Climate change is a defining global issue of our time. In a recent address to the UN Security Council, John Kerry, the U.S. presidential envoy for climate, remarked that climate change is “the challenge of all of our generations.” An important dimension of the challenge presented by climate change concerns its implications for state and human security.

Over the past several decades, scholars and policy makers have dedicated a considerable amount of time and other resources to understanding the connections between security and climate change. The interplay between climate change and terrorism is a dimension of the climate-security nexus that continues to attract significant interest in this regard.

Climate change and terrorism nexus

In my recent review piece Climate Change-Terrorism Nexus? A Preliminary Review/Analysis of the Literature, I explore the nexus between climate change and terrorism. These questions guided my review:

1. What does the literature say about the link and/or lack thereof between climate change and terrorism?
2. What is the publication trend for literature that explore the relationship between climate change and terrorism?
3. What insight(s) for future policy and/or research?

In reviewing numerous and diverse types of material published between January 2000 and February 2020, I found a noticeable increase over time in the number of publications focusing on these topics. My review also establishes that the climate change-terrorism nexus plays out in two ways, one a simple, indirect relationship and the other a complex, cyclical relationship.

First, because climate change acts as a threat multiplier, it can worsen existing social vulnerability if adaptation and/or mitigation measures are not put in place to help reduce such vulnerability and/or build resilience. Social vulnerability has been linked to both the spread of terrorism as well as the likelihood that an individual may be recruited to join a terrorist group. For example, Boko Haram has been known to recruit members from poverty-stricken youth. Thus, addressing poverty and climate change’s impact on poor people’s livelihoods are ways to starve Boko Haram of membership.

Second, the climate change-terrorism nexus has a complex, feedback loop relationship in which climate change drives and/or enables terrorism, which in turn drives climate change. This cycle is particularly concerning in pyro-terrorism, where terrorists use arson to terrorize a people and/or government for socio-political reasons. I note in the review that if pyro-terrorism were to be committed on a grand scale, it would undoubtedly contribute to climate change through emission of greenhouse gases. Considering the feedback-loop relationship between climate change and terrorism, the cycle would likely continue until some intervention disrupts it. With forest fires expected to get worse in terms of frequency and intensity as climate changes, vulnerability of forests to terrorist attacks remains a real concern for governments across the globe.

Leveraging existing knowledge to drive context-specific action

In addition to establishing these two relationships of the climate change-terrorism nexus, I found that much of the literature focuses on explaining the nexus, with little attention on addressing its dangerous aspects.

To this end, I first recommend that future research should focus on understanding how to best leverage existing knowledge on the nexus to inform context-specific adaptation and/or mitigation intervention(s) at multiple scales across the globe. This will ensure that unnecessary duplication of past research is kept at minimum, if not eliminated. It will also hasten climate action by not reinventing the wheel.

Second, concerning the climate-terrorism nexus specifically, the focus of future scholarship should be on understanding how to effectively reduce social vulnerability and build resilience in specific contexts, especially those that have a history of terroristic activities. This calls for paying attention to how social vulnerability varies according to the context. Counterterrorism initiatives aimed at addressing social vulnerability as an enabler or driver of terrorism are likely to be more effective if they are context-specific.

In Kenya (and elsewhere in the horn of Africa), where both terrorism and climate change are ongoing concerns, this means tackling issues such as poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, water insecurity, and insecurity regarding land tenure/use among others, in addition to the usual military interventions.

For the current U.S. administration, former President Obama’s administration’s handling of al-Shabaab with a multipronged and multilateral approach provides a useful example of how to leverage both hard and soft power in countering terrorism. In the context of the climate-terrorism nexus, the administration applied soft power in the form of diplomacy with regional actors and tackled social vulnerability by building resilience against environmental and human insecurity. In terms of hard power, operating within bilateral (e.g., the U.S. security relationship with Kenya) and multilateral (e.g., the U.S. and African Union peace and security partnership) arrangements, the Obama administration relied on several strategies including intelligence sharing, commando raids, and drone strikes. Well thought out and effectively implemented multipronged efforts promise better results in countries experiencing terrorism. Thus, the Biden administration should consider adopting this approach with some modifications—curbing excesses such as the killing of civilians by drone strikes in places such as Somalia, for example.

Specifically, I recommend rethinking prevailing notions of hard power interventions including the now infamous areas of active hostilities approach to drone strikes and commando raids introduced during the Obama administration and continued under the Trump administration. On the surface, President Biden’s recent restrictions on drone strikes reflects his appreciation of the need for a better approach and willingness to explore alternatives. However, one should not lose sight of the fact that the restriction is an interim intervention from the President. It does not eliminate the use of drone strikes. Under the Obama administration, drone strikes were limited to areas of active hostilities. But in practice, areas of active hostilities have been defined broadly to include civilian-populated areas, often leading to high toll of civilian casualties associated with drone strikes. Therefore, the Biden administration should not simply limit drone strikes while retaining the current approach (i.e., strikes being limited to areas of active hostilities). Instead, President Biden should work towards developing a more refined people-centered approach that, among other things, specifically limits drone strikes to civilian-free areas that are known to serve as hideouts for militants. To ensure its effectiveness and foster buy-in by stakeholders, this work should involve the engagement of local, national, regional, and global actors in the concerned areas around the world.

Moreover, my review affirms that it is imperative that climate change adaptation/mitigation be mainstreamed and made a key aspect of global counterterrorism strategy by all concerned actors. President Joe Biden’s science-oriented approach to policy formulation and implementation promises a future characterized by increasingly careful and nuanced policies, and ones informed by local contexts. Indeed, the U.S. President’s elevation of climate change as a security issue is a well-deserved and much-needed opportunity for climate action.