Climate change mitigation in forests: Conflict, peacebuilding, and lessons for climate security

Forests in low and middle-income countries are at the centre of climate change mitigation efforts. But these forests are also areas of high levels of insecurity and are found in fragile states with weak governance, especially over forestlands. Nations affected by conflict hold 40 per cent of the world’s tropical forests (Donovan et al. 2007). No fewer than 25 of 64 countries with REDD+ initiatives are experiencing or emerging from armed conflict (Castro-Nuñez et al. 2017; UN-REDD 2017). The debate about ‘climate security’ has focussed on the way climate change can exacerbate threats and dangers, but less attention has been placed on the security issues associated with the responses to climate change such as mitigation. Climate change mitigation initiatives can have a significant impact on peace, conflict and security by reinforcing existing inequalities or influencing new forms of forest governance and relations among forest actors. When CCMis contribute to peacebuilding through improved land tenure security for marginalized and Indigenous peoples, enhanced livelihoods opportunities, equitable benefit distribution, and fair processes for governance and conflict resolution, CCMIs can play a constructive force in stabilising security contexts. However, when these dynamics are lacking, they can destabilise forest areas and lead to escalated conflict and insecurity

Climate change mitigation in forests: Conflict, peacebuilding, and lessons for climate security - Position Paper

Climate change mitigation in forests: Conflict, peacebuilding, and lessons for climate security III There is growing awareness of the link between climate change and security. Most of the climate security debate has focused on the ways that climate change exacerbates geopolitical and state security matters through ‘threat multipliers’, especially in terms of intra-state, inter-group and sub-national conflicts. At the same time, 64 per cent of climate finance was allocated to mitigation and 25 per cent to adaptation between 2013 and 2019 (OECD 2020; OECD 2021). Despite this, the dynamics between climate change mitigation and security remains a less-explored topic. As climate security attracts increasing attention in research and policy, our entry point into reviewing the links between climate change mitigation and security is rooted in studies of conflict and peace in environmental governance. Because forests are a global focus of climate change mitigation, we focus our review on initiatives that directly affect, or are implemented in, forest areas in low- and middle-income countries. Forests have complex governance contexts and are prone to conflict due to histories of colonization and ongoing resource extraction that lead to disputes over who has authority to make decisions, how different actors are compensated, and whose priorities and claims dictate actions in forest areas. CCMIs related to forests are often inserted into these long-standing conflicts. Many of these tensions over rights and resources are located in fragile states and some in armed conflict and post-conflict contexts. Conflict and weak institutional governance are often associated with deforestation but have also been shown to protect forest resources when insurgent forces are compelled to do so

An institutional approach to livelihood resilience in Vietnam

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of East Anglia, 2001.The objective of the thesis is to investigate the ways in which institutions shape livelihood resilience. Livelihood resilience is defined as the ability of an individual or household to recover from, or to withstand changes in, the social or physical environment, and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and thus ensure security of livelihood. To analyse the extent to which institutions shape livelihood resilience I examine the way in which institutions affect access to natural resources and the role of this access in producing resilient livelihoods. This exploration is carried out by examining in turn the role of formal structures, of informal processes and of the geographical and historical context in shaping access to resources and livelihood resilienceUniversity of East Anglia