s going to be difficulties. Then you start getting potential grievances, instability and clear evidence that this can lead to the point of violent conflict, not always, but it can. Actually, those same environmental stresses, in different contexts, can lead to more co-operation between people. So, you can’t necessarily predict what’s going to happen, but you can see it.

Now, at the same time, conflict, or conflictual relationships, make it harder to handle environmental problems. I’ll give you one example, there’s a massive ship off the coast of Yemen now, which has been rusting for seven years and is waiting to cause an abominable environmental disaster, which can’t be addressed because of the violent conflict in Yemen. But we can also see it and worry about it in terms of geopolitics. As geopolitical confrontation increases, that has a potentially malign impact upon the chances of co-operation to resolve environmental questions.

And I think that’s one of the dilemmas that we live with at the moment, which is that whether you think about the pandemic or you think about climate change, or loss of biodiversity or, indeed, air pollution or plastics pollution, or land use problems, persistently, as a solution, as an approach, what you need to think about is co-operation. So, we have an unprecedentedly increasing need for international co-operation at a time when, sadly, the international appetite for co-operation is declining.

People sometimes ask me – I’ve been working on this for a decade and a half now, and people sometimes ask me, “Dan, why do you want to bring environment and peace together?” and my answer is, “I don’t,” right? Do you honestly think that I, or anyone, can bring environment and peace together? These are huge things, be serious, right? Environment and peace are so inextricably linked that if you damage one, you damage the other. But the good news, which we’ve also tried to unearth through the report, is that if you enhance one, you enhance the other.

So, I’m inclined to say that, you know, the policy report is a mere whatever it is, 92 pages or thereabouts long, and you can gallop through it and find the conclusions and the recommendations at the end. But let me summarise very quickly in headline form. One is that linked crises need joint solutions. The second, joint absolutions. The second thing is we have to get better at investing in preparedness and resilience and the prevention of crisis and violent conflict. We should be thinking much more seriously about what it would mean to finance peace rather than risk. We spend directly, not calculating indirect costs and so on, we spend directly $500 billion a year worldwide subsidising fossil fuel industries, which is increasing risk. We need to be, instead, financing peace.

It’s important, when thinking these things through, to understand that there are risks involved in almost any course of action. So, the transition that we need to see, the Green Deal, the zero-carbon economy, the brown to green transformation, this is a big thing. There will be losers as well as winners in this. So, our fourth area of recommendations is on the importance of delivering a transition that is both just and peaceful. If it’s not made explicit and done deliberately, it won’t be done.

Fifth, in order to do that, maximise inclusivity and lastly, as the – in some senses, the basis for all of this, we need more understanding, more education, more information and we need to operationalise that in government systems that have better foresight of the problems coming down the road at us. I’ll leave it there and I hope that I’ve done at least enough to provoke some questions. Thank you.

Dr Robert Falkner

Wonderful, thank you, Dan, and let me go now to Nigeria. Adenike, can you hear us?

Oladosu Adenike Titilope

Yeah, I can hear you.

Dr Robert Falkner

You have five minutes.

Oladosu Adenike Titilope

Okay, thank you so much. Thank you, Environment of Peace and Chatham House. So, I’m very excited to be here to speak about something I am passionate about. Recognise the fact that we’re here for the restoration of Lake Chad that has shrunk by 90% and I specialises in peace treaty equality in Africa, especially the Lake Chad region.

And looking at the fact that climate change in Africa is not just leading to conflict, but armed conflict and we are seeing these through different underlying issue by food insecurity on the resource control, poverty and the rest, that have been lingering for so long. And a practical example is that of the shrinking Lake Chad that has shrunk by 90% and has displaced more than 14 million people, and so, how do you expect there should be peace in a place where there are lost of livelihoods? And so, that is why I always mention the fact that peace is not just the absence of war, but the ability for us to sustain our livelihoods, because lost of livelihoods is one of the strategy that armed group, or violent armed group, such as Boko Haram and the rest, are using to expand their boundaries to recruit more people, young, old, different groups, into their group to become perpetrators of evil in their society.

