Simone Bunse & Claire McAllister: Securing peace in a time of environmental crisis

Russia’s war in Ukraine is not only a humanitarian catastrophe that challenges the geopolitical order and Europe’s security architecture but also an ecological disaster. As such, it is adding to the already daunting security risks posed by a set of acute environmental crises afflicting the planet.

Modern wars have manifold direct environmental impacts. Militaries’ carbon footprints are huge. Armed conflict destroys natural habitats and critical infrastructure that protects the environment including wastewater, gas and oil pipelines and storage sites for fuel and industrial waste. Soil, air and water pollution from conflicts can take decades to address. And of course the past year has witnessed high-intensity fighting around the Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plants. The environmental impacts of the war in Ukraine have been carefully documented by a number of organizations, such as the Zoï Environment Network.

Ukraine is not alone. It is just one of more than 50 armed conflicts today, a number that has more than doubled in the past 10 years. In 2022, global military spending reached a record high of 2,24 trillion USD.

The links between environmental damage and insecurity are far larger and more complex however than the direct impacts of war. The impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are not only changing the security landscape but also what it means to build and maintain peace. Environmental stresses are putting pressures on lives and livelihoods that, in already fragile economic or social contexts, undermine human security and in certain cases can lead to conflict. These stresses are also cascading into regions far from their origin, reverberating across the globe. The security risks linked to pollution and other emerging environmental problems are only starting to be explored.

So how do we reduce insecurity in a new era of environmental risk?

Three principles must guide policy responses. First, these twin security and environment crises demand new thinking. This starts with understanding that addressing the root causes of environmental degradation is essential to our long-term security. It also means new approaches. Climate action needs to, at a minimum, be conflict-sensitive. Ideally, it should be peace positive. Peace and conflict initiatives need to support environmental outcomes.  This means a  shift toward more complex interventions and investments in preparedness and resilience in the most fragile settings. Countries need to examine how best to integrate their foreign and security, development, defense and environmental policy tools, and find greater synergies between them.

Second, new cooperation frameworks, new modes of collaboration and diplomacy are needed. Many multilateral and regional organizations (such as the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) recognize the risks posed by the twin environmental and security crises, but have not operationalized their responses consistently. Good practice needs to be better identified, shared and scaled up. Multidisciplinary teams must be the norm and not the exception. Initiatives at national level need to connect local knowledge to international resources.. Collaboration between different levels, actors and sectors holds the best promise to produce and scale up innovative solutions to address these risks.

Third, the urgent transitions necessary to create greener societies must be just and peaceful. Poorly designed adaptation or projects can create negative social consequences, deepening existing divisions or insecurity in fragile communities.  Environmental policies must be designed and implemented in transparent and inclusive ways and embrace adaptive governance approaches, shifting course when policies are not working. At the geopolitical level, this requires providing support for economies that rely on fossil fuel rents or are heavily dependent on fossil fuels for energy to transition peacefully to new economic models. It also means meeting climate finance targets and addressing the current uneven distribution of that finance.

The war in Ukraine is undermining international cooperation to address the existential risks of climate change and diverting crucial resources away from development, peacebuilding and climate action. But it also underscores how interlinked our environment and our security are. Securing peace in a time of environmental crisis means not only recognizing these interlinkages but actively integrating development, foreign, security, defense and environmental policy tools to address them.