Editor’s Pick: 7 podcast episodes to understand Climate, Peace and Security
In this Editor’s Pick, we revisit six Climate Diplomacy Podcast episodes that offer an accessible introduction to CPS. Whether you are new to the field or looking for an audio-based refresher, these episodes provide a useful listening guide. Through interviews and expert discussions, the podcast unpacks key concepts, traces the evolution of the agenda and explores practical approaches to building peace and resilience in a changing climate.
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Episode 42 is an ideal starting point for anyone who wants to understand the basics of the CPS agenda and why climate risks matter for peacebuilding, development and humanitarian work. In a Q&A format, this episode addresses common questions spanning from meanings and definitions, through methodologies and approaches, to challenges and solutions to integrating climate, peace and security considerations into interventions on the ground.
To understand where the CPS agenda stands today, it helps to know how the discussions have evolved over time in key multilateral spaces. This episode, featuring Hafsa Maalim, provides a historical perspective on the role of the United Nations Security Council and other multilateral actors in recognising and addressing climate-related security risks. It outlines how awareness of the CPS nexus became a key topic of climate diplomacy, while also highlighting the political debates that will continue to shape the agenda in the coming years.
Livelihoods, or how people secure the necessities of life, are dependent on a healthy environment and a stable climate, making them particularly sensitive to climate and environmental crises. Episode 39 explains how climate and environmental pressures can undermine the ways people secure food, income and stability, and how these pressures interact with social and economic vulnerability. It shows how climate impacts can affect everyday security, resilience and prospects for peace through concrete examples in Mali, the Pacific and Kenya from the Weathering Risk initiative.
Climate change increasingly affects patterns of displacement and migration,, yet finance often struggles to reach the communities most exposed to climate and security risks. This special edition, with Andrew Harper, Special Advisor on Climate Action to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, offers an entry point into the links between climate mobility, humanitarian finance and protection. It also brings in important intersectional themes, including the role of women, youth and indigenous communities in shaping fairer and more effective responses.
This episode shifts the focus from understanding climate-security risks to action on the ground. It introduces the Weathering Risk Peace Pillar, an initiative launched in 2022 that translates climate-security foresight and analysis into peace programming. For listeners new to CPS, the episode shows how integrating climate risks into peace efforts can look like, with examples from Peace Pillar projects implemented in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and the Bay of Bengal. This ranges from supporting local partners to designing interventions that respond to conflict dynamics and climate impacts at the same time.
CPS is not only about identifying risks, but it is also about designing responses that support resilience and reduce the potential for conflict. In this episode, the conversation with Grazia Pacillo, Senior Scientist and Co-Lead of CGIAR FOCUS Climate Security, explores peace-positive approaches to climate action, including conflict sensitivity, tools to avoid maladaptation, partnerships and evidence on what works in practice. It is a useful reminder that well-designed climate programming can do more than address environmental pressures: it can also contribute to sustainable peace.
Finally, Episode 54 turns to a newer but increasingly important dimension of CPS: the information environment. Climate disinformation can undermine crisis response, erode trust and fuel security risks in today’s geopolitical climate. Through an interview with Jonah Thompson, EU policy manager at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the episode shows why information integrity matters for resilience, preparedness and social cohesion. It also looks at recent examples where misinformation outpaced emergency communications and explores how climate disinformation can weaken institutions such as NATO and the EU.