And this we are seeing in Nigeria, spreading across West Africa and we are seeing it in Ethiopia, in Mali, in Sudan and the rest, and this is our reality in Africa that we are being affected by conflict. And a practical example was where it’s called the Food basket of the Nation, because they have a fertile and harid land – arid land that is very good, that could feed the nation, because for it to be named as the Food Basket of the Nation, it has a vegetative and fertile landscape. And so, this make the farmers and the herdsmen to clash a lot because they have this in common. They are both depends on the vegetative cover, the shrinking natural resources, like the wat – like water and other things that intersect or integrate their needs together, and so, this make them to clash a lot, leading to conflict.

And one of my visits in the school, when I went there, I could see one of the internally displaced people’s camp, among many, and I am asking them about what happened. They could tell me that they were displaced due to conflicts that had arised. And so, one of those people that spoke with me, they are farmers and so, you could imagine thousands of farmers being displaced in the camp. Definitely it’s affecting the food system. And so, we need to provide long-lasting, sustainable livelihood.

It’s not enough when we provide food or shelter or give them water, drinks, clothes for them, but what matters most is when they are able to give them sustainable long-lasting livelihoods. But that – should that mean they could provide food, clothing, shelter, educate their children, because these people – or climate change conflicts, it could be the biggest driver of out of school children in this decades? Because that is what we are seeing, the floods, the droughts, the conflicts, displacing young people, making them – or depriving them from education and at the same time, women and girls are being affected because they’re either raped or being given out in marriages as a survival strategy.

And so, we need to look at this from different perspective, from the gender perspective, from the loss of livelihoods and then, the action that we need from government and from individuals to see that we’re able to tackle the issue of insecurity, because these are the major issue that’s affecting us currently and we are seeing it all around. And so, in where I’m from, Nigeria, people are seeing it as an ethnic or religion issue, because those are the things that built our place. Because in a sector like Nigeria, where we have different regions, different culture, it affects the peace and security, because little, or very few people, are seeing it from the environmental perspective and that is what is bringing the conflict here now, because people are seeing it that this is a political, ethnic, religion, but not ever mental issues.

So, that is why we need to educate the people, to get to know what is happening around them, because if you are not educating, of course, you can’t find a solution. You don’t even know that it’s a problem at the first instance. So, we need to educate the people to get them a readiness mechanism for them to understand the fact that this is our reality, and we have to stand against it with different actions that are necessary. Thank you.

Dr Robert Falkner

Wonderful, thank you, Adenike. Last, but not least, Glada, your five minutes.

Glada Lahn

Thank you, Robert, and thank you, Adenike and Dan, for those insights. So, I wanted to start by really reinforcing what Dan said about, you know, climate change and environmental degradation not instigating conflict in itself, but rather playing a role in conflict due to our society’s inability to co-operate or plan long-term. And this is a, you know, this is a huge problem in the Middle East and North Africa region, which I’m going to talk about, and as you said, as well, conflict cripples the ability to build that resilience to have those long-term plans and, also, to co-operate across boundaries, ‘cause of course, the environment and climate has no respect for political borders.

So, maybe I can provide a little bit of flesh to the bones on this idea of interactions between climate and conflict in the region. There’s lots to say about it. I mean, you can talk about the weaponization of environment in recent conflicts, but I thought I’d concentrate on just a few examples, really, where environmental events have provoked public protest, often violent, and the reasons for that.

I mean, in the MENA region we’ve seen so much war, conflict and human displacement over the last decade. It’s a region where there is more than 13 million, you know, displaced or made refugees in the region and the – and you’ve also got this large economic dependence on oil and gas rents, which I’ll come to later. So, there’s some specific dynamics that are in the mix here when we’re talking about climate change and, also, the way that global shifts in the economy will affect these countries and their ability to build resilience.

So, first of all, we could think about slow onset stresses, and I thought I’d mention Syria because there was a number of papers over – you know, a few years ago, on the link between climate change and the Syrian war. I’d be very, very reluctant to attribute the conflict to climate change, but there was a role, in terms of years of drought causing migration of rural populations into the urban areas, putting pressure on municipal services and social cohesion, which, you know, several Syrians have said to me certainly played a role in – leading up to the protests and the oppressive response to those.

