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In recent years, fresh conflicts have erupted across the globe with alarming regularity, coinciding with a decade of record high temperatures.

While the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East tend to receive the bulk of global attention, there are many other conflicts that are equally severe and protracted. According to analysis from the Peace Research Institute Oslo, 59 conflicts were recorded in 2023, the highest number since the end of the Second World War.

Many people would assume that climate adaptation takes a back seat when confronted with conflict. But new research from the Adaptation Fund provides insights and firsthand experience of successful projects operating within fragile states and conflict-affected countries.

The fund has invested $1.2 billion across 180 projects around the world – and so it’s to be expected that some of these would fall within areas of potential conflict. A number of projects are within countries, such as Mali, where wars have raged for years, while others are in places where sporadic and unpredictable violence can suddenly break out.

Still others are in especially fragile areas, such as the Volta Basin in West Africa, which is highly vulnerable to devastating floods and droughts. Knowing how to quickly respond and adapt is crucial within these different contexts, researchers found.

The study highlights a number of key factors for improving the outcomes of projects in conflict zones: strengthening institutions, ensuring local ownership of finance, allowing for flexibility on climate funding, building strong partnerships and close monitoring are all seen as critical.

Cross-border climate risks can’t be solved in isolation

Climate change is exacerbating instability by weakening institutions, displacing communities and increasing tensions over available food and water. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change drew attention to this in its 2022 climate science report, stating “there is increasing evidence linking increased temperatures and drought to conflict risk in Africa.”

Mikko Ollikainen, head of the Adaptation Fund, commented last year that conflict-affected countries are “among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and their needs for external assistance are high”.

He added that the fund’s research “reinforces the importance of strengthening institutions in fragile settings to deliver climate finance effectively, and building strong partnerships between governments, civil society and the private sector to ensure proper funding”.

Water conservation in Ethiopia

One case study that demonstrates these complexities is a climate-smart agriculture project in Ethiopia. The $10-million initiative took place between 2017 and 2022, and was designed to increase resilience across seven ‘woredas’ (districts), vulnerable to drought. 

These districts included areas both designated as arid and semi-arid, owing to the predominance of drylands throughout the country. This can make farming difficult as crop production is largely dependent on varying levels of rainfall. An estimated 8 million households in the country earn a living through small-scale subsistence farming, and the practice is of critical importance to overall food supplies.

One of the districts involved in the project was Tigray, an area in the northernmost reaches of Ethiopia, and at the time the site of intense fighting between the government and a paramilitary group called the Tigray Defense Forces.

Can climate funders overcome fear to tread in conflict zones?

The outbreak of conflict meant that planned infrastructure development in the region was delayed and staff were unable to assess sites. Therefore, the project focused on strengthening institutional capacity and increasing local awareness and ownership over adaptation activities in other districts.

One of the long-term benefits was the successful engagement of local communities to provide common training on using new water facilities. According to researchers, water stress was reduced in affected communities as an underground source of drinking water was provided and local training given to ensure its maintenance.

Over 15,000 households benefited from access to safe drinking water, and a further 8,500 farmers were trained in irrigation agriculture. In addition, 3,300 hectares of degraded land were restored using soil and water conservation techniques, such as constructing shallow wells, small dams and hillside terraces to prevent water runoff.

The impact of these interventions was to reduce conflict in parts of the country where climate change is fuelling tensions over the availability of freshwater.

Cristina Dengel, the Adaptation Fund’s knowledge management officer, who coordinated the study, said: “The water facilities helped to drastically limit the conflict between crop farmers and livestock herders at the local level. Even if anecdotal, it shows the potential of climate adaptation projects to have a positive impact in reducing conflict and fragility.”

This success has been used as a template for a much larger project funded by Green Climate Fund which could reach ten times as many districts.

Building trust

Working in conflict-affected countries means having a different mindset about what can be achieved. In Ethiopia, the security situation in Tigray meant it wasn’t possible to operate in the region. As such, attention turned to the other districts involved in the project and how to ensure the best possible outcomes – and reduce further conflict – for people on the ground. 

Speaking at a COP29 event on adaptation in conflict areas co-organised by the Adaptation Fund and the Global Environment Facility, Srilata Kammila, head of climate change adaptation at the United Nations Development Programme, said working in fragile states is complex for a host of reasons.

Not only are institutions weaker to implement projects over the long-term, but there is also often discord between communities and the government. “The people in these situations have been affected with lack of trust in the government and other entities coming from outside. Building that trust and engaging communities becomes a critical part and entry point of designing adaptation projects,” said Kammila. 

