Weathering Risk Peace Pillar: Pioneering systemic climate-security informed peace-building

Evidence from around the world demonstrates that climate change is intimately connected to conflict and insecurity. Empirical analysis has shown that through indirect impacts, including livelihood loss, water and food insecurity, migration patterns, and resource disputes, climate change exacerbates the effects of conflict on populations. But this is not inevitable. An overarching phenomenon that is reconfiguring our relationship with the natural world, climate change also contains opportunities to improve and even prevent conflict situations. Shared resources and common experiences are both avenues through which peace can be built, in all corners of the planet. Framed by the extensive research conducted in Weathering Risk, the Peace Pillar bridges analysis with action, supporting the activities of international peacebuilding organisations and local actors across the world. The Peace Pillar is implementing a number of pilot projects in regions severely affected by conflict and climate risks, transforming environmental challenges into opportunities to promote peace.

Weaving climate and environmental considerations into programming

The project is conducted in partnership with three renowned peacebuilding organisations and evaluation experts and funded by the German Federal Foreign Office’s Crisis Prevention, Stabilisation & Peacebuilding Unit. adelphi leads, manages and coordinates the consortium’s activities in streamlining a climate, environment, and resource-sensitive approach for locally implemented projects. To this end, the adelphi team ensures that climate and environmental factors are adequately and sufficiently woven into the peacebuilding projects aiming for measurable impacts. With rigorous quantitative or innovative mixed-methods evaluation, the project aims to inform policymakers, donors, governments, and implementing organisations of the potential that lies in climate-risk informed peace programming with the overarching goal of bringing about tangible, measurable impact, drawn from the pilot studies.

Facilitating, coordinating, exchanging

adelphi provides tailored guidance for the German Federal Foreign Office and on-demand support to consortium partners regarding the implementation of climate informed peace-building. adelphi’s responsibilities in the consortium range from administrative activities including the examination and selection of suitable pilot projects, contractual and financial management, and the development of outreach and communication formats. Utilising its years of expertise, adelphi will also review questionnaires and material for dialogue processes, facilitate knowledge sharing and the provision of expertise on climate security (risk assessments).

Cutting edge research at adelphi

adelphi is an experienced climate security actor that led Weathering Risk, under which a comprehensive methodology to assess climate security risks was developed and applied as well as a long history in formulating targeted, actionable policy recommendations. The Peace Pillar initiative is the first step in realising these recommendations, leading the way in moving forward climate-risk informed peace programming globally.