But I think, you know, it underscores how we have to think about the governance, the mismanagement of water that had preceded that, particularly – I mean, there’s several things to consider, the lack of transboundary co-operation between Turkey, Syria and Iraq, which continues to cause great stress to rural dwellers and farmers in that region. The neglect of the rural areas, the inequality in water distribution and issues like this, also all – and economic reforms, which were seen to increase that inequality.

And that comes to the other role of environmental disasters and damage, which anger people, and that’s when it directly implicates a government, a regime, in corrupt practices, in poor management, when it underscores that and you’ve seen that in events like the mass water poisonings in Southern Iraq in 2018, in Basra, where you had, like, about 118,000 people hospitalised because of the contamination. Now, that wasn’t only due to climate change. I feel that played some role, but it was the, you know, the treatment plants that were not working, for reasons of corruption and disrepair and neglect. There was the – again, a poor transboundary management causing the salinisation of the water, but it was – it led to the violent protests, because Basra is an oil rich province, you know, people are very aware of the acute inequalities between those that have the prestige, the patronage networks, and those that don’t. And unemployment and frustrations over corruption, of course, were underlying those protests.

So, there’s that trigger context and you saw it with the forest fires in Lebanon, as well, and the two October 19 protest movements that took place, both in Lebanon and Iraq, were very linked to issues like power outages, yeah, poor provision for waste disposal and water management.

So, I think looking forward, just to say one thing about transition. So, there is a fear in countries that are highly dependent on oil and gas, that they’re going to lose out and that this transition’s happening too quickly, it’s unfair and that they won’t be able to diversify fast enough. Again, coming back to Iraq, its, you know, its government is 90% or more dependent on those oil revenues for everything it spends. So, I just wanted to throw that in the mix and to – for us to think about what countries and governments do when they’re facing desperate times, especially given that those export revenues need to pay for food, highly, highly food dependent region. And with droughts happening in other parts of the world, price rising – and the prices rising for food, as we see currently with the Russia-Ukraine war, those tensions will be more acute.

Dr Robert Falkner

Great, thank you so much, Glada. Okay, I can see a few questions coming online, but I’ll give you a moment to think about your questions. Please do raise your hand if you would like to put a question and if I call anyone from the audience, please state your name and perhaps your affiliation, so we know who’s speaking. But I’ll give you a moment just to reflect on your question, but do get them ready.

I’ll start off with my own question that I want to put to the three panellists. We’ve heard from several of you now that the link between climate change and conflict is often a very local link and it’s happening on the ground, it’s happening in Nigeria, it’s happening around Lake Chad, it’s happening in the Middle East. It revolves and it originates in conflicts over local resources. So, in some ways, one could argue that the answer, therefore, the policy solution has to be also very local, has to be rooted in – as we heard from Nigeria, Adenike spoke about creating ‘sustainable livelihoods’ that are lasting and that are resilient. But I want to ask you, since this is Chatham House, so, where does the international come into this? In what ways is this a truly international challenge and what roles do international organisations play here? How should we think about this nexus here between the international and the local? I want to throw this open for the whole panel, and so reversing the order, perhaps, Adenike, do you want to go first on this?

Oladosu Adenike Titilope

Okay, thank you so much. Very good question that you just mentioned that – because stopping the climate change crisis, no-one could solve that crisis. It all has to be a collective way of solving the crisis and a very good example is that of the Lake Chad issue. They cannot avoid their need for international support, as well as local support, looking at, also, projects like The Great Green Wall. Maybe one of those things that wouldn’t have made this project a reality is because we are not involving those at the grassroots to champion the solutions. We are not involving them and, yet we want to realise the solution. It’s not possible that way. We have to align with the grassroots people and that is why whenever we carry out our action, we try to liaise with the grassroots people to see that it becomes successful.

And one major thing why we also need to not be involved, is also not using military action instead of climate action, because the peace and – the conflict that’s happening, we are seeing more military action. In West Africa we are seeing foreign agency, or international agencies, deploying a military post to that region, which shouldn’t be so. You know, such solutions could – should come from the local communities that are being impacted. They know the reality of the crisis that they are faced with, and they can solve the issues if they are given the chance, the space to do all of the solutions themselves.

