Pathways to Peace: Addressing Conflict and Strengthening Stability in a Changing Climate Series
The development community has made strides in cross-sector coordination, programming, and learning, yet understanding of the linkages between governance, conflict, and climate variability and change is still nascent. Many environments that face high exposure to climate risk also may exhibit characteristics of fragility. Together, these characteristics may make resident communities more vulnerable to instability and humanitarian emergencies.
Three recent USAID-funded programs in the Horn of Africa —Peace Centers for Climate and Social Resilience (PCCSR) in Ethiopia, PEACE III in East Africa, and Toward Enduring Peace in Sudan (TEPS)— that engaged pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in peacebuilding activities are building adaptive capacity and broader community resilience in the face of adverse climate conditions, such as drought, by integrating activities that explicitly address climate risk. The preliminary results from these programs suggest that collective action in response to the common threat of climate variability and change strengthens trust in institutions and cultivates greater social cohesion.
The Pathways to Peace: Addressing Conflict and Strengthening Stability in a Changing Climate series by the Adaptation Thought Leadership and Assessments (ATLAS) project considers how programming that integrates interventions to support governance in areas that promote peacebuilding and climate change adaptation simultaneously can produce dividends such as reducing inter-communal conflict and strengthening resilience to a range of shocks and stresses. As part of this series, ATLAS completed three program assessments for PCCSR, PEACE III and TEPS and a comprehensive thought leadership paper:
- Lessons Learned from Resilience and Peacebuilding Programs in the Horn of Africa
- An assessment of Mellit and Umm Keddada localities in North Darfur State, Sudan
- Lessons Learned From PEACE III: A Mid-Cycle Portfolio Review
- Lessons Learned from the Peace Centers for Climate and Social Resilience: An Assessment in Borana Zone, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia