This article was featured in a special publication produced by NATO’s Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence (CCASCOE)

Our work, especially with implementing partners in fragile contests, also shows however how climate and environmental action also offer entry points to foster cooperation. The Weathering Risk Peace Pillar integrates climate and environmental security into peace programming in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and the Bay of Bengal.

To better understand the value of integrated peace programming—how interventions can simultaneously build climate and environmental resilience and peace—monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) is a key focus of the initiative. As knowledge in this emerging field is still limited, it is crucial to build MEL expertise within project teams. Preliminary learnings from establishing and implementing individual project MEL plans include:

1. MEL approaches for integrated programming should prioritise climate and environmental security in order to measure outcomes across the different climate, environment, peace and security (CEPS) dimensions and capture their linkages. For this, it is important to overcome sectoral biases, such as an over-focus on peace indicators, to ensure that climate and environmental dimensions are sufficiently considered, for example through evaluating climate resilience with perception-based indicators. 
2. The complex linkages of the CEPS nexus can lead to highly complex theories of change. Simplifying problems into manageable components, including sub-theories, enhances more systematic programming and communication. 
3. Classic rigorous impact evaluations are often unfeasible in conflict contexts due to security, logistical and ethical challenges. MEL approaches must adapt to these conditions by using mixed-methods and qualitative approaches. Climate security assessments can help identify indicators, build a database and determine entry points for intervention and risk management. Focusing on “contribution to” rather than “cause of” peace and climate resilience is key, especially in people-to-people interactions, using methods like outcome harvesting, process tracing and perception surveys.
4. Shifting from proof of concept and data extraction to stakeholder dialogue to understand the impact of work in complex climate security contexts is vital. Storytelling can broaden MEL approaches, overcoming the challenge of collecting data on peace and climate resilience, while centring the impact stories around people and their security. 
5. There is a gap between funding and project realities of integrated programming, particularly in terms of funding periods and donor requirements versus the time needed to see the impact of peace programming. By emphasising intermediate outcomes, impact stories and learnings can showcase progress in shorter periods. Working with learning questions and indicators ensures that more long-term and ambitious impacts are targeted without promising unrealistic project outcomes.

The Peace Pillar’s ongoing lessons learned will be shared with practitioners and policymakers through a climate security M&E learning lab to promote learning and transparency and develop a growing evidence base to enable more targeted and systematic integrated peace programming. This work can also feed into the CCASCOE climate security knowledge hub and inform collaboration among NATO Allies and partners. Exploring approaches to MEL in CCASCOE’s work would support continuous learning and improvement of strategies, adaptation to changing climate security conditions, knowledge sharing and awareness raising, and risk management of unintended consequences of climate security interventions.