Securing Peace in a Time of Environmental Crisis–The Research Agenda Emerging from the 2022 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development Policy Dialogues

Over the last decade, the annual Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development has grown into one of the key venues for discussions between policy makers, researchers, and practitioners from the Global North and South about the nexus between peace, security, and development. This discussion space, outside of formal institutional contexts, has brought forward innovative policy responses to protracted problems and contributed to policy processes. Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the UN Conference on the Human Environment and at the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the 2022 Stockholm Forum focused on the issue of how to secure peace in a time of environmental crisis.

The topic was inspired by SIPRI's flagship report Environment of Peace: Security in a new era of risk (Black et al., 2022) launched at the Forum. Exploring the complex challenges presented by converging environmental and security crises, the report offers principles and recommendations for managing the risks and setting the world on a more secure and sustainable course. Its findings provided the backdrop for the policy questions the Forum considered. This briefing summarizes key aspects of the crises, and then discusses core recommendations from the Stockholm Forum, and what they mean for future research.

Converging Security and Environmental Crises

In the past decade, armed conflicts involving states have roughly doubled, after a long period of decline (Pettersson et al., 2021). Deaths in armed conflicts and the number of displaced people have doubled over the same time (UNHCR 2021), and hunger is rising (von Grebmer et al., 2021). Military spending has increased to $2.1 trillion (Lopes da Silva et al., 2022). In Europe, Russia's Ukraine invasion has brought back war between sovereign states.

At the same time, climate change is driving extreme weather patterns across the world (Pörtner et al., 2022). Rising sea levels are creating risks for coastal cities and islands. Glaciers that provide drinking water for more than a billion people are melting (Park, 2021). Species are going extinct many times faster than the natural rate (Brondízio et al., 2019), 33% of the Earth's soils are already degraded (UN FAO, 2015), and plastic pollution is omnipresent (Carrington, 2020; Peng et al., 2018).

The policy challenge is huge. Governments need to simultaneously address the security impacts of growing environmental crises and deliver huge changes to protect the biosphere in a just and peaceful way. The 2022 Stockholm Forum considered ways to do so. In 60 sessions, 64 organizations, 293 speakers, and 3,072 participants discussed how to:

improve national and human security while restoring nature;

exploit the synergies between environmental action and peacebuilding, especially in fragile contexts;

ensure a just and peaceful transition to competitive, zero carbon economies;

design policy that addresses climate-related security risks and builds more resilient communities; and

strengthen international organizations to tackle this complex policy challenge. ¹

Toward Policy Action That Tackles the Twin Challenge

Four key themes cut across the forum sessions and mirrored many of the Principles and Recommendations in the Environment of Peace report (Black et al., 2022). What follows is a summary of the conclusions and policy proposals put forward at the Stockholm Forum for addressing the twin environmental and security crises.

Immediate Action, Long-Term Vision

First, immediate action needs to be combined with a long-term agenda that simultaneously restores environmental integrity and preserves peace. Carbon emission reductions (including by militaries) are urgent – and require policy makers to tackle the factors that currently hamper progress toward climate goals. Given that the Global North is responsible for 92% of excess CO2 emissions (Hickel, 2020), while enjoying privileges that developing countries can only aspire to, it must take ownership. This puts great pressure on democracies, which generate over 50% of greenhouse gas emissions (IDEA, 2021). Indeed, the future of democracy as a credible political system may well ride on its ability to effectively deal with an existential issue for humankind.

Flexible, conflict-sensitive climate financing to fragile contexts needs to be expanded. Despite the linkages between climate change and insecurity, data suggests that only 1/20th of climate funding goes to fragile or extremely fragile states (UNDP, 2021). Investors are discouraged by the high levels of risk and complexity encountered in conflict contexts. The conversation on investment risks needs to shift from the money donors may lose to what communities lose in the absence of intervention. This would allow for donor-beneficiary relationships to change into partnerships.

The twin security and environmental crises demand joint solutions. Greater flexibility from donors and reformed bureaucratic structures that enable multidimensional funding approaches are needed. Mitigation and adaptation interventions in fragile contexts need to be conflict sensitive, while peace and conflict initiatives require a climate and environmental dimension. This calls for a shift toward more complex, comprehensive interventions and more investment in preparedness and resilience. For example, innovative technologies can be employed more systematically to map conflict risk zones, resource availability, and climate data. This could help communities coordinate collective resource management, predict migration patterns, or prevent escalating tensions. Co-development of technology would bring the tech sector closer to problems it is trying to solve. Technology development combined with a sense of agency by local communities also promises to facilitate entrepreneurship that disincentivizes environmental destruction.

A long-term agenda should guide such initiatives. This requires rethinking the relationship between humans and nature, away from human extraction from nature and toward an understanding of humans as part of nature. Long-term investment should focus on governments’ capacity to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change and other environmental degradation. Strengthening national capacities includes financing peace and development in crisis contexts over prolonged time periods. Education is central to understanding the causes and impacts of climate change and to facilitate community engagement and actions that hold governments accountable.