Record-hot 2024 shows world must adapt to extremes, says EU climate service

Researchers found that in the case of Ethiopia, and others like it, having flexibility to adapt to a rapidly evolving situation is critical, together with community ownership over how projects are designed and implemented. This is easier said than done while in a conflict zone, but it at least provides better odds for success.

Ollikainen told Climate Home he hoped lessons learned in Ethiopia and the other case studies analysed will be applied elsewhere as conflicts continue to put pressure on local populations struggling with worsening climate extremes.

“We know that people need our help and it’s our responsibility to ensure financing is there to support them,“ he said. “As the climate crisis intensifies, we need to be prepared to work in conflict zones and let communities know we aren’t going to abandon them.”

Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK.

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The deal – the fund’s first sizeable help for a single conflict-affected state – is an early example of the kind of investment climate finance experts say needs to be rapidly expanded as many of the world’s most vulnerable countries face the crushing double pressures of conflict and climate impacts.  

At COP28 in Dubai last year, more than 100 countries, banks and other organisations called for “collective action to build climate resilience at the scale and speed required in highly vulnerable countries and communities, particularly those threatened or affected by fragility or conflict”.

On Friday, as the COP29 climate summit in Baku reached its halfway point, a handful of fragile countries – including Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Chad and Burundi – launched a “Network of Climate-vulnerable Countries Affected by Conflict or High Levels of Humanitarian Needs”, aimed at scaling up the climate finance they say has been lacking. 

“There is a blind spot in climate funding which is preventing the world’s most vulnerable people from receiving the support they desperately need. Our message to all countries is clear: we can no longer afford to ignore this,” said Yemen’s environment minister Tawfiq al-Sharjabi, speaking at a COP event. 

Aid agencies grapple with climate adaptation in fragile states

With climate shocks growing in scale and number, “climate change is a matter of survival for Somalia,” the country’s environment minister Khadija Mohamed Al-Makhzoumi said in October as the new Green Climate Fund (GCF) package was announced. 

But persuading the GCF to take a chance on Somalia took years of diplomatic pressure and wrangling, climate finance analysts say – and rapidly moving the much larger sums of money needed for urgent climate adaptation in fragile nations through a range of finance providers will be a colossal challenge. 

“Somalia is only one country. All that diplomacy and work went for financing $100 million,” said Mauricio Vazquez, who leads work on climate change and conflict at ODI Global, a London-based global affairs think-tank. 

“It’s just not feasible to do that for $35 billion,” he warned, referring to the amount of money the 24 most fragile and conflict-affected countries say they need annually over the next 5-10 years to achieve their national climate adaptation plans. 

As he sees it, the GCF’s Somalia funding “is one in 1,000 they should be doing – so the Somalia success, when you look at it in the big picture, is a demonstration of collective failure.” 

Low appetite for risk 

Countries embroiled in conflicts, or with weak or absent governments, have long struggled to access climate finance, not least because much of it is provided as loans – and loan providers prefer low-risk investments. 

Heavily conflict-affected countries received an average of just $2.74 per capita each year in international adaptation funding in the decade to 2020 – 40% of what other low-income countries got, according to a World Bank report published in July.

Weaker states often also lack the systems, human resources and know-how to effectively apply for funding. As part of its mandate to push half of its adaptation finance to the most vulnerable states, the GCF offers every country at least $4 million in “readiness” funds to help prepare their applications. But an analysis found most fragile and conflict-affected states hadn’t even sought that money. 

“They weren’t accessing investments, or even getting to readiness,” Stephanie Speck, a spokeswoman for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) told Climate Home in an interview. Relying on countries to “come to us” – the normal process – doesn’t work in these cases, she said. 

Adaptation Fund head laments “puzzling” lack of pledges at COP29

Under international pressure to try to move more funding to countries and communities where it is needed most, the GCF – and some other multilateral development banks, including the African Development Bank (AfDB) – are trying to fundamentally rethink how they work with fragile countries. 

They are also looking for new sources of funding – particularly from the long-reluctant private sector – with public climate and development aid unlikely to grow substantially, especially given developments such as the re-election this month of incoming US President Donald Trump, who cut international climate spending during his first term in office. 

“Every actor, including the multilateral development banks, says it’s absolutely vital to bring in the private sector. Otherwise, it’s just a drop in the ocean,” said Yue Cao, an ODI climate finance researcher. 

Much room for improvement 

The AfDB now factors in both fragility and climate change as part of its decision-making on all investments, said Frederik Teufel, the bank’s lead coordinator of efforts to boost its work in fragile contexts. 

