The climate security practices project from the Planetary Security Initiative seeks to open up a new and vital area of analysis in the climate security community: When it comes to action, what works, and what doesn’t?

The recommendations of the report follow three main lines:

Firstly, because efforts to undertake action in this field are still developing, all actors working within it should more systemically report on relevant aspects of their projects to enhance our understanding of the field. Likewise, attempts should be made across organisations to learn from others working in the field

Secondly, when working in regions affected by climate change, military actors must shift their focus onto the climate-security nexus as one that often underpins other causes of insecurity like governance failure, inequality and marginalisation. In order to work within this paradigm, military actors could work more extensively with civilian actors on environmental peacebuilding and climate adaptation and mitigation projects.

Lastly, because the results of work in the climate-security nexus are not easily measured quantitatively or in a results-based manner, it is imperative for policymakers to focus on the bigger picture. This often means undertaking projects which have a higher risk of failure as a part of the learning process. However, this should go hand in hand with development in monitoring and evaluation methodologies to ensure that in the long-term climate-security interventions can be accurately monitored.

Climate-security practices hold a lot of potential and will grow in importance. Now it is necessary for the community of practice in the field to increase our understanding and mutual learning about the impact of these practices.

Download the report here.  

This description was excerpted from planetarysecurityinitiative.org.