Climate security is an essential conceptual framework to understand the global interplay of biophysical and socioeconomic forces that threaten our planet. Indeed, it is so important that new currents of science, politics, and advocacy make refining definitions a necessity.

Take USAID’s recently released Climate Strategy. It defines climate security as “The ways in which the impacts of, and responses to, climate change alter the socioeconomic and geopolitical systems that affect peace and security.” The agency’s reframing pushes beyond viewing climate change primarily as a driver of conflict, and instead directly acknowledges the many ways climate change, conflict, and security interact.

Considering climate and conflict as interrelated dynamics is not merely a matter of linguistic fidelity, it’s a critical path for effective development response. Existing framings leave gaps in understanding and action that do not fully capture that conflict and violence affect climate change vulnerability and that climate interventions can inadvertently trigger conflict.

Moreover, as is clear in multiple lines of USAID effort, climate change can be a source of cooperation and leveraged in peacebuilding efforts. These dynamics underscore the need to think about climate security in the broadest terms possible. Doing so not only more accurately captures the relationship between climate change and security, it also opens up new avenues for effective interventions.

Why Reassess?

For years, the dominant framing of climate security has labeled climate change a “threat multiplier.” This approach clarified that the link between climate change and security outcomes are not causal, but can exacerbate conflict risk and outcomes.

To fully capture the dynamic interaction between climate change, conflict, and security, it is more precise to conceptualize climate security as overlapping and compounding risk factors rather than as a direct and linear phenomenon. In other words, climate change heightens conflict risks and impacts while conflict decreases adaptive capacity to climate shocks. This is especially true for those who already face other vulnerability factors such as weak governance or unreliable income sources.

This cyclical risk has impacts from the global to the household scale. The impacts of climate change can contribute to outcomes as localized as gender-based violence or as dispersed as increasing geopolitical tensions. One need look no further than the second-order effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to understand the dangerous ways climate change and conflict converge, compound, and cascade: Russia’s invasion has dramatically decreased the global supply of grain, increased the cost of energy and agricultural inputs and, in turn, increased the cost of food, sometimes radically. And all these events have occurred at a point in time when unprecedented drought was already creating catastrophic food insecurity independent of the invasion (e.g., in the Horn of Africa). In the dangerous, potentially perpetuating cycle of climate change and conflict, risk compounds. 

Addressing Climate Security through Development

Climate change impacts cannot be considered independently of broader social, economic, and political systems. Likewise, there is also no one-size-fits-all approach to climate security.

Depending on the context, the most effective intervention could be supporting resource governance (e.g., developing resource sharing agreements that promote equitable access to water and land), providing technical products (e.g., delivering seasonal forecasting), or promoting supply side interventions that address disparities in resource access (e.g., increased water access infrastructure) amongst many other approaches. Indeed, the most effective programmatic efforts will be integrated and address existing fragilities. For example, USAID efforts in Uganda demonstrate that environmental peacebuilding enables outcomes that increase communities’ security while also supporting climate change resilience.

In practice this means that traditional silos need to be broken down. A peacebuilding program that strengthens ties between herders and pastoralists without building in collaborative efforts to address changing resource availability risks failure as climate puts even greater stress on biophysical and socioeconomic systems.

Put simply, without understanding climatic risks, we risk misunderstanding the conflict. In the same vein, without full appreciation of the conflict risks, climate interventions, no matter how technically sound, risk failure or creating ‘backdraft effects’ (i.e., unintended consequences that drive conflict).

Bridging all of these concerns and considerations requires a carefully calibrated, sequenced, and layered response that ensures that the conflict context informs climate change efforts and the climatic context informs approaches to conflict. Such an approach goes well beyond responding to the increased conflict risks that stem from climate shocks. Addressing climate security requires explicitly supporting people whose vulnerability to climate is exacerbated by lasting impacts of conflict and violence.

Addressing climate security, in other words, is also a matter of climate justice. And the essential redefinition of climate security to encompass its complexity is the best place to start.