Geopolitical conflict impedes climate change mitigation

Introduction

During the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP) in Egypt, the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres appealed to the world community to work together or face “climate hell”¹. In his speech, Guterres hinted at conflicts posing barriers to cooperation on climate issues: “The war in Ukraine, other conflicts, […] have had dramatic impacts all over the world. But we cannot accept that our attention is not focused on climate change”¹. Indeed, contrary to the hopes for a world society and for the end of history² after the end of the Cold War, geopolitical fragmentation and conflicts have been spreading, and have rendered international consensus on how to escape Guterres’ climate hell more challenging and—as time passes—more unlikely.The developments leading to the current geopolitical fragmentation have not occurred overnight, but were foreseeable for some time. Nevertheless, Guterres’ concern about how conflicts and socio-economic disruptions in the fabric of global relations are significantly decelerating climate change mitigation has so far not been heeded, neither in the Assessment Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nor in the wider peer-reviewed literature.

There is ample debate and publication on climate change causing conflict. Research on environmental conflicts increased since the 1990s³ and cumulated in a scientific discourse concerning conflict as a consequence of climate change, in other words, a Climate=>Conflict-nexus⁴ (Fig. 1, blue arrow and boxes). The question of a possible impact of climate change on conflict is discussed for direct and indirect conflictual outcomes such as wars, communal violence and the individual acceptance of and participation in political violence, but also via climate-affected conflict drivers such as resource scarcity, agricultural damages and climate-induced migration^{5, 6, 7–8} (see also Appendix 1 - TheClimate=>Conflict-Nexus). While critics emphasize a lack of evidential validity for the existence of this nexus^9,10, there is evidence that climate change impacts conflicts indirectly by aggravating other drivers of conflict^11,12. As a result of being criticized for lacking research on a nexus between climate and conflict¹³, the IPCC in its 5th Assessment Report (AR5) included a chapter on Human Security¹⁴, in which, again, research on conflict as a consequence