To woo more private investors, the bank is moving away from focusing first on the fragility of countries such as Somalia and Chad – a term the countries themselves dislike – to emphasising potential investment opportunities that could aid longer-term development, from expanding access to mini-grid power to building irrigation systems, Teufel said.  

“When you overly focus on the problem, investors say, ‘I can’t invest there,’” he told Climate Home. 

The bank also is shifting from a project-by-project approach in fragile situations to a longer-term investment effort – and its new 2024 strategy sees homegrown African investors as the key. 

“The risk perception from investors is completely different within the continent versus outside the continent,” he said. 

But to attract homegrown – or other – investment, the bank admits in its strategy it will need to help fragile countries develop and put into action stronger financial management systems, aimed at building “transparency, accountability and anti-corruption measures, and sustainable management of debt”. 

The GCF, in turn – which Speck noted was “established to be a high risk taker” – is trying to build more flexibility into its investments to accommodate the often fast-changing situation on the ground in conflict-hit countries. 

“Things sometimes change one day to the next. You think you can work in District A, then a warlord takes over. You don’t want to have to take a year to decide to move to District B,” she said. Being flexible and nimble, she noted, “is new for us”. 

In Somalia, Green Climate Fund tests new approach for left-out communities

Recognising that making applicants wait up to two years for an answer on a funding proposal also didn’t work, especially in fragile settings, the GCF, under its new executive director Mafalda Duarte, has pledged to report back on basic concept proposals within six weeks starting next year, and to provide decisions on full proposals within nine months, Speck said. 

Funders including the GCF and the AfDB say they are also increasingly taking into account that not backing a project in a fragile setting can carry as much or more risk than funding it. 

“People’s careers are based on success – and success is riskier in places that are more difficult,” said Vazquez. Investing in conflict-affected states is also often more expensive than in more stable settings, he said. 

But in places with very low levels of food security or poor health, for instance, the amount of improvement that can potentially be achieved with an investment is huge, he noted, compared to more “minimal” advances in places with less severe problems. 

With climate impacts surging globally, “the adaptation window is closing, and countries affected by conflict and fragility can easily reach their limits, if they’re not already there,” he said. “The question is, who actually pays the cost of doing nothing?” 

Sponsored by SPARC (Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises) through the Climate, Peace and Transboundary Resilience Pavilion at COP29. See our supporters page for what this means. 

Laurie Goering is a freelance writer and editor based in London, UK. 

The Climate, Peace and Transboundary Resilience Pavilion at COP29 will host 30 events with world-leading experts, including heads of state and other leading representatives from governments, climate funds, aid agencies, civil society organisations, and more. All events will be livestreamed. For more information visit the Pavilion page here.

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With supplies of international aid increasingly falling short around the world as the number and scale of crises and disasters grows, humanitarian groups are trying out new approaches to close the gap, including “anticipatory action” which pushes small amounts of cash to those in the path of a looming disaster, to help them better protect themselves and their assets.

In countries such as Bangladesh, with strong early warning systems and disaster-reduction mechanisms in place, such efforts have been shown to cut losses by about $7 for each $1 invested. But in the world’s most fragile and conflict-affected states – from Somalia to Afghanistan, and Iraq to Chad – systems like this are often missing.

COP29: We need to adapt to climate chaos now

Reducing humanitarian needs and boosting resilience there will require building basic infrastructure, something that can only happen if development, peace-building and relief groups – and their funders – get out of their comfort zones and overcome obstacles to working together, resilience researchers say.  

“The only way to get ahead of a disaster is not by mitigating its effects but by avoiding it happening in the first place – by investing in disaster-risk reduction and climate adaptation,” said Mauricio Vazquez, who leads work on climate change and conflict at ODI Global, a London-based think-tank. 

“You don’t need to wait for a bad weather forecast to do something. Anticipatory action done by humanitarians doesn’t create opportunities for people, it just helps make the best of a situation,” he said in an interview with Climate Home. 

Weak governance exposes people 

Abdihakim Ainte, director of climate change for Somalia’s prime minister, agreed that “vulnerability primarily stems from the dysfunction of key institutions.” 

“The weaker the institutions, the more susceptible people are to every shock and disruption,” he told Climate Home. 

 At last year’s COP28 climate talks, more than 100 countries, banks and other organisations issued a call for “collective action to build climate resilience at the scale and speed required in highly vulnerable countries and communities, particularly those threatened or affected by fragility or conflict.”

Innovative efforts to make that happen are ramping up. Financiers including the African Development Bank, for instance, are increasingly trying to move development cash through peace-building and humanitarian groups on the ground in conflict-hit areas. 

