This paper, a collaboration between UNU-CPR and the Geneva Graduate Institute, examines how climate change, food insecurity and violent conflict interact – and what this means for the UN’s prevention agenda.
It outlines the current state of evidence on the climate-food-conflict nexus, and shows how climate shocks such as heatwaves, floods and droughts increasingly disrupt food production, drive up prices and erode livelihoods, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected settings. These pressures can fuel social unrest, displacement and recruitment by armed groups, while conflicts themselves destroy food systems and weaponize hunger, creating a vicious circle.
The brief dispels persistent myths about the relationship between climate change and conflict, highlighting that while there is no simple direct causality, climate impacts clearly act as a risk multiplier that interacts with existing political, economic, and social grievances. It argues that the Security Council is already seized of these issues through country-specific mandates and that climate-related food insecurity is increasingly central to its prevention agenda.
The authors identify concrete steps for the Security Council, Member States, and international organisations. These include better integrating climate and food-security analysis into Council deliberations, strengthening early-warning systems, scaling up climate-sensitive and conflict-sensitive food systems investments, and improving coordination between UN climate, development, humanitarian and peacebuilding bodies. The brief ultimately calls for food and livelihood security to be treated as a core pillar of international peace and security in an era of accelerating climate risk.
Read "Climate Change, Food Security and Conflict" here.
