This Climate-Fragility profile is envisaged as a first component of a Climate-Fragility Risk Assessment process. It summarizes the key challenges the Lake Chad region is experiencing as a consequence of the interplay between climate change and fragility.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is a non-legally binding agreement designed to reduce existing levels of risk and prevent emerging risks. While references to conflict were deleted from the final text, Sendai addresses issues parallel to those that would need to be addressed in a prevention and sustaining peace agenda.

The Framework, if properly implemented, would tackle three sets of factors that increase both disaster and conflict risks:

The NATO Parliamentary Assemblies’ Science and Technology Committee drafted a new report on Food and Water Security in the Middle East and North Africa. The report underlines that pressures on natural resources and connected impacts on food production are factors that contribute to the (in-) security of the MENA region. The document summarizes causes as well as possible technical and governance approaches to improve food and water security in the region. The initiative shows that the role of environmental resources is increasingly taken seriously in the sphere of security policy.

More than 113 million people across 53 countries experienced acute hunger requiring urgent food, nutrition and livelihoods assistance (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) in 2018. This report illustrates in stark terms the hunger caused by conflict and insecurity, climate shocks and economic turbulence.

This new report by the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in collaboration with the Clingendael Institute and other Dutch research institutes points to pressure on security and migration arising from too little, too much or polluted water. Many integrated solutions are possible to divert this trend towards a sustainable and climate-resilient world.

South Asia is on the front line in confronting the implications of climate change and addressing the consequences for security.

To analyse this and more, the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change (GMACCC) has just released its report “Climate Change and Security in South Asia”. GMACCC is a global network of military and security experts working on the security implications of climate change. President BIPSS, Major General A N M Muniruzzaman, ndc, psc (Retd) is the Chairman of GMACCC. He is also a lead author of this report.

Significant progress has been made over the past decade or so in the development of policy and legislation that support the recognition of customary rights to land, with important legal rulings in Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, South Sudan, and South Africa. At the same time, the strengthening of communities’ traditional rights to use resources has progressed through community forest reserves and community conservation areas.

Land markets are evolving in response to increasing population pressure in Africa.
High population pressure leads to land use intensification on very small farms.
Population growth in densely populated rural areas leads to increasing rural–urban youth migration.
Tenure security enhancing land reforms enhance investments and sustainable land use intensification.
Pro-poor development strategies should target the strengthening of land governance.

Land Degradation Neutrality is a new way of approaching land degradation that acknowledges that land and land-based ecosystems are affected by global environmental change as well as by local land use practices. Achieving the target of a land degradation neutral world encourages adaptive management during planning, implementation, and monitoring of LDN-related activities and follows the LDN response hierarchy of avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation.

In this synthesis report, the issue of tenure security is addressed and assessed in several countries where government, civil society, the private sector and development cooperation initiatives have been implemented for decades. The selected case studies from fifteen (15) countries ensure not only a geographic balance but they also represent countries with different socio-economic and land-related histories and that have followed different pathways. The studies’ key findings underline the still precarious state of tenure security in many countries.

Located in the arid and semi-arid areas of West Africa, the Sahel has undergone profound changes over the past 50 years. Known for the prevalence of land degradation processes, the Sahel is suffering from the combined negative effects of population growth, human activities and climate variability, resulting in recurrent droughts and the continued decline of natural resources and land productivity.