Climate change is increasingly viewed as the world’s greatest global security risk. However, the UN Security Council (UNSC) has not consistently or systematically addressed climate-related security risks. In practice, the UNSC has predominantly focused on crisis management and hard security interventions but more recently the demand for investment in conflict prevention has grown rapidly. Supported by the confidence in global action on climate change generated by the Paris Agreement, there is a window of opportunity for the UNSC to take action on climate security. That is, the management of the direct and indirect consequences of inadequate or mismanaged climate mitigation and adaptation.

This volume brings together insights on the interactions between environmental change and human security in the Middle East and Africa. These regions face particular challenges in relation to environmental degradation, the decline of natural resources and consequent risks to current and future human security.

In an article recently published in Regional Environmental Change, Uche Okpara, Lindsay Stringer, and Andrews Dougill discuss the development and application of a climate-water conflict vulnerability index to assess communities along the southeastern shores of Lake Chad in the Republic of Congo.

The potential links between climate change and conflict have received much attention in recent years, but there is little consensus on the issue in the relevant literature. So far, few methodological reflections exist in climate–conflict research. This is unfortunate given the tremendous innovations in methods the research field has experienced in recent years and the potential of diverse methods to shed light on different aspects of the subject matter, thereby increasing our understanding of potential climate–conflict links.