A New Mandate for Peacekeeping Operations: Climate Adaptation

February 21, 2022

By Christopher Daly
Graduate Fellow, UNA-NCA

There is broad agreement that climate change poses a very real and growing threat to peace and stability around the world. The need for clean water and arable land is predicted to become a key driver of intrastate armed conflicts, with inevitable spillovers in the form of migration and economic destabilization which will affect whole regions. Today’s converging crises of famine, civil war, and mass migration are likely just a warm-up for the 2030’s and beyond.

The U.S. National Intelligence Council, the UN, and the UN Security Council are well aware of climate change’s potential as a driver of conflict, as spelled out in the steady stream of risk assessment reports released in the last several years. Indeed, numerous ongoing UN peacekeeping operations around the world have mandates that have been or could be expanded to address weather-related emergencies such as the recent fires in Lebanon and floods in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The General Assembly and Security Council should consider how the scope of peacekeeping might be expanded to include weather-related emergencies outside conflict zones and in locations in which missions are not already deployed. Specifically, preventative UN missions devoted to climate-adaptation should be considered.

Natural disaster response or climate-adaptation missions could be invited by countries where the threat of economic or social disruption from the future effects of climate change is dire.

What would a climate-adaptation peacekeeping operation entail, and how would it be deployed? Similar to the way that peacekeeping missions are requested by host governments, natural disaster response or climate adaptation missions could be invited by countries where the threat of economic or social disruption from the future effects of climate change is dire. These hypothetical missions would still be authorized by the Security Council and include troops and equipment generated by the UN’s Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System (PCRS), with emphasis on civil engineering contingents.

Demand for adaptation missions is likely to grow, especially in countries that want to build sustainable and climate-resilient infrastructure but lack the financing to do so. After this year’s COP26 meeting in Glasgow, there was considerable anguish over wealthy states’ failure to live up to the promise made at COP15 in 2009 that by 2020 $100 billion per year would be allotted for a climate loss and damage fund to be made available to poorer countries. Adaptation missions could be a way for richer states to offer tangible aid, in addition to funding, while sharing the cost-burden.

While powerful countries may use military resources to address environmental shocks on the horizon, smaller countries’ readiness will be much more dependent on a confluence of other resources. Knowledge exchange, facilitated through joint adaptation-focused peacekeeping operations would benefit those countries while lessening the need for aid over time. Technical expertise in engineering and related activities gained in the course of building adaptive infrastructure could be put to use at home as engineering corps troops cycle in and out, as is typical of multi-year operations, with future dividends coming in the form of better disaster preparedness as well as more highly skilled workforces.

The unfolding climate crisis means that militaries will increasingly be tasked with disaster relief and civil engineering missions as states are beset by continuous cycles of extreme weather, and as strains on infrastructure increase due to ballooning urban populations and influxes of refugees from climate-stricken areas. Policies need to be developed now to meet these challenges before they overwhelm our collective ability to act. Re-thinking UN peacekeeping to respond to and help stabilize communities threatened by increased severity of weather incidents caused by climate change, could move the UN system forward in a dramatic and tangible way, with considerable material benefits both for countries on the receiving end of infrastructure enhancements and for those who provide it.