adelphi and partners hold climate-fragility training in Nepal
Nepal and Afghanistan face a number of serious climate-fragility risks, so adelphi brought together regional government officials and NGO experts for a training in Kathmandu on 9 November 2019.
Nepal and Afghanistan – as well as their South Asian neighbours - face a number of serious climate-fragility risks. For example, in Nepal, floods and landslides have made it harder for some people to make a living and forced them to consider migrating to other areas of the country. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, increasingly frequent droughts are encouraging farmers to resort to more drought-resistant crops, such as poppy plants, which can boost the drug economy.
In order to improve the region’s ability to adapt to climate change, adelphi, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and Practical Action Nepal brought together experts from the Afghani and Nepalese governments, as well as local and national civil society organisations, international organisations and donors, and the academia, to analyse and discuss the knock-on consequences of climate change.
The training, which took place at the Hotel Greenwich in Kathmandu on November 9th, was based on an Integrated Climate-Fragility Risk Assessment tool that links peacebuilding and climate change adaption, developed by UNEP and adelphi as part of the EU-funded Climate Change and Fragility project.
Participants highlighted the importance of addressing the social dimension of climate challenges and gave examples of specific experiences and projects at the nexus of climate and security. As Dr. Beatrice Mosello of adelphi put it, “It is important to understand how climate change interacts with other drivers or risk. Without quantifying these trends, the world will continue to underestimate the scale of climate change.”
This was just the first of several trainings and workshops in South Asia planned for the rest of 2019. Stay tuned for the launch of adelphi’s Climate Security Expert Network website, where you can find fact sheets and detailed risk reports on the climate-fragility risks in chosen countries.
A Toolkit for Addressing Climate Fragility Risks
Climate change is increasingly challenging global security and undermining peacebuilding efforts. UN Environment and the European Union have joined forces to address these challenges. With the support of adelphi, they have developed a toolkit on ‘Addressing climate-fragility risks’. This toolkit facilitates the development and implementation of strategies, policies, and projects that seek to build resilience by linking climate change adaptation, peacebuilding, and sustainable livelihoods, focusing on the pilot countries Sudan and Nepal.
Shoring up Stability in Niger
The new study Shoring up Stability demonstrates, for the first time, how climate change interacts with conflict and exacerbates the humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad region. To launch the report and discuss its findings with local policy-makers, experts and practitioners, the German Embassy in Niger, adelphi and CNESS co-organised a launch event on 24 October in Niamey. Insights from Niger point to the importance of investing in governance rather than technical fixes.
Nobody needs to be convinced that climate change affects our very existence and security. However, experts are interested to know how climate change affects security at a global level and what the EU can do in that regard. This was the main aim of the European Security and Defence College (ESDC) Climate Change and Security Course co-organised by the French Institute for Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN) and adelphi, as part of the Climate Diplomacy initiative supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, which took place in Brussels from 21 to 23 October 2019.
Even as the US officially pulled out of the Paris Agreement earlier this week, it might be too soon to lose hope on the country's long-term commitments to climate action. If a Democrat wins the upcoming presidential elections, which are set for November 2020, a reaccession process could begin shortly after the withdrawal is complete. In the meantime, however, the effect on trade policy could be significant.