United Nations peacekeeping as climate adaptation and conflict mitigation

Abstract

United Nations peacekeeping operations (UN PKOs) are increasingly deployed in settings experiencing both violent conflict and climate change. Given this overlap, our paper presents an analytical framework for understanding how UN PKOs’ conflict mitigation strategies may support climate adaptation. We focus specifically on activities UN PKOs undertake to address intercommunal violence related to natural resources impacted by climate change. In short, we argue that contemporary UN PKOs reduce the risk of intercommunal violence by engaging in de facto common-pool resource (CPR) management when deployed to climate-impacted settings, helping strengthen the institutions required to cooperatively manage shared resources like water for livestock. We generate this argument inductively, relying on qualitative evidence from four multidimensional UN PKOs in the Sudano-Sahelian zone—a region where intercommunal violence is increasing, partly due to the effect of climate change on shared grazing lands. These data highlight how contemporary UN PKOs’ capacities for local patrolling, building infrastructure, and mediating disputes strengthen various aspects of CPR management and subsequently reduce the risk of intercommunal violence. Overall, this study meets practitioners’ calls to better capture the impact of conflict mitigation strategies on climate adaptation and vulnerability.