And so, we have to look inward, that military action wouldn’t solve the problem, whether it’s this or all environmental crisis that are caused by climate change crisis. So, it’s not by military crisis, it’s an environmental crisis and so, that is why when we are bringing international solution, we all have to localise it in the grassroots to see that it’s fit into the larger solutions that we are bringing onboard, because the IPCC reports mentioned about ‘maladaptation’. And so, maladaptation comes into place, because we are not integrating the grassroots submission into the larger solutions that we are bringing onboard. So, inasmuch as we need international co-operation, multilateralism, we also need to look at the grassroots level, which of the solution is going to suit best and, also, creating called climate finance, because without climate finance, there is no way we could carry out our climate action. There is no way it could build resonance. There is no way we could have justice that we need and, so, all of this have to be put in place to see that we have the successful solutions that fit into the scenario. Yeah, thank you.

Dr Robert Falkner

Great, thank you very much. Glada, Adenike mentioned the tendency, or the temptation, to go for military solutions, particularly, as you’ve mentioned, the situation in Syria, where it was a military conflict that resulted from various environmental and political stresses. How do you interpret the role that military solutions can play here?

Glada Lahn

Yeah, I would definitely just stress that the conflicts that we see in the Middle East and North Africa and in many other places, they’re not happening in a vacuum. You know, they’re fuelled by various, both regional, political, manoeuvres and international sales of weapons, support for oppressive regimes without any conditionality. So, there is – I think there’s a very, very strong need for international donors and financiers who are also trying to promote climate resilience, to look at their policies across the board and seeing whether these are cohesive or whether, you know, they are actually undoing some of the good actions that they’re trying to fund on the ground.

And secondly, in terms of that on the ground action, just to come to Adenike’s point about local actors. One of the very strong recommendations that came from our consultations with many experts in the MENA region was for actors like the EU and the multilateral development banks to work much more closely to empower municipalities and CSOs, civil society organisations, who are often highly constrained, both in terms of resources and their legal abilities. So, that – and to connect them, hopefully, with national government efforts, as well. But as you say, action has – you know, it – the first response to some of these crises has to happen at the local level and at the moment, they’re not and the response capacity is weak.

Dr Robert Falkner

Dan, same question to you, how do you define the international responsibility in this field, particularly with regard to international organisations?

Dan Smith

Yeah, I think there’s so many places to jump into it, but it’s – and, you know, you’re going to have to put up your hand to stop me at a certain point, because the list gets quite long. But take Egypt in 2011, Tahrir Square, people are holding up banners which say, “For bread and dignity,” and where does the food part of that come from? It comes from wildfires in Russia the year before, and it comes from an extraordinarily wet growing season in China the year before, and it comes from a US shift of a lot of farmland that had been used for growing crops, to biofuels. So, a well-intentioned policy and a couple of effects of particular weather systems producing food price volatility on a global scale, which couldn’t be handled by some countries, particularly those which are importing a lot of food and then subsidising the price of staples for their populations, such as Egypt.

So, there’s – just as there is a story about if you’re telling the story of the Syrian conflict, if you leave nature out of it, you’re not telling the whole story, the same with the beginning of the Arab Spring in Egypt. It’s just that the local was in three different pla – four different places, if you include Egypt. A similar effect is going to be seen with Ukraine now. I mean, look at India, the impact of climate change on the wheat harvest in India, the – at the same time as the food is being blockaded, with worse fears about what may happen next year if the fertiliser doesn’t get into the ground in Ukraine during the growing season this year. So, there’s a lot of impacts that combine together and yes, it’s local in every case, it’s individual in every case, it’s affecting human wellbeing, but if the international context is not conducive to co-operation or to handling these issues, everything gets particularly serious.

Then, addition, there’s mitigation of carbon emission – greenhouse gas emissions in order to address some of the root causes. Adaptation is a local thing, but the financing for adaptation will very often have to be international and the management of the conflicts, which arise when things have been gotten wrong, will certainly involve a local element. If it doesn’t, it’s going to go wrong. But again, it very often needs international financing, international support. It may need a peacekeeping force and so on. So, all the time that you’re talking about the local, you should also be talking about the international and vice versa, as well. There is a red thread connecting them all the time.

