Can transboundary climate risks lead to conflicts?

Transboundary climate risks transcend borders and are triggered by climate-related hazards that have cascading impacts beyond the primary affected area(s). These include extreme weather events such as tropical storms, flooding, drought, and heatwaves, as well as slow-onset events such as high temperatures, land and forest degradation, loss of biodiversity, sea-level rise, and ocean warming. 

Moreover, as countries are being propelled to adapt to climate change, adaptation efforts of one country could redistribute climate risks by shifting them onto other countries. For instance, a country’s decision to build a dam to support national sustainable energy and agricultural policy goals can jeopardise water supply for neighbours further downstream. As countries (or regions) grapple with this unexpected redistribution of climate risk, it could lead to conflict.

A growing literature is attempting to understand the direct and indirect pathways between climate change and conflict, often analysing them as one-off events in a single-context scenario (for example, flooding in a defined geographic region). However, observing how climate change is agnostic to geography, operating as if in a borderless world, more research is needed to understand transboundary climate risks and whether they may foment conflict or cause instability beyond their source of origination.

Understanding various transboundary climate risks

1. Terrestrial shared natural resources include forests, grasslands, wetlands, rivers, deltas, and other land ecosystems that traverse delimited borders. The forests in the Mekong River basin area connect Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Vietnam. They present a striking case of how Vietnam, as an early adopter of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives in 2009, transferred deforestation and forest degradation to its neighbours. As Vietnamese companies had to follow strict forest conservation policies locally, they shifted the production of deforesting commodities (such as timber and semi-processed wood products, rubber latex, among others) to Lao PDR and Cambodia, which granted them large-scale land concessions. These deals, at times, provoked land conflicts when they created adverse outcomes for the indigenous communities (who could no longer use the land that had been their main source of livelihood).
    
2. Marine shared natural ecosystems cover habitats that extend from the coastline to the deep ocean and include a range of species and ecosystems that depend on them. Pacific small island developing states (SIDS) have a history of conflict, including over maritime resources, and climate change challenges (through ocean warming, acidification, and sea-level rise) might lead to further disturbances. The degradation of ocean ecosystems (such as coral reefs) is significantly redistributing the migration pattern of tuna out of the Pacific exclusive economic zones. Pacific SIDS earn substantial licensing revenues from tuna fishing, and these changes could result in a rise in unregulated and illegal fishing, potentially exacerbating conflict in the region.
   
   Rising sea levels are also threatening the established maritime boundaries of the Pacific SIDS. This has grave implications for the region's national identity, legal order, and security. For instance, most of the land in archipelagic Tuvalu is less than two metres above sea level and risks being submerged. 
    
3. Agricultural commodities and food security are extremely vulnerable to climate change. Extreme weather events (such as droughts and floods) reduce agricultural yields in exporting countries, disrupting international supply chains and trade, and increasing global food prices. For instance, when the Ukraine-Russia war in early 2022 created a global grain crisis, India announced its commitment to fulfil the shortfall. However, India withdrew the very same day as forecasts predicted an unprecedented heatwave that would dampen the harvest. Subsequently, India banned wheat export, resulting in an immediate 6% increase in the global price of wheat. This illustrates how conflict and climate change in different regions within the same timeframe can exacerbate a global food crisis.
    

4. Sustainable energy transformation from fossil-fuel based energy systems towards renewable energy systems (powered by solar, wind, hydro, biomass) is critical for greenhouse gas mitigation. To meet decarbonisation targets, there has been a surge in demand for green minerals (primarily cobalt, lithium, and nickel) that are key inputs for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and other new green technologies. Substantial reserves of these critical minerals are located in states classified as fragile and/or conflict-affected (for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo holds 50% of the global reserves of cobalt), and there are real risks that their extraction can cause the emergence or persistence of grievances, tensions, and conflicts.

   Rising geopolitical rivalries and green protectionism are growing concerns as they raise costs and drive shortages of key inputs. This shows how efforts to mitigate climate change effects may (ironically) drive conflict, and how these, in turn, may reinforce climate change effects by delaying the global progress on energy transition.
    

5. Human mobility in the context of climate-induced movements refers to displacement, migration, and planned relocation. Mobility can be a proactive adaptation strategy (for example, farmers migrating to urban areas as their yields and income fall) or forced displacement to escape life-threatening climate risks. Although most climate induced mobility has been internal (i.e. within the country of origin), an accelerated trend of international (i.e. cross-border) mobility is being observed where climate change interacts with conflict and violence. The UNHCR’s Strategic Plan for Climate Action 2024-2030 reveals that the last decade witnessed the manifestation of the interlinkages between the impacts of climate change and conflict. In 2022, 84% of refugees and asylum seekers fled from 15 highly climate-vulnerable countries, compared to 61% in 2010. Recent years have seen a rise in ante against migrants in host communities with policy solutions now exploring how the causes of displacement, that include climate change, can be tackled at source.

These transboundary climate risks demonstrate how climate adaptation can no longer be viewed narrowly as a domestic concern. Rather, adaptation responses to tackle these complex transboundary climate risks and their cascading impacts need to be viewed as a shared global responsibility, similar to the more widely accepted narrative that advocates for international efforts on mitigation. 

This will require multilateral cooperation between different global, regional, national, and sub-national stakeholders and between governments, sectors, and communities. Research that leverages the latest technologies for forecasting climate scenarios and developing metrics that effectively measure these effects would be needed. Improved coordination and collaboration between cross-border actors to develop advanced alerting mechanisms to pre-empt and limit the effects of transboundary risks will be key. This necessitates considerable efforts towards building awareness and capacity at all levels. Most importantly, adaptation responses to transboundary climate risks need to consciously incorporate conflict sensitivity and risk mitigation frameworks to ensure the fallout from these to vulnerable communities can be minimised, if not entirely eliminated.