The bank has signed an agreement with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), an organisation that “has the ability to operate in very insecure environments. They stay there – they’ve been there for decades,” said Frederik Teufel, the bank’s lead coordinator of efforts to boost its investments in fragile contexts. 

The ICRC focuses on using humanitarian grants to deliver short-term aid. But in places like conflict-plagued Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, or in Somalia, “there’s no reason they cannot use that delivery capacity there to also advance irrigation (or) community-based solar,” Teufel said in an interview with Climate Home. 

Humanitarian groups can give funders crucial and otherwise unavailable insights into what communities affected by conflict themselves see as the most useful investments, he said, noting that “they all want development solutions, not another bag of rice.” 

But significant institutional obstacles stand in the way of scaling up such cooperation, including a need by humanitarian groups to be seen as neutral in conflict zones, and accounting rules that require different types of development and climate funding to be kept in separate pots to avoid double counting. 

Humanitarian action limited 

In Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the ICRC, which focuses on protecting victims of armed conflict, is working with development partners and funders over seven years to rehabilitate and expand the Goma West water system – a project that serves both development and humanitarian needs.

But such projects don’t lead to meeting broad country-level needs, warned Catherine-Lune Grayson, head of policy at the ICRC. 

In order to protect their ability to access conflict-hit communities, humanitarian groups need to carefully avoid taking sides in political disputes – and choices about partners and where to spend development money are often political. 

“We have to tread a fine line. Where do we join forces, and where do we need to keep a healthy distance so it’s not read as too political?” Grayson asked, emphasising the need for “complementary” rather than “joint” work. 

Cross-border climate risks can’t be solved in isolation

Scale is another issue. “We can help rehabilitate the water system in Goma, but you cannot ask the ICRC to restore and expand all water systems across the country. We will say we’re not equipped to do this,” she said. 

Still, the view that countries struggling with conflict are not the sole responsibility of humanitarian agencies is fortunately growing, she said. 

“A few years ago, there would not even have been a discussion about this. There’s been a real shift,” she added. 

Maladaptation? 

The different time horizons of humanitarian groups – focused on meeting short-term needs – and development actors – focused on longer-term aims – are another area that needs attention as groups try to work together, said Manisha Gulati, a global risks and resilience researcher with ODI Global. 

In Somalia, for instance, wells and water storage are often being built to meet immediate humanitarian demand – but analysis by ODI researchers suggests the money is not being spent where it will be most needed in the future, as climate change impacts strengthen, she said. 

“We have mapped where water insecurity is now and where it will get worse – and that’s where we should be thinking about. That’s how we prevent the next drought and humanitarian crisis,” Gulati said. 

Today “we’re digging wells that won’t work in the long term. It’s maladaptation and we’re not using finance well if we’re using it in a manner where in the next 5-10 years we create a problem,” she said. 

Simply improving communication among those working to solve problems in armed conflict areas is one way to move ahead, Gulati said. “How do we talk about collective action when agencies have no idea what the others are doing?” she asked. 

Ainte, of Somalia, said efforts to win resources for crucial development in conflict-hit countries – a challenge as development aid stagnates – can often come into conflict with appeals for humanitarian aid, which keep the focus on vulnerability. 

“The humanitarian narrative has to change to a development narrative. Somalia has resources that need to be invested in. We need that kind of mentality, that we are a country that has potential and deserves investment, rather than a country that has a problem,” he said. 

Need to fix systems 

But winning funding to boost development and create resilient systems in fragile countries will also require the countries themselves to step up, including cutting corruption and building stronger guardrails to ensure funds are used effectively, Gulati said. 

“They need to understand it’s not a one-way street – they have to make an equal effort and adjustments,” she said. “You might get $100 million – but you won’t get more unless you fix the basics in your systems.” 

With climate impacts surging and almost two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor expected to live in countries that are fragile or conflict-affected by 2030, the stakes for getting this cooperation right are growing, she added.

“We can keep throwing money at the humanitarian problem, but we’re not reducing the caseload,” she said. “We need to address the basic vulnerabilities that are leading to this situation. If we don’t do that, we’re not going to solve the problem.” 

Sponsored by SPARC (Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises) through the Climate, Peace and Transboundary Resilience Pavilion at COP29. See our supporters page for what this means. 

Laurie Goering is a freelance writer and editor based in London, UK. 

The Climate, Peace and Transboundary Resilience Pavilion at COP29 will host 30 events with world-leading experts, including heads of state and other leading representatives from governments, climate funds, aid agencies, civil society organisations, and more. All events will be livestreamed. For more information visit the Pavilion page here.

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