Dr Robert Falkner

Very good, thank you. Okay, let’s now take questions from the audience, both in the room and online. I’ll try and take two or three together and mix it, also, with online questions. Maybe start over there, the gentleman with the white shirt.

Jeevan Vasagar

Okay, I have a question.

Dr Robert Falkner

The microphone’s coming, just a moment.

Jeevan Vasagar

Okay, I have a question for the panel about if you – about the conflict in Ukraine. So, the European response appears to be pretty clear, in the short-term putting in more gas, medium-term stepping up its ambition on decarbonisation. What I’m interested in is what the response outside Europe might be, particularly in China and India.

Dr Robert Falkner

That’s great, thank you, and if you feel like if you can state your name and affiliation?

Jeevan Vasagar

Sure, yeah, I’m Jeevan Vasagar, I’m the Climate Editor at Tortoise Media.

Dr Robert Falkner

Wonderful, and I’m going to the Zoom Room, as it’s now known, and there’s a question from Kieran O’Meara. Now, let’s see if this experiment works. Kieran, are you able to put your question? Otherwise, I’ll read it out [pause]. This is a pause for dramatic effect. I’m checking my online feed here. No, I think it’s not working, so, on this occasion, I shall read the question, but then, we’ll try again another time. So, Kieran’s question is the following, “Can the global climate crisis and the conflict this phenomenon has caused be addressed without first addressing the issue of global justice, or can the current global order allow for the crisis to be assessed, without the structures of global justice being altered?” So, a big question that follows on from the very specific that you’ve just heard. Who would like to answer those two questions to start with? And I should mention, again, not all panellists have to answer all questions. Who would like to go first?

Glada Lahn

Maybe I’ll just say, on the Ukraine crisis, I mean, I think without knowing what the most recent announcements are, I would say that India and China would want to take the Russian oil and gas that’s not going to Europe. And I know there were some early statements from India that it would, kind of, provide, you know, more grain to the global economy, but then, found because of its drought, that it couldn’t actually do that and imposed some restrictions on exports. So, that’s what I see for now. I think – I mean, the US is playing an interesting game. I mean, traditional responses, in terms of Biden’s planned visit to Saudi and trying to encourage the production of more oil elsewhere, but at the same time, trying to promote solar production at home, in a short timeframe.

Dr Robert Falkner

Okay. Adenike, I can see you. Would you like to answer any of these two questions?

Oladosu Adenike Titilope

Yeah, thinking about the Ukraine and Russia clashes, or conflicts, that you see, oh, very well, the possible problem that it’s a weapon of mass destruction, because we are seeing it from what is happening currently, and the fact that climate change could also lead to conflict if we don’t deal with it, because it’s providing an enabling environment for violence, for conflict, for war. And one of the things that it builds is to affect our diversification, just like that of Nigeria, that have the different diversity and so, that of Ukraine to have shown us that we need to transit two or three renewable sources of energy that could help our systems to become resilient enough, because we could not – we cannot still take direct hits of inaction, while not dealing with the impact of climate change. And very well to mention about facts that voluntary commitment will take us nowhere. Until we start making commitments that we have no option than to do, then, that’s when we have headway towards winning the race against the climate change crisis.

And so, all commitment, all policies, have to be back up with different structures and so, we have to look forward to see that such scenario of the Ukraine and Russia crisis doesn’t exist again, doesn’t come up again, because the effect of one war, between these two countries, it’s felt by Africa. It’s felt by humanitarian aids that are needed to combat the climate change crisis. We are seeing it through different actions and we should realise number of money that have been spent in the Russian and Ukraine crisis, it’s affecting climate action. Because if such money is being used towards transitioning without funding loans, and it won’t solve any climate change crisis, won’t be seen as aggregating crisis, like the TiS issues, the insecurity of conflict issues. And so, if we don’t tackle the climate change crisis, we need to adapt the dire issue in the future that we might not be able to tackle, and so, that’s what I have for the question. Thank you.

