Part 3/3 – Land, Peace and Security
By: Sandor Madar
Alp Analytica had the great pleasure to work along with adelphi on a report for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), titled: Ground for Peace: Land and Ecosystem Restoration for International Peace and Security. The report was launched at a side event hosted by adelphi, UNCCD and UNDPPA at UNCCD – COP16 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Despite growing global awareness of the importance of land and ecosystem restoration in addressing the climate crisis, less attention has been paid to its promising – yet largely untapped – potential to foster international peace and cooperation. This report aims to fill this gap by setting the political case for land and ecosystem restoration as a powerful route towards international peace and security, by addressing the linkages between land degradation, conflict and insecurity in transboundary geographies, the key enablers for land restoration and forest conservation to promote transboundary cooperation and peace, as well as the current financial landscape and its remaining gaps to enhance peace and security.
Land is crucial to people’s livelihoods, health and wellbeing, as well as to their culture and identity, but it is increasingly under threat. 20 to 40% of global land area, as well as 60% of all ecosystem services are already degraded or currently degrading. As land resources are degrading and becoming scarcer, competition and dispute over their access and use increase. Over the last 60 years, at least 40% of all intrastate conflicts have been linked to natural resources, including land. At the same time, conflict and fragility also drive vulnerability, they create environmental degradation and also interact with the impacts of climate change. 70% of the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change and environmental degradation are also among the most fragile states.
In this context, there is a two-way interaction between land, ecosystem degradation, and international peace and security: Land can be a victim, and a source and driver of conflict. Conflict and insecurity can degrade land, resources and ecosystems through direct physical impact from fighting, landmines, fires, through indirect impacts by crop, pasture and water system destruction as well as by change in land rights, the use of maladaptive livelihood practices due to vulnerabilities and by the impact of conflict-triggered unregulated displacement.
We identified five key pathways through which land and ecosystem degradation can contribute to conflict and insecurity:
1: Exposure to loss of livelihood, income and economic opportunities can push people toward competition, criminal activities and conflict. In the West African Sahel, soil erosion and loss of soil fertility coupled with poor water management and weak governance practices triggered loss of livelihoods, competition for resources and conflict between pastoralists and farmers, the spread of extremism, and the appearance of groups such as Boko Haram.
2: Reduced farmland availability, crop failure and reduced agricultural productivity can contribute to raising social tensions and conflict. Food riots broke out in Tunisia, Egypt and in Syria in 2011 to protest increasing food prices and food insecurity as a result of failing crops induced by droughts.
3: Unregulated migration and displacement can create tensions between host and displaced communities. Climate change, land degradation and gang violence triggered unregulated migration in the Central American Dry Corridor.
4: Reinforced socio-economic disparities, inequalities, marginalization and discrimination of vulnerable groups can lead to social tensions and conflict. Latin America is home to 42 million indigenous people but they only own 5% of land and even that is constantly under threat of deforestation, agricultural expansion, monocultural agri-industry, ranching and by the extractive industry. Land defenders often pay the price of their activism with their lives.
5: Natural resources and governance: Weakened or absent land and natural resources governance structures can escalate conflict. In Sudan, Internal displacement due to conflicts and issues around land tenure generated tensions and conflict between pastoralists and farmers as well as host communities and internally displaced people.
Climate change acts as an accelerator of crises and conflicts, especially in fragile socioeconomic contexts, and disproportionately impacts people who are already marginalized. However, there is a wealth of examples that demonstrate that land can also be leveraged for fostering peace and security, and enhancing transboundary cooperation.
Our research also identified five enablers of peace:
1: Focusing on technical and scientific collaboration: In cross-border areas, this can establish the basis for pursuing shared goals, and exchange of data and information can create honest engagement and consensual decisions.
2: Inclusive dialogue: Community-led dialogue must be prioritized in transboundary ecosystem restoration and sustainable land management efforts. This can be enabled by undertaking stakeholder analysis and mapping and consultations at the outset. Broad inclusion in processes can also build community resilience and peaceful coexistence.
3: Transboundary governance mechanisms: When linked to policy and dialogue processes, land and ecosystem restoration interventions can serve as an entry point to bring stakeholders together over common goals. It is done more efficiently when existing governance structures can be leveraged and shared economic incentives are also part of the equation.
4: Conflict-sensitive approaches to land restoration: Applying conflict sensitivity to land and ecosystem restoration interventions helps identify proactive ways to build trust and cooperation. Important elements are the do no harm, explicitly addressing the root causes of conflicts and conflict dynamics are monitored
5: Capacity-building: Can be used as a tool to promote cooperation and peaceful coexistence
In order to enable these solutions, we need to upscale and accelerate finance, especially in fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS). Despite playing a crucial role as a root cause and driver of conflicts, land-related issues only receive roughly 10% of climate finance and only a fraction of this is directed to FCAS. However, with the right investment and conflict sensitive programming, we can transform land into a tool of peacebuilding. One of the examples of the transformative initiatives is the Peace Forest Initiative convened by South Korea. This reports was also conceived with the aim of providing support and scientific, evidence-based guidance for its operations.
At the COP16, the land, peace and security-related events and the scope of the discussion was very limited. Apart from the PFI-related side events, the land degradation, peace and security nexus was most interestingly observed from the angle of migration. A high-level ministerial meeting was held on the topic where states expressed their concerns about land degradation that they perceive as a driving factor of migration and a potential source of insecurity and conflict.
The key messages highlighted that we can see an emergence of conflict, as land is degrading due to climate change and human activity, and failures occur in the agricultural sector triggering food insecurity as well as loss of livelihoods. In tandem, more competition happens for resources, and for the access to pasture and productive land. The more land degrades, the more people will move, a trend which can already be observed across Niger, Haiti and Afghanistan. Currently, 1.8 billion people are affected by drought, three billion people by land degradation and 123 million people by displacement. The widespread displacement of people undermines regional security, erodes social cohesion and deepens inequalities. The root causes of conflicts are most often not taken into account, resulting in inadequate solutions with conflicts more likely to remain with us or relapse.
Hopefully, this area will receive more attention in the near future and reports like ours will be utilized to help understand the dynamics between land degradation, peace and security as well as the peacebuilding potential of international, transboundary cooperation, land restoration and ecosystem conservation underpinned by adequate financial mechanisms.
N.B.: All figures and statistics in this article were quoted from the UNCCD (2024), Ground for Peace: Land and Ecosystem Restoration for International Peace and Security, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification report
If you are interested in the links between biodiversity conservation and peace and security, you can read the first article of the series here. Or you might take an interest in the nexus of climate change, conflict and forced displacement that you can read about in the second article here.