Overall, the type of decisions needed is unprecedented: they involve short-term trade-offs for long-term benefits for life on earth. The Ukraine war has thus far overshadowed climate change debates and undermined action to accelerate the phaseout of fossil fuels. It underscores the urgency for policy makers to embrace immediate action guided by a long-term vision that protects the environment and builds peace.

New Frameworks of Cooperation

Second, new frameworks for cooperation are needed. Addressing these twin crises challenges international norms and practices, while presenting opportunities for unprecedented collaboration, coordination, and diplomacy. It may focus on multilateral organizations (e.g., the UN, EU, OSCE, or NATO) and their institutional responses to climate change and security risks. It may also form the basis of interregional dialogues and diplomacy, for example, between the EU and the African Union. Monitoring the implementation of the proposals by the Conference on the Future of Europe (Conference on the Future of Europe, 2022) and proposals to improve international cooperation at the 2024 Summit of the Future will be important in this context.

In addition to multilateral spheres, we need more initiatives at national level, and cooperation that bridges local knowledge and international resources. Collaboration between different levels and types of actors—from grassroots to multilateral international organizations and between practitioners, national policymakers, researchers, and local actors—holds the best promise to empower and produce innovative solutions that mitigate and prevent direct and indirect consequences of climate change.

A Just and Peaceful Transition from Fossil-Dependent to Green Societies

Third, the transitions away from fossil dependency must be managed carefully. They present both risks and opportunities for peace and security and impact all levels—from the geopolitical to the local. Countries’ energy choices come with different security implications. Conflict perspectives need to be incorporated systematically from global climate policies down to policy delivery mechanisms. Numerous Stockholm Forum discussions called for multifaceted policy approaches—meticulously designed, planned, and implemented to ensure they do not entrench existing inequalities and divisions or contribute to insecurity.

There are incentives to destroy the environment for profit or survival at all levels, from international corporations mining precious minerals to people using slash and burn farming techniques. When the economy of an entire community is based on an industry that is harmful to the environment, it cannot easily be replaced without social repercussions. Incentives need to be addressed to increase the effectiveness and sustainability of climate-conflict interventions.

At the political level, incentives inherent in countries’ electoral cycles focus on the short- to medium-term. The temptation to subsidize fossil fuels to gain popular support and avoid economic deficits over the much-needed, long-term investments into greener energy is an example. Yet transitioning toward sustainable societies requires long-term planning. It also requires showcasing that climate action and economic development need not be mutually exclusive, particularly as new jobs emerge. Politicians should embrace and communicate both the challenges and the opportunities and empower people to make informed choices. Shifting the climate narrative away from fear, which paralyzes rather than motivates, is key. A discourse focused on the advantages of climate action holds greater promise to be effective. Climate journalism is an important channel through which innovative climate actions can be shared and new narratives for mobilization and action can be shaped.

Make Inclusion the Default

Fourth, inclusion at every decision-making level should be the default to address current environmental challenges and to ensure a just and equitable transition. At the project design and implementation level, women, Indigenous people, and young people—often the most affected by climate change and conflict—also lead in the development of initiatives to build resilience. But these are not always formally recognized or supported. Involving them in decision-making and implementation without reinforcing hierarchies must be a priority to ensure relevant and effective interventions. Women and girls’ roles as agents of change should be leveraged to educate and prepare communities for prevention and adaptation and to enhance community resilience.

At the policy level, the engagement of youth movements is an important driver for innovation. Legitimacy and effectiveness of action will be increased by including a wide variety of voices and actors, especially local grassroots perspectives. Youth groups are often seeking the type of uncomfortable conversations needed for substantive change and should therefore be meaningfully included in policy making. This requires decision-makers to actively listen to youth representatives, allowing a younger generation to lead and take ownership of their work, and to finance youth involvement, while breaking traditional norms of age hierarchy. Intergenerational partnerships are key, especially between the youth and traditional keepers of power and finance. They should be empowered to be an equal voice in all fora, from the local to the global.

What is Next: A Research Agenda That Supports Joined Up, Sustainable Solutions

Based on these conclusions and recommendations, four areas merit further research:

Inclusion: What inclusive processes (notably inclusion of youth, women, and Indigenous groups) have been effective in building peace and addressing climate- and environment-related security risks at either policy making or project implementation level? Why?

Governance: Where and how have the shortcomings that often affect countries’ performance in climate action (e.g., short-termism, cumbersome decision-making, policy capture) been addressed?

Finance: What mechanisms could enable or improve the flow of climate finance (both public and private) to fragile and conflict-affected states, and ensure that the money is spent in ways that support peacebuilding?

Project design and delivery: What works and why? What initiatives that address environment-related security risks seem promising, and why?

Alongside research, action is needed. Policy makers, practitioners, donors, and civil society must learn fast on all these fronts to stand a chance at developing effective, collective, sustainable solutions to the twin security and planetary crises. There is a need to move from pilot projects to mainstreaming efforts to address these interlinked crises at a program level. By taking action on the ground, both the policy and research communities will improve collective understanding and the effectiveness of efforts intent on securing peace in a time of environmental crisis.