Dr Robert Falkner

Thank you. Thank you. Dan, climate change is often portrayed as a justice issue.

Dan Smith

Hmmm hmm.

Dr Robert Falkner

How does that relate to the link with conflict?

Dan Smith

Sure.

Dr Robert Falkner

Where does the justice dimension…

Dan Smith

Well…

Dr Robert Falkner

…come into your thinking?

Dan Smith

…if I think about Kieran’s question, my reaction to it is completely different, based on the presence or absence of a single word and that word is first. So, if the question is, can we – can the global crisis be addressed without first addressing the question of global justice? My answer is, we can’t wait. And if the question, instead, were, can global cris – can the global environmental crisis be addressed without addressing global justice, my answer is, “Absolutely not.” It has to be a just and fair, as well, and a peaceful transition. Otherwise, it’s not going to work, right?

So, I see cluster – climate justice as being not only about a basic, kind of, ethical commitment towards fairness in society and between different societies. I see it, also, as being an issue about how you – how we make this enormous change work. It’s going to take a huge amount of effort. It’s going to take a lot of really good brains working together, but it’s also going to take a lot of people in their daily lives changing things and being committed into changing things, and that’s not just in the rich world. That’s not just thinking about, ooh, how I must be buying organic at Sainsbury’s or, you know, Waitrose or, in my case, ICA in that corner in Stock – around the corner, in Stockholm, where I live. It’s about everybody in different places changing their – the way that they live, both for adaptation purposes and, also, as part of mitigation and limiting greenhouse gas emissions. You can’t do that unless the process is inclusive and unless the results are, relatively speaking, fair. So, living in an unjust and unequal world, we have to address the questions of justice, alongside of addressing the questions of environment.

Dr Robert Falkner

May I just come in on that last point you raise? Does this also mean we have to compensate those that are currently holding fossil fuel assets that are being phased out? Does justice also demand that we compensate those that will lose out, in terms of their economic development potential?

Dan Smith

And personally, I wouldn’t start at the point of compensation, right, to say – because, I mean, I think there are people in this process who need – in this whole picture who need to be compensated. We could start by paying for some of the damage that we have done. But I wouldn’t start by thinking about compensation for fossil fuel assets and so on. I would rather think about what is the social change, what is the change which is going to be needed in these different countries, different places, including in the oil rich Middle East? What transitions and changes are going to be made? How can they be made peacefully and relatively fairly? No, I don’t think I want to, kind of, you know, fund super yacht habits of the super-rich because they happen to hold a whole lot of fossil fuel reserves.

Dr Robert Falkner

And you mentioned loss and damage, which is currently on the agenda again…

Dan Smith

Yes, exactly.

Dr Robert Falkner

…in Bonn, at the climate session.

Dan Smith

And about time…

Dr Robert Falkner

Which…

Dan Smith

…that it came back onto the…

Dr Robert Falkner

…has been…

Dan Smith

…agenda, as well.

Dr Robert Falkner

…on the agenda for a long time and Northern…

Dan Smith

Yeah.

Dr Robert Falkner

…countries have blocked that agenda. Okay, let me take some more questions. I’m always keen to bring a gender balance into the mix, so I’m going to take the lady here in the second row first and then, right next to you.

Nikki

Hi, my name is Nikki, I’m a student at King’s College. I have a question about this Ukraine-Russia situation. It has impact on global energy prices and a lot of countries are exploring diversification of their energy source. So, do you say there is a risk that some country might adopt a less clear energy, in a way, to kind of, shift their, you know, energy source mix in the short-term? And, also, about the, you know, the clear energy, you know, strategy, going forward. We see a lot of, you know, supply issues in these, like, renewable energy supply chains, in terms of, you know, some sort of materials that they needed to secure in the developing countries. So, do you see there is also risks there? Thank you.

Dr Robert Falkner

Great, thank you, and if you could just pass on the mic to the gentleman in the second row, next to it. I’m not sure, yeah, it should work.

Hugo Barker

Hi, Hugo Barker from Imperial. Last year I did research in a developing country that’s going to be hit significantly in their agricultural industry by climate change on the use of Agrible techs and I found the cost of energy was very low, the use of the Agrible techs had been beneficial to mitigating climate change, all these benefits. However, by the end of my research, I found that the current regulatory format of that country wouldn’t allow energy to be sold back to the grid, which made the whole thing not economically viable. I’m now advising on another project in another country with Agrible techs that’s having a similar bureaucratic kind of issue around they don’t actually recognise the technology. They don’t know if it’s energy production, or it’s agricultural.

My question to the panel is, well, two things, is do you think this bureaucratic issue is a limiting factor for the application of technology and, kind of, the limiting of climate change? And what would your advice be to, kind of, combating this, and especially in countries that may be suffering from corruption and other incentives?

Dr Robert Falkner

Good. I’ll bring in a third question, so that the panel can pick their favourite question. Was it – the gentleman there, in the last row? Yes, please.

Mark Schuber

Yes. Thank you, my name is Mark Schuber. I started and run an education NGO in Hong Kong, where I live. Going back, and this is a more macro question, I guess we had COP26 seven months ago now, roughly, to what degree would the panellists feel, or not, that this linkage of climate and conflict security was recognised by the participants at COP26? And to the degree it was recognised, to what degree do you feel like it was addressed with the plan, with timely action items?

Dr Robert Falkner

Three very good questions, indeed, which also raises the question, if I may add one, which is what role could the COP process play in addressing climate and conflict issues? So, first question on a rising conflict around the energy transition. You also mentioned conflict around scarce resources that are needed in the transition, the bureaucratic hurdles and then, finally, the COP26.

Glada Lahn

Okay.

Dr Robert Falkner

Take your pick.

Glada Lahn

I’ll have a go. There’s…

Dr Robert Falkner

Glada.

Glada Lahn

…so much there, so I’ll just, sort of, pick and choose. Yes, I think a lot of people feel that the Russia-Ukraine crisis has pushed things back, in terms of energy transition, with countries who have oil and gas resources and were thinking about maybe, you know, drawing those down or not issuing new production licences, are now going ahead. And there’s – it’s, kind of, enabled those with an interest in the industry to push forward with plans to invest in new acreage. Now, that logic seems pretty flawed, because what we need is more production now, I don’t doubt that, and more production of gas, in particular. But if you were investing in new acreage now, it’s not really going to be coming online for another five/ten years, you know, depending on the environment and the discovery.

So, I’d say yes, it’s enabled those interests to have a field day, but on the other hand, of course, it provides this very, very strong justification to think long-term about reducing dependence, and one would hope that an investment in efficiency and retrofitting and creating, you know, the kind of passive infrastructure, which would reduce radically – which would have radically reduced a dependence here in the UK, you know, actually gets a boost.

Just on the regulatory question and the policies and country – in developing countries that have long prevented large-scale implementation of renewable energy solutions that would make sense, including in the agricultural sector. Yes, you know, the financial stability of utilities, the lack of agrability of projects has been a problem and particularly, fuel subsidies. You know, where diesel prices are high enough to incentivise off-grid opportunities, that has happened. I mean, weirdly, there’s a lot of solar use in Yemen, for instance, for water pumping. Of course, not so sustainable, in terms of ground water levels, but it’s taken off because of the high diesel price and you see that in places in Africa, as well. Yes, there’s an opportunity to work around it, but it needs a lot of thought and I think you need to work on both sides, you know, both with the government and at the local level.

Just quickly on the climate – shall I stop there and – yeah.

Dr Robert Falkner

Let’s.

Glada Lahn

Sorry.

Dr Robert Falkner

You can come back in the very last round. Dan, the UN has been – the UN Climate Regime has been, perhaps, slow to recognise some of the importance of that link. Does it have a role to play?

Dan Smith

Perhaps slow.

Dr Robert Falkner

Yeah, phew.

Dan Smith

No, I think, I mean, I think the answer on COP26 is that, no, there was no real focus there and there was certainly nothing that was, kind of, actionable and actioned coming out of it. To be fair to the UK Government, it is one that has, for a long time and under different parties and under different Prime Ministers, taken seriously the link between climate change and insecurity. I don’t know if you remember, but I mean, it was a – the Labour Government that first took the issue to the UN Security Council in 2007, but when William Hague was Foreign Secretary, he declared climate change to be “One of the two great security challenges that we face in our time.”

I think, to be honest, that I would say that it is the environmental side of this pair that has had greater difficulty in taking on the security ramifications. Whereas you look on the security policy side, both amongst those with a kind of, relatively broad definition of security, that’s human security and so on, but also those sticking with a fairly narrow hard security definition, have understood that security – that climate change and other environmental effects have an impact on their operating environment. So, some of this starts from thinking about military bases. Some of it starts from thinking about in what context are they going to be operating in 20 or 30 years’ time? Actually, some parts of the military are going green quite quickly, because being self-reliant and sustainable makes a lot more strategic and tactical sense than having extended supply lines, which are vulnerable to interdiction and attack. And they also look at some of the societal impacts, as well.

So, NATO is starting a Centre of Excellence on Climate Change and Security. The Defence Concepts and Doctrines Centre at Shrivenham in the UK has been working on these issues for 15 years, at least, maybe longer. It’s the Environmentalists who very often, kind of, you know, gather their skirts around them at the term ‘security’ and they say, “Oh, gosh, you’re trying to securitise the issue.” As I said, “Nobody is bringing these issues together. These issues are together.” So, by not looking at it clearly in the environmental movements, environmental organisations, they’re really missing something. Can this move forward?

I think, you know, it will be interesting to see how this plays out with COP27 and COP28, this year in Egypt and next year in the UAE. I think it’s interesting, also, to look at what might happen with the Climate Security Mechanism, which is a small unit in a department of the UN, that’s there both to brief the agencies, but also to brief the Security Council. I think there is increasing recognition of this at the UN level, but the UN is a very, very complex beast. In the end, I think it will be member states who put this issue into probably COP27 – COP28, rather than COP27. Thank you.

Dr Robert Falkner

Very interesting. Adenike, did you want to add anything to this, or shall we – brief comment, or shall we move to the last question?

Oladosu Adenike Titilope

So, okay, I just want to add to it. When it was mentioned about con – climate and conflict and – in COP and I think I’ve represented Nigeria at COP25, COP26 and maybe, probably, COP27, maybe. And so, I did come towards the attention of climate and security. One of those things that I mentioned was about the climate finance women and – for women and girls and the rest. But I think it is an issue that we need to look inward into to see that we bring it to COP processes to see how we could deal with it.

And one important thing I also want to mention, it’s about the United Nations Security Councils that have to do with the peace, the security issue. Looking at the fact that we have only five permanent members that could only decide on these issues. There was a time that this issue on climate conflict came up, you know, but it was kept down, because probably, it’s not a reality for country in Global North or Global West to see, but it – to us, here in Africa, it’s a reality. And I think there is a call for us to bring in another structure that will enable every country to have a say at the Council meeting, to say that we bring in con – climate and conflict into the proper processes of conference of parties, to see how we could also denigrate those sort of issue that is affecting us, because it’s a issue that could grow into a bigger or larger crisis if we don’t deal with it. It could even resort to war. We saw it with the Darfur crisis that led to tens of thousands of people that died.

And so, if we don’t bring this kind of issue – if we don’t discuss it, if we don’t act on it at COP processes, it is possible that we might still be in the stage of still making statements, or still negotiating or [audio cuts out – 60:50]. So, we need to reshuffle or bring in different structures that recognise this issue in the broader now aspects, so that we could all talk about it at the scene of this crisis. Thank you.

Dr Robert Falkner

Adenike, you’re breaking up slightly, but it is actually the point where I do need to call this to a close, because we’ve reached the end of our allotted time, and there were a few more questions that I wanted to bring in. Apologies that we didn’t have more time for this, but I think we’ve covered important ground. We’ve moved swiftly from the local to the international and there’s now a chance, if you would like to join us upstairs, in the library, to continue the conversation with a drink in hand. So, please join me in thanking the panellists, both online and in the room [applause]. Thank you.